Mavs give Warriors problems, but champs have ‘enough to win.’ You think?

Steve Kerr, never an NBA leading man as a player but now the leader of the league’s best team as its coach, succinctly and unintentionally put NBA things into their proper perspective Wednesday in a pregame chat with the media.

Andre Iguodala and Omri Casspi are injured, it turns out, and weren’t available for the Golden State Warriors in their second and final trip of the season to the American Airlines Center.

“They’ll be missed,” Kerr said. “But we’ve got plenty, obviously, and we’ve got enough to win.”

You think?

The NBA’s best team was just fine against the Dallas Mavericks without two role players who are averaging a combined 12.6 points a game.

Somehow, the Warriors were able to ride the coattails of Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson to a 125-122 victory that snapped the Mavs’ modest, yet season best, four-game winning streak.

Curry’s 3-pointer with three seconds left was the difference, but not the only difference.

Even though they hung close in the second half, even taking an 84-83 lead in the third and forging a tie with 12 seconds to go, the Mavs are light years from the Warriors.

Of course, in the NBA that difference can be made up with one great draft and a couple mega off-season moves orchestrated by motivated players. Yeah, you know who you are.

The reality is that kind of miraculous off-season might only get the Mavs within an arm’s reach of the Warriors, plus they would need to take a similarly grand avenue just to get closer to the Houston Rockets.

That’s who Golden State plays Thursday, and the Rockets, even without an injured James Harden, were a big factor in Kerr’s decision to sit Iguodala and Casspi against the Mavs. That duo probably could have given something Wednesday, but Kerr would rather have it against the team closest to the Warriors in the Western Conference standings.

Kerr knows who he must beat now to position his team later. He knows who has the talent to unseat the Warriors.

It’s a short list.

And that’s one of the ills of the NBA.

How many teams, realistically, can win a title?

Four? Six?

Two — the Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers — have played each other in the Finals the past three years. The Cavaliers replaced the Miami Heat as the East representative after four straight years playing for it all, and the Warriors replaced the Spurs after San Antonio’s back-to-back Finals appearances.

So much for parity.

Behind the Warriors and Rockets are the Spurs. The Mavs’ four-game winning streak got them to 12th in the 15-team West, and they are much, much closer to 15th than they are to eighth, the conference’s last playoff spot.

At times Wednesday they looked better than their lot in the standings says they are. After falling behind by as many as 12 in the second quarter, the Mavs used a 25-14 run to get within 55-54 and actually force Kerr to use a timeout.

He also thought it would be a good idea to get Curry, Durant and Draymond Green back into the game.

Hey, Iguodala and Casspi were missed.

But a 7-0 run later and the Mavs were back down eight. Dennis Smith Jr. wowed with a dunk down the lane, but Curry countered it with a quick 3. Smith hit his own triple, but the 67-61 halftime deficit was about as good as the Mavs could have expected.

Even with Iguodala and Casspi on ice.

Rick Carlisle likes the way the Mavs are playing, as he should after watching them struggle so much early on. They’ve finally started finding their rhythm playing together, the coach said, and they hit their peak Sunday with a three-point win at Oklahoma City as the rookie Smith went off late.

They played better in the third Wednesday than the Warriors, but gave up too many second chance points while going cold on the other end to start the fourth. That was with Curry and Durant on the bench.

They returned to the floor with just over seven minutes to go, and it appeared that would be that.

The Mavs moved from down 11 to down two with just over a minute to go. Yogi Farrell stole a pass but missed a 3 that would have given the Mavs a lead. Harrison Barnes tied the game with 39 seconds to go and did so again a possession later.

Somehow, the Warriors survived without Iguodala and Casspi as Curry scored a game-high 32 and Durant and Thompson added 25 apiece.

As Kerr said, Golden State has enough talent to win.

You think?

Only as many as five others, maybe, in the league can compete with them.

That’s one of the ills of the NBA, and Kerr knows it.

WARRIORS 125, MAVERICKS 122

This story was originally published January 3, 2018 at 10:09 PM with the headline "Mavs give Warriors problems, but champs have ‘enough to win.’ You think?."