Mavericks will face Oklahoma City in playoffs after ugly loss to Spurs

After their extremely lackluster performance Wednesday night against the San Antonio Spurs, the Dallas Mavericks mostly wanted to turn the page on the ugly game and look ahead to the playoffs.

And the Mavs’ postseason will start at 8:30 p.m. Saturday in Oklahoma City when they open a best-of-seven first-round series against the Thunder.

Game 2 will be at 7 p.m. Monday before the series shifts to Dallas for Games 3 and 4.

Game 3 will be April 21 at 6 p.m., and Game 4 is April 23 at 7 p.m.

If needed, Game 5 will be back in Oklahoma City on April 25, Game 6 in Dallas on April 28, and a Game 7 would be in Oklahoma City on April 30.

All games will be shown telecast locally on KTXA/Channel 21.

The Mavs were 0-4 against the Thunder this season, but owner Mark Cuban remains optimistic that his squad can pull everything together and upset their Red River rivals.

“We haven’t played them with our new [deliberate style offensive] approach,” Cuban said. “Like I said, now we’re down to only about eight sprained ankles or broken bones away from being the favorites, so we’ll see what happens.”

Whatever happens against the Thunder, the Mavs will have to perform much better against Oklahoma City than they did Wednesday night against what amounted to San Antonio’s second team.

In their 96-91 loss to the Spurs at American Airlines Center, the Mavs looked completely disjointed in the second half when they blew an 18-point lead.

“I think they turned up their pressure on us and we might have gotten a little bit laxed,” said guard Wesley Matthews, who had 11 points on 4 of 14 shooting. “We missed a couple easy shots, they made a run.

“[It’s] something to learn from that, but at the same time, one of those games — it was kind of weird. Now it’s over, the regular season is over, and now we’ve got to remember what got us to this point. It was our defense, playing together, sharing the ball and just playing hard.”

Before getting to the Thunder, forward Dirk Nowitzki said the back-to-back road games the Mavs played Sunday against the Los Angeles Clippers and Monday against the Utah Jazz took some of the steam out of them and impacted their play against the Spurs.

“We had a tough back-to-back out West,” said Nowitzki, who scored 19 points on 5-of-17 shooting. “We didn’t have enough pep in our step, some shots didn’t go, but we still should’ve found a way to win, especially down the stretch.

“They had some layups, one possession three or four offensive rebounds, and those are costly.’’

What made this loss awkward for the Mavs was who the Spurs had on the court. San Antonio only dressed nine players and didn’t even bother to bring Kawhi Leonard, Tim Duncan, LaMarcus Aldridge, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and David West to Dallas.

The Spurs trailed 52-34 at the half, but ran circles around the Mavs en route to getting within 67-65 of Dallas heading into the final quarter.

Still, the Mavs said because they played without injured guards J.J. Barea (strained right groin) and Devin Harris (sprained left thumb), that affected how they could attack the Spurs. Particularly since backup center David Lee left for good in the second quarter with an injury to his right heel (X-rays were negative).

“I would have liked to get tonight for our fans, our last home game in the regular season,” Matthews said. “But we’re getting guys back healthy and it was a good night for guys to rest like Devin and JJ, and we just want to be hitting strides and be full strength.”

This is the 15th playoff appearance in the last 16 years for the Mavs. They’ve only played Oklahoma City twice in the playoffs.

The Mavs beat the Thunder 4-2 in the 2011 Western Conference Finals and then went on to defeat Miami in six games in the NBA Finals. The next season, the Thunder swept the Mavs 4-0, in the first round of the playoffs.

Before the Seattle SuperSonics left the Pacific Northwest and moved to Oklahoma City, they met the Mavs twice in the playoffs. In 1984, the Mavs defeated the Sonics 3-2 in the first round of the playoffs, and in 1987, Seattle beat Dallas 3-1, in the first round.

In losing all four of their games to OKC this season, the Mavs twice lost one-possession games. The Thunder won at home on Nov. 22 (117-114) and Jan. 13 (108-89), and in Dallas on Jan. 22 (109-106) and on Feb. 24 (116-103).

The Mavs dropped to 35-38 this season and were on playoff life support before winning seven of their next game and clinching a playoff berth with Monday’s 102-93 win in Utah. From here on, the Mavs want to be more as they were against the Jazz and less like they played against the Spurs.

“We deserved it after a long year, up-and-down season, the last (few) weeks we battled,” Nowitzki said. “We gutted out some tough wins on the road, at home, fought some injury problems all year long.

“Obviously we would have loved to win tonight. But we just didn’t think we had it tonight.”

The Mavs hope to have it against the Thunder. Otherwise, they may the same results they had Wednesday.

This story was originally published April 14, 2016 at 12:41 AM with the headline "Mavericks will face Oklahoma City in playoffs after ugly loss to Spurs."