How Daniel Gafford’s Dallas Mavericks Beat the Spurs, Encouraged by Mavs Play? | Mavs Postgame

50 comments

1. How has Luka's game improved over the yrs? Is he a better shooter? Better teammate? Better leader? More disciplined? Better conditioning?…

2. Lets go!! finally a win!!

3. am I the only person concerned about Klay? He never has a smile on his face, always looks mad idk smth looks off abt klay, luka and dinwiddie they just not them normal selves.

4. The mavs win came because kyrie already secured the boxscores for thr mavs in the 3rd quarter. Without kyrie mavs will be annihilated by the lne up depleted spurs

5. When the other team shoots 31% from the field and you still need 3 Qtr.'s to pull away, you still have big problems.

6. Kyrie had the same amount of points as Luka and better all around stats in the first half. These guys don’t know ball

7. To the Gafford has to grow up & Lively should get most of the minutes community…. How we feeling??

8. To those that say post play doesn’t matter, its boring inefficient basketball community. How we feeling?? How do you think post entry then monsterous slam by Gafford impact the game??

9. Just started this podcast hope I don't here anymore Gafford Lively who should be the starter crap

10. The mavs needs Jamarion sharp back into the team.
    Chris Coloko is doing it for the lakers and he is not starter. It works on certain situations that would assure a rebound and block shots. He's also a deterrent for anybody trying to drive in the paint after a blow by.

11. Now I understand why there is "Block Slightly"… it all makes sense now…

12. Putting Gaffords mavs not Kyrie is insane but ok

13. Luka lead point scorer & Mavs win – "How Luka led the mavs to victory"

    Kyrie leads point scoring & Mavs win – "how the mavs struggled to win"

14. As for luka, he needs to get healthy and not make things worse for himself.
    Luka is grinding his knees and his lower back is hurt as well. His excessive weight is killing him.

15. The biggest negative about this win is Nick letting it ride on this new song

16. Slightly nailed it! The offense is built around Kyrie & Luka but Luka has not done his part on both ends! Its all about Luka! Now the question is WHY??

17. Defenders have figured out Lukas dribble tendencies, that's why it's harder to shake tem off. As a star you need to start adjusting your play style to shake off scouting reports, the 3s are not going in efficiently so it's a problem. He needs to add more playstyle to his game, start posting up more with his size. The offseason is for improving and adding new skills to your game. Just playing basketball like luka does isnt gonna cut it because you keep your same tendencies when you just play, no time to really develop new skills.

18. I dont know why we are trying to look for excuses for Luka. He is overweight hence his lower body ailments although I dont believe he is hurt. He always plays hurt when he isn’t playing well. Why cant he return to Skinny Luka? We have seen it & that is clearly the best version of Luka. It’s infuriating watching him knowing that. He is slow because of that extra weight.

19. They both are better against the oppositions 2nd unit smh

20. If Luka has a knee problem, why would he play .. just an excuse at this point

21. You are 100% right here. Mavs fans are obsessed with the potential of Lively but Gafford is a top 10-15 starting center in this league right now

22. Mavs were terrible tonight in the first half, Spurs Wemby-less are trash.

    Kidd is done. Fire him, Nico. Please.

23. Gotta get the ball out of Kyrie’s hands. It’s clear we have lots of his clan/cult here as mavs fans now, but the facts are Luka is better than him in every metric. Kyrie is a shooting guard and a second option, Kidd should stop fucking around and do the obvious thing.

24. Good comments on Gafford. He played really well and the analysis was good.

25. I want you all to sit back and truly look at the excuses Nick makes for Luka. I vividly remember Kyrie having a subpar shooting night early in this season. Nick called Kyrie out.

    Nick not once mentioned Kyrie just had surgery on this hand so maybe he needs to work his way back in to real game situations. However, when Luka doesn’t do something right, yeah Luka isn’t right. What surgery did Luka undergo?!? This is why I laugh at his logic.

26. We gotta get back to bullyin people!!!! Love having 2 of maxi Pj d live and gaff on the court at all times.. missing pj and maxi really has hurt us cause it was just 4 guards and a big at all times

27. Does it seem to any of yall like luka hasnt been getting calls? I know he always complains but seems like he has reason to this year.. not at all saying this is why hes playing so bad but it just seems like the refs really hate him lol

28. Kyrie bias is wild even MFFL. Kyrie has been our best and most consistent player but you would know it by listening to LockedOn.

29. These two dingbats are so incredibly biased and misrepresent the facts so freely. They're better off being political pundits/commentators than covering basketball as they've clearly never played/understood competitive ball.

    Daniel Gafford is a top 5 starting center in this league. Where Derek Lively was with the Mavs a full season last year and the team struggled, Gafford arrived in February and alongside PJ brought aggression and efficiency. Tough-nosed defender and swatter then on the other end seldom if ever misses. Yall forget he had made 34 or 35 straight buckets last year. Let go of your moronic bias for Lively starting. Gafford has earned the starting role and is a walking bucket plus swatter. Gaff is literally a top 5 center and the best Mavs center since 2011 Tyson Chandler (and a better scorer than him).

    Instead of yall two misrepresenting on yet another minority player who is fully playing his role and thensome–focus your airtime on holding the supermax leader of this team accountable to BE a leader, get in shape (Doncic has been obese since 2021 plodding up and down the court), stop whining to refs, take high % shots. Everyone else on the roster is doing their job. Kidd has a very difficult job managing an autocratic brat. Your Luka propaganda is killing his career and the mavs' title chances.

30. Gafford gonna destroy OKC. Hes so good when th other teams little. No chet no hartenstein. Kidd needs to start subin gaff in anytime the other team goes small

31. WHAT GAFF BEEN GOOD ALL SEASON….CLEARLY OUTPLAYIN LIVELY……HE BEEN BETTER AS A STARTER OR NOW OFF THE BENCH

32. All I want for Christmas is a new let it ride! Song…

33. I’m convinced that the dudes that run this podcasts are not mavs fans and they’re just luka fans and y’all really don’t know basketball. The shit they be saying is crazy

34. The offense is not clicking because Kidd is not coaching. There is literally nothing good to say about this win.

35. Considering the competition is just a Meh. Luka still locked pretty bad for the bar we are expecting him to reach.

36. Our team has ALWAYS depended on Luka being superhuman, regardless of who else we had. He’s not playing on that level this season. In fact, quite a bit below it.

37. I am a huge Luka fan, but I'm not blind. I said to a friend three years ago that if Luka doesn't stop whining to the refs he'll never be the player he has the size and talent to be. Luka is actively in the process of losing his team leadership to Kyrie because he just hasn't matured enough to keep it. Kyrie is slowly morphing into Luka's daddy, and I am starting to worry that Luka might never recover. Spence says that Luka is just a big kid at heart. Kyrie is a grown man.

38. I seen someone say this is kyries team until further notice and I can agree with that

39. The Solution has always been to let Kai lead period. Kai makes smarter decisions, gets everyone involved, doesn’t dribble the life out of the damn ball, plays defense and keeps that damn offense moving period.

    Kyrie is having an Awesome season, don’t put him in a pot with Luka…Stop making excuses for Luka, he has been playing on the fly to damn long. He’s not in shape and NOT at there 100% for his team.

    Look at the other players in shape and want to run…but not Luka when’s he tired as hell.

    You can tell someone has been talking to him about his bad shot selection, because some of the passes he made last night he actually thought well if 2 guys are on me SOMEBODY must be open…normally he would have forced an ill advised shot up.

40. Gafford been showing up give him flowers he should be starting fr

41. Yo those City Edition jerseys are drippy 🔥

42. It was a must win, vs the Spurs without Wemby… and I can't see how we could beat Okc.

43. We have one of the better two center tandems out there. Stop the Gafford hate!! He has been the one consistent player on the team this season. Let’s embrace and have Luka to start going to the rim more (which he did a decent job last night) rather than all of those unnecessary step back 3!pointers!

44. Thank god Wemby spared us, he’s a real one.

45. What makes the Mavs so good is that they have Gafford & Lively. They are the same level of player. They are both good enough to be starting centers so to have either available to come off the bench is what makes the Mavs special in addition to Luka being able to be special when he wants

46. And now back to reality where we get destroyed by Thunder tonight 😀

47. Are these Gafford fans like new mavs fans this season or what? Did yall forget what happened to Gafford in the playoffs? Lively has proven he is a better center for this team. Gafford is flashier but not better, he’s not a better defender, cause he tunnel visions the blocks, and offensively he’s not good for what the mavs would like to do because he’s not as good as lively in the short pass and he tends to focus on getting his own shot as opposed to finding the open man. You can argue Lively is the opposite because he’s tends to focus more on the pass then his own shot but this season he has shown he is improving on that decision making. Gafford is great, I think we’re a great team with both him and lively, but Gafford is a crutch. We can’t complain about Luka and Kyrie iso ball and then exclaim how better Gafford is than lively when Gafford’s skill set literally perouates Luka and Kyrie to continue to iso the ball because a pass first offense is weaker with Gafford in the floor as opposed to Lively. But hey if you like Luka isos and stuff then he’s let’s start Gafford he’s great in those situations. It’s not like this team was down by ten points in the first quarter the last couple of times Gafford started or anything.

48. We have to have better D

49. You have to play inside out not outside in we need more penetration. Get your easy buckets so that you can get in the groove then go from there. When you drive it sets everything else just look back at our history. We also need to transition out of the ISO ball if Luka isn’t looking good by half. We need to swing the ball around more too.

50. This team is not close to a contender at this moment. Luka is but a shell of his normal self and this teams offense and bench is just nowhere near what it needs to be or was expected to be. I'm falling back to my anti-Kidd as HC from the first half of last year. I think that team caught fire at the right moment because of D Lively infectious and very unexpected meteoric rise and immediate impact as a rookie. He's not off to a great start to this season and this team is severely lacking defense and rebounding specifically when matched against the top teams. Yes, I agree they could easily be 9-4 with those 3 razor thin losses but they'd still have these same issues if they had. It's a long season and there's hope still if they can not only get healthy but STAY healthy.