For most of the night the schedule looked like it was going to decide it. Dallas had beaten Brooklyn 130-93 the night before, and through 2 quarters the Mavericks looked like a team playing on tired legs. The Pacers were a little fresher after a day off following Mexico City, and for 24 minutes they defended and scored like it. Dallas had already dealt with this kind of thing all season, playing again without Dereck Lively II, Sergio de Larrea and Tarik Biberovic, and Morez Johnson Jr. was ruled out with a leg injury too.
Then the 2nd half started and the Mavericks' legs were fine. Dallas won the 3rd quarter 34-27 to cut the 10-point halftime deficit to 3, then took the 4th 35-29. That's 69 points after the break against Indiana's 56, which is a lot for a team that was supposed to be fading on a back-to-back. Indiana's offense didn't fall apart. Its defense just couldn't get stops once Dallas found a rhythm.
The box score search turned up only the line score, not individual stat lines, so this recap can't say what Cooper Flagg, Kyrie Irving, Pascal Siakam or T.J. McConnell put up. The preview's question about Flagg was whether he would break Indiana open early like he did in October. He didn't, and Dallas trailed for the whole first half. Whoever carried the Mavericks after halftime, the game turned in the 3rd quarter, when a home team that was tired on paper outscored the Pacers by 7 and made this a game again.
For Indiana it's the same story as the rest of this road trip, and it's the worst kind of loss. In the preview the worry was that a short rotation couldn't come back from an early hole. This time the Pacers had the lead and their thin rotation, still without Tyrese Haliburton and Ben Sheppard, couldn't hold it for 48 minutes. They gave up 35 in the 4th quarter and lost by a possession. At 3-8 and 1-4 in their last 5, they've been close in a few of these and come up short in all but one.
Dallas has now won 3 straight and is 7-4, and this was the gutsiest win of the bunch. The 130-93 rout of Brooklyn was one-sided from the jump. This one asked the Mavericks to come back from 10 down on the second night of a back-to-back, missing 4 forwards and a center, and they did it with 2 straight winning quarters to close.
