Luka Doncic gets a final opportunity to impress the voters and potentially lock up Western Conference Player of the Month honors when the Dallas Mavericks and Golden State Warriors close out their respective December schedules Saturday night in San Francisco.
Doncic has been on a rampage of late, sandwiching 39-point outings around a 50-point explosion Christmas Day in Phoenix in a win over the Suns.
The 24-year-old should be well rested for his 13th game this month, having been given Thursday off on the second night of a back-to-back. The Mavericks lost the game 118-110 on the road against the Minnesota Timberwolves, their second consecutive defeat.
Doncic, who is listed as questionable, is a runaway leader in the Western Conference in December in scoring (37.4) and assists (11.2) while registering four triple-doubles and six other double-doubles.
He has not faced the Warriors this season, but no doubt looks forward to it. He’s scorched them for 34, 41, 41 and 30 points the past four times he’s seen them during the regular season, with the Mavericks having won three of those four games.
The Warriors have never seen Doncic and sidekick Kyrie Irving in tandem, and that likely will be the case again Saturday, with Irving still rehabbing a bruised right heel that has kept him out of Dallas’ past 11 games. Irving is listed as doubtful.
Golden State will, however, get its first look at impressive Mavericks rookie big man Dereck Lively II, who already has five double-doubles this season, including a 20-point, 10-rebound contribution to the Christmas win over the Suns.
“We’re all excited about what he’s doing,” Dallas coach Jason Kidd gushed of the No. 12 pick in the June draft.
“If we knew that this was going to happen, if the league knew this was going to happen, he probably would have been the No. 3 or 4 pick. He fits what we need, and that’s a center that’s active and has good hands.”
Lively figures to match up with another rookie surprise, Golden State’s Trayce Jackson-Davis, who was picked 45 spots after Lively with the draft’s second-to-last selection.
Jackson-Davis has recorded double-doubles in three of his past five games and enters the contest with the second-best December field-goal percentage among rookies (66.0), trailing only Lively (73.4).
Similar to Dallas getting Doncic back in the lineup, the Warriors surely would benefit if Stephen Curry were able to bounce back from a subpar effort in Thursday’s 114-102 home loss to the Miami Heat.
Curry was held to 13 points, harassed into 3-for-15 shooting overall and 2-for-8 on 3-pointers.
“It wasn’t his night,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. “This is all a part of it – 82-game season. Guys are going to have some tough nights, stretches, and I am not worried about Steph, that is for sure. It was just a night where we just couldn’t get anything going.”
The loss came in the opener of a seven-game Warriors homestand and ended an eight-game home winning streak.
The Mavericks, who will be making the second stop on a three-city trip, have dropped three of their past four on the road.
–Field Level Media
