Before Dennis Smith Jr. led the Dallas Mavericks with 13 points in the second half, and before he hit a step-back, and-one, game-winning jumper that maybe, just maybe, included a pushoff, and before he said, “I knew I was gonna shoot it,” when asked about his confidence after the game, Smith was pulled aside at halftime by DeAndre Jordan.



“We told him to stick with it,” Jordan said. “I told him, ‘This is going to be your half,’ and that he was going to make a big play to win us the game.”



Smith did that with the clutch jumper, closing out a wild 140-136 win in the Dallas home opener, finishing what his equally young costar, Luka Doncic, had started. Where Smith finished with 19 points and six assists, Doncic chimed in with a team-high 26 points on 8-of-16 shooting. Dallas, finally accepting Dirk Nowitzki’s looming retirement and preparing for the next era without him, keeps alluding to the future; this is the...