Dallas Mavericks: 3 teams that would have to underperform for Mavs to make playoffs
By Kohl Rast
San Antonio Spurs
The Mavericks biggest interstate rival and the team with the longest active playoff streak in the NBA, it would be pretty crazy to see an NBA postseason without the Spurs involved. The last time that the Spurs did not make the playoffs, in fact, was after the 1996-97 season. They drafted Tim Duncan the very next year and have been dominating ever since.
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If you want to talk about teams that are surprising to leave out of a playoff prediction, the Spurs may belong even higher than the Warriors considering they have had success with the main parts of their current roster. The main issue here is that the West got a lot better and the Spurs really didn’t make any significant moves.
They do still have Gregg Popovich in their corner, perhaps the single most influential person in NBA playoff history. That certainly isn’t going to hurt them in the long run. However, the team talent is waning, their best players are getting older and I just don’t know how they can do it again with how much better the west is this year.
Even though the Spurs haven’t missed the playoffs since 1997, they are coming off maybe their worst finish in that span as the 7th seed. With multiple teams getting significantly better this year that were below the Spurs, it is not outside of the realm of possibility that they fall out in this coming year.
Dallas has a better team than San Antonio this year and I am not sure that would surprise anyone to hear. Yet, the Mavs have always had trouble beating the Spurs and that is where the bigger issues comes around. The Mavs need to have a better record than the Spurs because if it comes down to a tiebreaker, that could end poorly.