There’s no shame in losing to the defending NBA champions on their court, even with its funky paint job.
The way the Mavericks did it, however, supplied lots of film-session fodder for the coaching staff. The Denver Nuggets ripped out to a 40-24 lead after one quarter and the Mavericks spent the rest of the night digging out of the hole, unsuccessfully.
“When you give up 40 points to champions, they’re going to make you pay,” Kyrie Irving said. “And they did that the rest of the night.
“But we made our runs. There’s some positives to take out of it, but again, there’s some things we got to fix moving forward.