PORTLAND, Ore. — It wasn’t the play that lost the game, but Dennis Smith Jr.’s fifth foul in the Mavericks’ 117-108 loss to the Trail Blazers on Saturday night was an encapsulation of his up-and-down rookie season.
Smith stole the ball from Blazers guard Shabazz Napier with the Mavericks trailing by 11, chipping away at a 16-point halftime lead that they eventually cut to five. Smith’s fastbreak dunk, however, was waved off and called an offensive foul. With five fouls, Smith was forced to sit down, and by the time the Mavs were able to chip away again at the Blazers’ lead, it was too late.
"You’ve just got to take it on the head," Smith said of the call. "It is what it is."
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Smith’s rookie season has been one filled with learning experiences like that. Although Smith was one of the most buzzed-about prospects in the lead-up to the draft and following Summer League, he’s been relegated to an afterthought through no fault of his own. Being part of one of the most loaded rookie classes in years means having to compete for attention with the likes of Jayson Tatum, Donovan Mitchell, Lauri Markkanen and the never-ending Ball family circus.
Smith may have the endorsement of LeBron James, who chastised the Knicks earlier in the season for not drafting him, but the Mavericks are a 16-win team, just two games ahead of the Kings for the worst record in the Western Conference, without much else to draw casual fan interest besides what could be Dirk Nowitzki’s farewell tour.
To be sure, Smith hasn’t shown the kind of consistency that would put him in the conversation with the likes of Tatum and Mitchell in the Rookie of the Year race. But he’s shown plenty of flashes of the explosive scoring ability that made him a popular preseason sleeper pick for that award. Saturday’s 21-point performance was his third straight game of at least 20 points (the brief streak ended Monday against the Wizards), just a few days after an 11-of-18 shooting performance against the Nuggets.
By virtue of being a lottery pick on a bottom-tier Western Conference team, and one with legitimate star potential to succeed the 39-year-old Nowitzki, he was always going to play a lot of minutes from the beginning. The jump from the college game to the pro game is daunting at any position, but the challenges that come with his position, point guard, are head and shoulders above any other.
Even Nowitzki, who has seen just about everything there is to see in his 20-year Hall of Fame career, has never played with a rookie point guard with this amount of responsibility right away.
"Being a rookie in this league is tough," Nowitzki said. "But being a point guard is especially tough. You’ve got to know every position, we’ve got a thousand plays, he gets a million things thrown at him on the fly. But we love his upside, we love his athleticism, we love his competitiveness."
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The endorsement of one of the greatest players in the history of the NBA is one thing, but it speaks volumes that Smith has won the respect of Rick Carlisle, the coach with famously little patience for young players’ mistakes and an equally checkered history of relationships with high-profile point guards. True to form, Carlisle was never going to just hand the keys over to Smith with no regard for performance. But Smith, outside of a normal amount of down games for a rookie, has given his coach no reason not to trust him.
"It’s not all about giving the freedom and giving the responsibility," Carlisle said. "The ideal situation is for him to earn it, and that starts in the summer, when we go to our pre-Vegas rookie camp. And then he plays in the Summer League, he gets individual work during the summer, he gets into training camp. If it’s not earned, it’s not meaningful. And to a large degree, he’s earned the responsibility that he’s gotten."
Part of that adjustment has been learning to strike the balance of being aggressive with looking for his own shots while making plays for others.
"I can get guys open, and if I don’t get the assist, the next guy will be open because they’ve got to react to the drive," Smith said. "I’m already aware of that."
At the same time, Smith’s teammates and coaches stress that he needs to stay in attack mode. That momentum-shifting charge call that temporarily took him out of the game is exactly the play they’d want him to make again, although everyone involved would have preferred the whistle went a different way.
"That’s a great play on his part," Mavs guard Wesley Matthews said. "He’s got to stay aggressive. I think he went into this game without committing an offensive foul, and now he’s got two in one game. He’s got to go downhill and attack and provide momentum."
In what is already all but a lost season for Dallas, those learning experiences are key for the player the franchise hopes will be the face of its next phase. The talent is there. The production and decision-making will catch up.
"He’s growing in all areas," Carlisle said. "Skill refinement, recognition, knowing his teammates. The more you do this, your leadership capabilities certainly increase. A lot of positive things."