Why do the Golden State Warriors have home-court advantage against Mavericks?
Given that the Dallas team won the regular season series against the Warriors, people are wondering why Game 1 is in San Francisco.
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Following their series-opening loss against the Utah Jazz, the Dallas Mavericks have won five straight at home. They would, of course, have loved to get their Western Conference finals off to the perfect start with their own fans cheering them on but, as it has turned out, they will be travelling to San Francisco to face the Golden State Warriors in Game 1 on Wednesday evening. So how did this come to pass?
Why are Mavericks at Warriors in Game 1?
Luka Doncic and his Mavericks had the edge on this Western Conference rivals during the regular season, proving themselves victorious across their mini-series 3-1. That, however, was not enough for them to gain home-court advantage as we entered the business end of the campaign.
As the regular season finished, the win column showed that the Warriors had 53 compared to the 52 of the team from Dallas and this has been the decisive factor in the first of a potential seven games being played at the Chase Center in San Francisco, California.
To get to just their second-ever meeting in the postseason, both teams needed to get past higher-seeded opponents. Fourth-seeded Dallas took out Phoenix, the Western Conference regular-season champ, in seven games, while third-seeded Golden State disposed of No. 2 Memphis in six games. Doncic, who averaged 32.6 points in the series against Phoenix, outscored Curry in all four regular-season head-to-heads this season. In fact, their personal duel wasn’t close, with the Dallas star running up 26-14, 25-18, 34-27 and 41-21 scoring advantages.
The Mavericks didn’t see the Warriors at their best, with Draymond Green missing the last three meetings and Klay Thompson missing two of the first three. Then again, the Warriors saw the Mavericks only twice after Dallas’ headline-grabbing trade of Kristaps Porzingis at midseason, with newcomer Spencer Dinwiddie leading the Mavericks to wins in the last two meetings with a total of 41 points.
Will the home-court advantage prove decisive in the opener of this series? Join us around an hour before tip-off to find out.