DALLAS – Christian Wood did almost everything right.

In 24 minutes, he notched 25 points, grabbed eight rebounds, and put together a stretch where he was solely responsible for 16-straight Dallas Mavericks points. He looked incredible. Wood stepped out and hit the three (4-for-7), he took advantage of mismatches inside, and he didn’t look nearly as bad on defense as advertised.

Yet, as the Phoenix Suns blitzed Dallas in the second half, Wood sat firmly at the end of head coach Jason Kidd’s bench. When the Mavericks went to close the game, Kidd went with the usual suspects. And as Phoenix head coach Monty Williams rode Damion Lee’s hot hand, Kidd stifled Wood’s. The result? A gut-punch of an opening 107-105 loss that didn’t have to go down the way it did.

Kidd’s explanation for not playing Wood during the stretches the game hung in the balance was nearly as confusing as watching Dallas’ 20-point lead whittle away.

“We were going offense-defense,” Kidd said. “We wanted understanding with Maxi [Kleber] out there defensive, and offensively being able to stretch. And then C Wood, we wanted to see offensively how he handled it. And defensively we wanted to see how he handled it.”

Huh?

Free throw troubles

The solution to Dallas’ problem against Phoenix seemed so simple – play Wood because there was no one on Phoenix who could stop him. Throughout the game, Phoenix switched, played zone, and sent timely doubles to force the ball out of Luka Doncic’s hand. Wood’s outside shooting kept Phoenix honest. And frankly, it appeared that the Suns didn’t have an answer for it.

But what may have contributed to Wood’s lack of playing time in the closing moments of Wednesday night’s game — and didn’t go unsaid in the post-game press conference — was free throw shooting.

Wood got to the line 10 times, but he only made three free throws.

“We missed a lot of free throws and that cost us the game especially,” Wood said. “I got to take care of it.”

The anemic free throw shooting was something Kidd brought up after the final game of the preseason. And again, after Wednesday night’s loss, he brought it up again.

“If you’re going to get there 30-plus times, you can’t shoot 61 percent,” Kidd said. “You can’t win, and you can’t be an elite team in this league if you aren’t going to make free throws.

“You just have to practice them. We spend time on it. It’s just a matter of being able to take it to the floor.”

In Wood’s debut, he did nearly everything right. He looked like the stretch big Dallas has needed since the Doncic-era started. But in a two-point loss, the missed free throws may have contributed to the late-game absence and a loss that, really, the Mavericks shouldn’t have picked up.

The saying goes, almost only counts in horseshoes. And in the zero-sum game that is the NBA, that age-old proverb still rings true.

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Feature image via Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports.