After an 11-year drought, the Dallas Mavericks won a playoff series, defeating the Utah Jazz in Game 6, 98-96.
It was a long time coming. After an 11-year drought, the Dallas Mavericks won a playoff series, defeating the Utah Jazz in Game 6,98-96. Dallas advances to the second round and will face the No.1 seed Phoenix Suns. In those 11 years, the Mavericks bowed out of the playoffs in the first round six times. That isn’t the case today. This Dallas team shook off the last two years of playoff disappointments and broke through. “I’m happy, man. I’m happy,” Luka Doncic said. “It was tough. Had a couple of games–last game here–that we could have won, but we didn’t. Same thing happened right now, but they missed the shot. I’m just really happy to go past the first round.” With four seconds remaining in Game 6, Utah’s Bojan Bogdanovic got a good look at the basket from behind the three-point arc. The Mavericks’ Spencer Dinwiddie tried to chase him off the line, but a strong screen from Jordan Clarkson curtailed his efforts. Bogdanovic rose and shot, but he came up short. The ball hit the nearside iron giving the Mavericks the win. “It though, ‘He don’t miss a lot of those,’” Doncic said of Bogdanovic’s final shot. “My heart stopped. It felt like that shot was going for 15 seconds. I was just hoping he misses.” The Jazz and their fans probably thought the same of Doncic every time he shot the ball in the series.
