As speculated, the Mavericks made a change to their starting lineup for Friday’s game against Toronto, replacing center JaVale McGee with Dwight Powell. Head coach Jason Kidd told reporters before the game that it wouldn’t necessarily be a permanent move.
“This is something for us to look at,” Kidd said, per Tim MacMahon of ESPN. “(Powell) has been playing extremely well. … We’ll take it one game at a time for now.”
McGee signed with the Mavericks as a free agent this past offseason after being promised the starting center job, but the team has performed better with Powell manning that spot in the early going this season. That didn’t change on Friday.
Against the Raptors, both Powell (plus-8) and McGee (plus-6) had positive on-court ratings in the same game for just the second time this season. The first time it happened, on Oct. 22, Dallas blew out Memphis by 41 points. On Friday, the Mavs won by just a single point.
Here’s more out of Dallas:
- Mavericks guard Spencer Dinwiddie alleged that veteran referee Tony Brothers referred to him as a “b–ch -ss motherf—er” during Friday’s game. As MacMahon writes in a full ESPN.com story, Dinwiddie, who protested when Brothers called him for a technical foul, said that a teammate informed him of Brothers’ comment. “I’m not even mad at the language,” Dinwiddie said. “Everybody has said things before when they are upset or feeling sensitive or hurt. That’s fine. Just say it to my face. … I would like to not be called a b–ch -ss motherf—er to my teammates.”
- Speaking to Callie Caplan of The Dallas Morning News, veteran point guard Facundo Campazzo said he was close to resuming his career in Europe when he received an offer from the Mavericks. “When the Mavs’ offer came, I mean, I didn’t hesitate. I just said yes at the first question they did, and that’s it,” Campazzo said. “I was in Argentina with my family and said, ‘OK, we are moving to Dallas.’ That was a Thursday, and they asked me if I can fly Friday, the next day. I said, ‘I need a little bit more time. I have to move a lot of things,’ so we flew in that Saturday and stayed in the hotel and started this journey.”
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Luka Doncic made NBA history on Friday by becoming the second player to ever start a season by scoring at least 30 points in each of his first eight games. Wilt Chamberlain was the only other player in league history to accomplish the feat, according to Caplan.
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