The Dallas Mavericks Are Taking a Gap Year They Can't Afford

The wide-open status of the Western Conference has been a story all season, but we can probably close the book on the 2022-23 Dallas Mavericks after their 127-125 loss to the Golden State Warriors on Wednesday.

Sure, Dallas' tough defeat only dumped it a little further down the rungs of the play-in mess. But at 36-37 and having just surrendered the standings tiebreaker to the Warriors, the Mavericks are no longer worthy of halfway serious consideration as a postseason threat. And that's a major problem for a Mavs team that faced these same Warriors in the Western Conference Finals just last year.

The optimist could note that Dallas added Kyrie Irving (who sat out against the Warriors with a foot injury) at the trade deadline and could secure help on defense in free agency this summer. Next season will be better, right? But with Luka Dončić in his early prime and the taste of legitimate playoff success still fresh, this feels like a dangerous time for the Mavericks to take a gap year.

Partly because of what it surrendered in the Irving trade, Dallas is more than a piece or two away from fielding a roster as good as the one it trotted out a season ago. The Mavs need size, defensive versatility and, not least of all, a healthy, available and committed Irving.

Wagering on that last element has been a sucker's bet for the better part of a decade.

It's true that if Irving had been involved on Wednesday to relieve the pressure on Dončić, things might have turned out differently. But that's the problem with Irving; he's very, very often not involved for one reason or another.

His looming free agency creates the possibility he won't be around at all.

That'd be a true disaster scenario, one in which Dončić might find himself looking around and wondering what the point of the last several seasons was. Who'd blame him?

First, Dallas whiffed by giving up draft equity to acquire Kristaps Porziņģis as a second star. Then it botched the Jalen Brunson negotiation and lost him for nothing. If Irving were to bounce, it should amount to strike three from Dončić's perspective.

Of course, when the less terrifying outcome is committing to Irving on a massive new contract in free agency, hoping against hope that "it might work for us," it's a pretty strong indication that good options are scarce.

It's possible Dončić's brilliance will make everything work out in the end, assuming he's patient enough and/or has sufficient trust in the Mavs front office to stave off thoughts of skipping town. Take Wednesday's game as an example of Dončić's ability to turn lemons into lemonade.

Even as the Warriors showed him box-and-one looks and essentially inserted Jonathan Kuminga into his jersey, Dončić racked up 30 points and 17 assists, setting a franchise record in the process.

With precious little help outside of rookie Jaden Hardy's hot shooting, Dončić kept the Mavericks in the game until the very end.

Granted, Dallas has a legitimate gripe about the outcome. The officials allowed the Warriors to inbound the ball and score as all five Mavericks, convinced they had possession, waited at the other end of the floor. That's a tough beat in a game that came down to precisely two points.

Mavericks governor Mark Cuban told the ESPN broadcast that he would protest to the league, and he later laid out Dallas' side of the story.

The Pool Report clarified the situation, and it doesn't look like Dallas has much of a chance at success. We haven't seen a successful protest since 2008.

But, hey, Mavs, how about making sure one of the most woeful road teams in the league doesn't stay close enough for a single possession to matter?

The Warriors' win in Dallas marked just the second time they'd earned back-to-back victories away from home all season. It was also the very first time Golden State had won a road game in which it trailed at the end of the first quarter, upping its mark to an illustrious 1-20 on the year.

Granted, Draymond Green made a half-dozen tremendous plays down the stretch, Stephen Curry put up 20 points and 13 assists, and Kuminga had the energy to amass 22 points on 9-of-11 shooting while hounding Dončić all over the floor.

But the Warriors also lost the turnover battle, allowed Dallas to take 10 more free throws and shot just 30.8 percent from long range. It's not like the Dubs brought their A-game, whatever that even means for them on the road this season.

Considering all that, and even if we make a few excuses for Dallas, this was a game it needed to win.

In some ways, the mere presence of Dončić on Dallas' roster imparts calm—both now and further down the road. How bad can things really be if he's around?

But maybe that's part of the explanation for how things have gone so wrong. The Mavericks already finished the hardest part of the job: finding a generational star around whom to build. Perhaps the comfort of knowing that is why they've so sloppily handled the rest of the construction process.

Whatever the cause, the effect is that Dallas took a significant step back after last year's success and now has no guarantee anything better lies ahead.

One loss in March shouldn't necessarily inspire panic, and plenty of teams around the league would trade places with the Mavs in a heartbeat. But Dallas has gotten the non-Dončić stuff wrong a few too many times, and now, it has essentially cost them a season.

With a player like him, any year spent out of contention is a wasted one. Keep squandering games, blowing chances to take steps forward and giving away seasons, and maybe, eventually, you lose Luka himself.

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Stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference and Cleaning the Glass. Accurate through March 22. Salary info via Spotrac.

Grant Hughes covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@gt_hughes), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, where he appears with Bleacher Report's Dan Favale.