Sergio de Larrea made nine shots Saturday, three of them from outside, and Dallas needed every bit of that production. His twenty-one points led the Mavericks in a 122-106 loss to San Antonio at American Airlines Center. A night without Cooper Flagg and Kyrie Irving gave de Larrea a much larger share of the offense to carry.
He carried enough of it to help Dallas take a third-quarter lead. Four assists and five rebounds accompanied the scoring, while four turnovers made the performance less settled than the shooting line. The interesting part was how much de Larrea could contribute before Dallas’s offense lost its grip on the fourth quarter.
The clearest portrait arrived in the third quarter. Dallas trailed 68-60 at halftime, and San Antonio moved ahead 73-63 before de Larrea entered with 8:56 remaining. His first few possessions supplied both sides of the evaluation: at 8:37, a bad pass became a Spurs steal; nine seconds later, an offensive foul produced another turnover.
Then came the response. At 7:44, de Larrea hit a 24-foot running jumper that cut the Spurs’ lead to 77-66. After San Antonio scored again, he connected from 24 feet at 4:37 to make it 82-77. Marcus Sasser’s 3-pointer at 2:59 narrowed the margin to one, and de Larrea followed at 2:01 with a driving 7-foot floater that put Dallas ahead 85-84.
That run was more than a string of difficult makes. De Larrea contributed a drive, two perimeter baskets and the finishing touch on a possession organized by Sasser, who had five assists. Dallas scored 29 points in the quarter and won it 29-24, transforming a game that had threatened to become a comfortable San Antonio victory into a live contest.
For a short-handed offense, de Larrea supplied both volume and variety.
San Antonio answered before the quarter was over. Wembanyama finished an alley-oop at 1:44, Castle hit a 3-pointer with 1:09 left, and Wembanyama added another 3 at 35.7 seconds. The Spurs carried a 92-89 advantage into the fourth. Dallas had produced its best offensive stretch of the night and still had to chase the game.
The possession problem became decisive. De Larrea’s first turnover came when he stepped out of bounds at 11:18 of the second quarter. The two third-quarter giveaways arrived during the rally’s most volatile section: the bad-pass turnover at 8:37 and the offensive-foul turnover at 8:28.
His final giveaway, a lost ball at 3:58 of the fourth, came after San Antonio had already built a large lead. It did not cause the defeat by itself, but four empty Dallas possessions from one contributor fit a larger problem.
The Mavericks finished with 21 total turnovers to San Antonio’s 12, and the Spurs converted Dallas’ giveaways into 26 points. That damage overwhelmed Dallas’ better shooting percentages. The Mavericks made 51.1% of their field-goal attempts and 39.3% from 3-point range, compared with San Antonio’s 47.5% and 35.7%.
