Kristaps Porzingis exploded upwards when the season-opening tip was tossed as if he were a spring that had been compressed for the past 20 months, waiting to unleash coiled energy. Or as if he were a baking soda volcano primed for the middle school science fair, just waiting for the vinegar to be poured. Poor Thomas Bryant, the Wizards center standing opposite him, stood no chance: The ball rose up and was batted back seemingly within milliseconds. Porzingis, it appeared, was done waiting.
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But if Porzingis uncorked an entire missed season’s worth of kinetic energy into that leap, he managed to generate plenty more for another moment two hours later. With 52 seconds remaining in the game, Jalen Brunson collected the ball off a broken play, drove towards the basket and gently tossed up a basketball that was begging to be dunked. Porzingis obliged. It was an emphatic play, a reminder of return, a game-sealing dagger and something that cracked open the American Airlines Center, which was flooded with more noise than I’ve ever heard from it before Halloween. It was a fan’s euphoria. Mavericks basketball, that play screamed, is back.
Porzingis puts the exclamation point on his Mavs debut. pic.twitter.com/M4RqJfPdkw
— Bobby Karalla (@bobbykaralla) October 24, 2019
Those are the two moments burnt into my brain after Dallas’ season-opening home victory on Wednesday, a 108-100 against the Washington Wizards. It was Porzingis’ first official game with his new franchise, and even months of full-contact basketball before this couldn’t quite prepare him for it.
“I got to get my lungs right,” he said afterward while smiling. “I’m happy to be out there, but I’m also excited going forward (for) getting that rhythm, that feel back where most games you just go out there and you can’t do anything wrong.”
It was a perfectly adequate debut: Porzingis finished with 23 points on 7-of-16 shooting. Perhaps we would scrutinize it more if it was only him out there. But as you most certainly know, it’s not. And on Wednesday, Luka Doncic dropped 34 himself with a calm, reserved 12-of-19 shooting night.
It’s a work in progress, those two. Tonight felt more “my turn, your turn” than a cohesive, flowing star duo playing off each other. “We just need time,” Porzingis said. “I want to be out there on the floor with him because he takes away so much attention from me, and I want to take away attention from him. Once we get that two-man game going, it’s going to be pretty hard to stop.” It’s Game One of 82, and so those two don’t need to rush. I agreed with Porzingis when he said, “There’s so many more levels we can go higher with this team.”
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What’s important is that they’re both keen to work on it. Doncic said that he’s learning more about Porzingis every day they play together. Late in the game, after Washington had been hit with a technical free throw, Porzingis – the closest Maverick to the free throw line – stepped to it and then looked back to Doncic, who in turn pointed emphatically at him in approval. “Take it,” his gesture said. Porzingis missed, and maybe we’ll look back and see some dark analogy come from this. But all that I saw was mutual deference. They both want this partnership to work, and they’re putting it a little extra effort to try and make sure it does.
Here are some miscellaneous thoughts on their games:
- It almost feels like Porzingis can’t take bad shots. He’s so tall, with such shooting touch, that even crossover pull-up 2-pointers feel like decent attempts. That said, I would like to see him be more decisive on his catch-and-shoot attempts, and the team more purposeful in getting him low block looks. The very first play Dallas ran in this game was one that sprung Porzingis open with deep positioning on his man. He nailed the turnaround jumper, but it got waved off with a pre-shot defensive foul. Porzingis ended up starting 0-for-4, but I do love the idea of that opening sequence. Get him the ball deep, and Porzingis will be efficient enough with those attempts to make it worth your while.
- There were certainly moments when Doncic and Porzingis didn’t sync up correctly, primarily on an attempted Doncic alley-oop pass that failed and a botched Porzingis entry pass into Doncic. “Their relationship is good, obviously, on the court,” Maxi Kleber said. “Today, there were like one or two turnovers on post entry, stuff they have to talk about, figure out, because they never played together.” I’m using that Kleber quote just to point out that, yeah, this happens. They know. It’s fine. This is just the beginning of them developing real wink-nod chemistry.
- Even without much collaboration with Porzingis, Doncic looks ridiculously good. “I had a feeling he got quicker, to be honest,” Kleber said. “When I got back and we played five-on-five pickup games, he looked like he’s quicker, more explosive.” That’s certainly not fair. We’ll have more expansive analysis of the team’s early play next week once we have a better sample size, but boy, that Doncic-is-an-All-Star prediction looks good so far.
- This is the rotation pattern I suspected: It was Porzingis who subbed out early while Doncic stayed in, which allowed Porzingis to come back in and play with the second unit late in the first and to start the second. In the first half, Dallas only played a one-minute, 41-second stretch without either of the stars. It looked like the second half started playing out in that same manner, but Dallas was flirting with cracking open the game late in the third quarter, which probably caused Carlisle to deviate from his usual approach slightly and go heavier with his bench unit.
- Here’s one hype quote from Porzingis about Doncic: “He’s amazing. He’s unbelievable. He’s so talented. Once he gets going, it’s very hard to stop, and he’s going to be a problem.”
There will be growing pains; the inbounds mistake and the alley-oop that ended up on craigslist.com/missedconnections are both good reminders of that. Both Dallas stars expect so much from themselves, but it will sometimes be sloppy, sometimes chippy, sometimes both. This game was capped by Bradley Beal directly challenging Doncic on the court defensively and then getting ejected with just under two minutes remaining. It was an appropriate ending for the ref show we had gotten all game, and one Doncic handled well.
“That’s what basketball’s about,” Doncic said admiringly afterwards. “You have no friends on the court. I respect him for doing that. Everybody saying he’s an all-offensive player; no, he showed he’s great on defense, too, and he showed this. I respect him.”
Beal actually slowed him down just a bit – before that, it seemed inevitable that Doncic would eclipse his career-high 35 points. He mostly succeeded by getting Doncic to give up the ball and let other players make plays, which they did less successfully than him. But it’s not like Beal provided some brand-new, never-seen-before blueprint to stop the Slovenian.
Photo courtesy: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports
“They did that to me last year,” Doncic said, pausing for emphasis. “And the year before. And the year before. I’m used to it.”
This night has been a long time coming since the January Porzingis trade – for him, for Doncic, for fans, for everyone.
“I’m glad we got a win,” Doncic said. “I hope many more to come.”
Top photo courtesy: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports
Tim Cato is a staff writer at The Athletic covering the Dallas Mavericks. Previously, he wrote for SB Nation. Follow Tim on Twitter @tim_cato
