Dallas Mavericks: Two reasons they need to beat the Suns

The Dallas Mavericks and Phoenix Suns play each other tonight for the third time this season. Although Phoenix has only 10 wins on the year, two of those have been against the Mavs. It’s time Dallas solved the issues against the bottom tier.

Since the start of the 2017-18 season, the Dallas Mavericks have won 11 more games than the Phoenix Suns. That difference could be all the way up to 16 games were it not for the matchup between the two teams. That’s right, since the start of last season, the Mavs are 0-5 against the worst team in the league.

For some reason, the Mavericks cannot get the team going against teams that they should be beating. Dallas has lost games this year to Phoenix, Atlanta, New York, Memphis and Phoenix again. All of these teams are in the bottom 10 teams in the league and Dallas has no better than a .500 record against any of them so far.

To put it lightly, the Mavs need to get a win tonight, especially if Devin Booker is out (again). Even if Luka Doncic and Dennis Smith Jr. both miss tonight’s game (both are currently listed as questionable) there really is still no excuse for the Mavs to lose this game tonight. These are the games that Dallas absolutely has to win going forward for two reasons.

They aren’t an elite team yet

Dallas has players that are doing really well this year. Luka looks like an upcoming star of the game, Harrison Barnes is a solid role player and the Mavs bench has been strong more often than not. The presence of DeAndre Jordan in the middle has given us mixed feelings, but he is one of the leading rebounders in the league, which is never a bad thing.

The team is still missing a lot of talent before they will be considered elite or even a team that could compete deep into the playoffs. For that reason, Dallas can’t afford to be losing to the bottom tier teams if their goal is really to fight for a playoff spot and start their climb back to the top.

The Mavs will be back in the conversation soon, I believe, but it won’t happen this year if they can’t separate themselves from the bottom of the pack. Beating the good teams is a great thing, but losing to the bad teams is always going to trump that.

Confidence is going to be big going forward

The Mavs have a lot of veterans on their team that have been through hard times in their careers, but they also have young players that are not used to failure quite as much. Guys like Luka, Dennis Smith, Jalen Brunson and others are not accustomed to falling flat on their backs against teams they know they should be beating.

The older guys on the team will help ease some of the frustrations for the youngsters, but others can only help so much. It is clear that the future of this team is already here in Luka Doncic, but that means that the team needs to be doing what they need to in order to keep him happy.

On paper, this game doesn’t look that important, but those of us who are tired of seeing the Mavericks fall to the hapless Suns know this one needs to be won. The Mavs and Suns will tip-off at 7:30 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas. Let’s go Mavs!