5 Peaks and 5 pits from the Dallas Mavericks' season thus far

8. Peak: Luka Doncic's end of game heroics against Brooklyn

The Dallas Mavericks had quite the insane turnaround to start the season as they played their home opener against the Brooklyn Nets after facing off against the No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs on opening night. The game featured a return to Dallas for two former Mavericks shipped off in Dallas' transaction for Kyrie Irving, that being Dorian Finney-Smith and Spencer Dinwiddie.

Barring the emotional connotations of the game (Dallas played tribute videos for both Finney-Smith and Dinwiddie), it was only Dallas' second game of the year and rotations weren't completely set nor did many players on the Mavericks have their feet under them just quite yet.

Luka Doncic was not one of those players though, as the Slovenian superstar kickstarted his 2023-24 MVP campaign by scoring 49 points on a career-high nine 3-pointers made. Doncic scored 14 of Dallas' last 17 points in the contests, and hit four 3-pointers in the last three minutes of game-time, including an obscene shot-clock buzzer-beating one-handed bank shot from 25 feet to put Dallas ahead 123-120 with 26.1 seconds left in the game.

Doncic may not be able to reciprocate another game of such prolific shooting efficiency from 3-point land this season, but with the way he's playing right now, we can't throw anything out the window.

While Doncic's jaw-dropping late-game heroics against Brooklyn were certainly some early-season fun and a huge highlight of this season for Dallas thus far, don't be surprised if he does something even more spectacular soon, as it's not out of the realm of possibilities for him.