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Mike Leslie | WFAA Dallas Sports Reporter

Amy Lawrence Show / Amy Lawrence
The Truth Network Radio
May 16, 2024 5:49 am

Mike Leslie | WFAA Dallas Sports Reporter

Amy Lawrence Show / Amy Lawrence

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May 16, 2024 5:49 am

WFAA Dallas sports reporter Mike Leslie joins the show to recap a Mavericks Game 5 win, as well as the latest on the Stars and the Cowboys' schedule release.

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I think for once the Dallas Cowboys might actually take a back seat, not by much, and it does not happen often around here, but I think right now the thing people are fired up the most about is that Mavs win in Oklahoma City. I think people walking out of the arena on Monday night after game four, there was a feeling of, well, there went their chance. They could have gone up 3-1. They could have put the thunder in a hole.

They gave away the opportunity. They couldn't shoot free throws. They couldn't try, but see you next season kind of thinking, all right, they're going to go back to Oklahoma City, and that's going to kind of be the end of things, and they went up there and played a fantastic basketball game. Luca in particular, and he's been battling injury, and there are reasons why he has struggled, but to me the biggest thing and the most impressive thing about what Luca did tonight, there was a mentality shift. There was a conscious decision, hey, I'm just going to shut up and play ball, and Mavs fans have kind of been asking for that for five, six, eight, 14 years. Just leave the officials alone and play basketball, and he did that tonight, and he was different.

He played different. The entire vibe around the team was a little different, and they went in there and in a lot of ways controlled the basketball game. That's the Mavs at their peak. I don't know if that peak is good enough to beat potentially Denver in the next round, and obviously they've still got a lot of work to be done here with OKC. They've got to win one more and close it out, and the Stars showed tonight how difficult that can be, so I don't mean to forecast too far forward here, but the Mavs Zenith, we saw an example of that tonight with Luca.

Hey, just focus in and play basketball. I was touting Luca as the league MVP for a good portion of the season. As you mentioned, he's dealing with injuries. This looked a lot more like the Doncic who led the league in scoring. He also mentioned, though, the joy. He wanted to play with more joy.

Just focus on basketball. How much did you see that with him? That was the entire thrust of the night for Luca was to play with that focus, with that joy, with that ease from a mental standpoint, and not get roped up in a lot of the other nonsense.

I was talking about it with one of my co-workers at WFA down here in Dallas a couple games ago. I was like, man, if you charted every single time that Luca Doncic drove to the hoop against the number of times that he then followed that drive to the hoop with a complaint to the official, it might be 93% of the time. It's almost every time he goes to the hoop. He's called, hey, I got hit. I got hit. I got hit. And again, this is where I go back to. Mavs fans have been just like, Luca, just play.

Just forget all that and play. And to see that tonight was a really good thing. I think more than anything, forget the fans, just for Luca. That was a really good thing for him to be able to find that and know that he can go to that place. When this team is playing at the highest level, you've got other role players who step up.

So how much have you seen the group around Luca grow? And not so much Kyrie, though the two of them had to find a rhythm, but what about guys like Derrick Jones, who has a playoff career high, and PJ Washington, who gets into double digits and has a double-double, actually? PJ Washington's been maybe my personal favorite story of these playoffs, the way that he has as a local kid, grew up in Frisco, just north of Dallas, coming back home and really finding a niche. This is a guy that was kind of in no man's land in Charlotte on a team that wasn't going anywhere, and it's hard to shine in that kind of situation. He comes back home and in these playoffs, and certainly in this series, he has blossomed really, really nicely. And even tonight, struggling early on, got himself in foul trouble, didn't score in the first half.

I was at the Stars game tonight, but as I'm trying to track both games, as we've done quite a bit of recently, looking at that box score at halftime and I'm going, really? After as well as he has played, leading them in scoring and making such an impact on both ends of the floor, that was surprising, and then he bounces back and hits a couple of big shots, especially late to help them keep Oklahoma City at bay and continue to make the impact that he makes defensively. He's been a terrific story, and Derrick Jones tonight was outrageous. 6 of 6 in the first half, 3 for 3 from 3-point range. He's a guy that I can only imagine Oklahoma City's game.

We're going to let him shoot, and he buries all of them and makes them pay for that strategy. His first half is as big a reason the Mavs won this game as any, because that is somewhat out of nowhere, and for him to make that kind of offensive impact with his team puts them in a spot where they can be, up by 10 at halftime on the road. In a game where everybody thought coming in, their mentality was a bit distracted and they were a little down on themselves. They were very frustrated walking off the floor after game 4. They lifted themselves right back up tonight. Mike Leslie is a sports anchor at WFAA in Dallas with us here after hours with Amy Lawrence. But Mike, what makes the Thunder such a tough out? In the fourth quarter, another 12-1 run to cut that lead drastically again. Well, I mean, we saw it in game 4.

SDA is just ridiculous. What he did in game 4 in Dallas was really, really impressive and had me walking out of the arena going, All right, you know what? You want to put him second in the MVP voting over Luca?

I throw my hands up in the air. Okay, because that was incredible. And we said going into that game, hey, this may be the toughest game for the Mavs to win in this entire series, that game 4 on their home court, because it was going to be a desperate, aggressive, basically playing for their season Thunder team, knowing that they can't go back home down 3-1. And we saw that in the fourth quarter, not just from SGA, but also Jalen Williams had a couple of clutch buckets in that fourth quarter after he had been, in my mind, very quiet the first three games of the series. We're probably going to see a very similar mindset from OKC on Saturday back in Dallas because now they are quite literally playing for their season.

And when you have somebody that is as gifted as SGA is, he is incredibly dangerous. So that, like I said before, they still have an immense amount of work to be done to close out this series. What should the Thunder expect in that arena on Saturday as the Mavericks have a chance to close out and get back to the conference finals for the first time since 22? It will be crazy at the AAC on Saturday.

There's no two ways about it. That building, honestly, the loudest I have heard that building in these playoffs, this is going to sound a little strange. The loss to the Clippers when they were down 31 and came all the way back to lead that game but ultimately ran out of steam and lost. Kyrie Irving went on a little spurt in the middle of the second quarter and kind of jump-started that run to get them back into that basketball game. And it was the most surreal thing because it was like the crowd knew, hey, something just started.

And they went bananas. The AAC can get pretty loud. The Mavs fans, the Stars fans too, but the volume with Mavs fans is a little different.

And they're going to be pretty fired up on Saturday with a chance to go back to the West Finals. You mentioned Kyrie, so before I move on to hockey, he did resign with the Mavericks after that trade last year. Certainly has been quiet around him, meaning not a whole lot of publicized, talked about drama. How do you think he fits there now after a year? I think he's incredibly comfortable with this team and within this organization. He has found something that clearly he was not finding in stop after stop before getting here. And I don't know what the shelf life of that is. That may be a permanent thing.

I don't know. He seems very comfortable right now. I know there have been times where things have gone sideways on him, either of his own making or otherwise. So there's still a little bit of wait and see for me on that, but he does seem very at ease. And you listen to him talk in the postgame press conference and he's very introspective and thoughtful about himself and about this team and where they're going. And how they're starting to coalesce as a group. He just seems at ease.

And again, I don't know what the shelf life on that is and if that has any permanence to it. But at least right now, he seems incredibly comfortable. Mike Leslie is with us from WFAA in Dallas. Not just talking about the Mavericks winning Game 5, but also the Stars on their own ice, not able to close out the Avalanche. And you were at this game. The Stars are really shown for the Avalanche in the third period. They're able to get goals from Nathan McKinnon and Cale McCarr. He obviously had a power play goal to tie the game in the second period.

What changed in the later stages of this one? This is an ads team that you're just not going to be able to keep down for the entirety of a series. This is a team that led the league in scoring this year.

3.68 goals per game. You weren't going to just string together five straight games and holding them to a goal or two and say see ya. It was never going to be that easy. At some point, McKinnon and McCarr, they were going to break out and have at least a game like this. I can't help but want to go back to the goals they scored right before the end of the first period.

And how much that changed just from a mental standpoint the way that this game was going to flow. Dallas was six tenths of a second away from going back to the dressing room with a 1-0 lead. And just needing to kill off about 20-25 seconds worth of that power play coming back out to start the second period. How different might this game have felt if they were able to just get that second more without giving up that power play goal to tie it up 1-1 late in the first.

At some point they were going to break through. Tonight was absolutely that night. The Avalanche skated much better tonight I feel like than they have early on in this series. Dallas was a little clunkier with the puck tonight than we have seen at any point so far.

Again, there was bound to be at least a game like this in the series. Now Dallas, they've bounced back well in these playoffs. We saw them go down 0-2 to Vegas and bounce back very well. We saw them go down 0-1 in this series in a game where they outplayed Colorado for the majority of that game. But for the about 20 minute stretch where they allowed the Avalanche to come all the way back, then outplayed them in overtime and yet didn't get the winner. So there's a lot of reason for Dallas to feel like they still have the upper hand in this series. But Joe Pavelski did say tonight in the dressing room afterward that they feel like they let an opportunity get away from them tonight to be able to close this thing out on their home ice. He said, listen, we're not playing, we're not trying to win because we want rest, we're trying to win because we want to advance to the conference final. But they certainly wouldn't mind having gotten a couple extra days to let their bodies heal up and be ready for the West Final. And they just at least frittered away two of those days worth of rest that they could have otherwise had.

What makes them so good on the road? This isn't just the playoffs, this is all through the regular season. They were the best team in hockey on the road, 26-10-5 on the road during the regular season. And then they backed it up in the playoffs in Vegas, they've done it now in Colorado. To me the thing that was most impressive about going to Colorado, you're talking about an Avalanche team that won their two home games in the first round 11-3. Dallas flips that around on them on their home ice and outscores them 9-2 in those two games.

That is a radical shift. I think it just comes down to they're just a really very good hockey team. And they travel really, it's a veteran team between Pavelski and Jamie Bennett and Tyler Sagan.

Nothing changes for them and they just go out and play their game whether they're at the AAC or anywhere else. Mike this may not be fair but is there a game that stands out on the Dallas Cowboys schedule? When I tell you I gave that about 14 seconds worth of a look, published it on Twitter and Facebook and went back to the hockey.

I have not even had a chance to diagnose it. I saw the Browns game came down yesterday, I've given that very little look to this point. The Niners game is always going to stick out. I do remember that one being a Sunday Niner if I'm remembering week 8. That one is definitely one to look forward to because again that's the Cowboys 800 pound gorilla in the room.

Get past them or your season is kind of not really worth a whole lot. So Mike Leslie's got a lot to juggle these days but I appreciate that you actually had an answer for that because I'm with you there's a lot more going on. The schedule release seems important only because the NFL tells us it's important in the month of May. So you can find Mike on Twitter at Mike Leslie L-E-S-L-I-E-W-F-A-A sports anchor there covering Mavs and Stars and Cowboys and Rangers. We appreciate a couple of minutes. I know it's been a busy few days. Thank you so much Mike.

Thanks Amy. Call from Mom. Answer it.

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Whisper: medium.en / 2024-05-16 07:20:13 / 2024-05-16 07:27:30 / 7

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