Final: Mavs 115, Bulls 109

  • Dallas scored 115 tonight, extending its streak of 100-plus efforts to three games in this young season. But the story, if you’ve paid any attention so far in 2018, was all about the first quarter, when the Mavs allowed only 28 points. In a normal year, 28’s a pretty high number to allow in 12 minutes. But this isn’t a normal year — or, I guess, it is a normal year, but it’s a new normal. All in all, Chicago didn’t have a relatively explosive scoring quarter the way Phoenix (37 and 38) and Minnesota (46 and 37) did, which resulted in what’s now considered a pretty modest 115-109 final score. The Mavs are now 1-0 this season when leading after the first frame. I can’t stress to you enough how significant the “when leading after the first quarter” stat will be this season. If they’re going to be good, that’s going to be a big reason why.

  • Your daily reminder that Luka Doncic is a Maverick:


  • We consider the Mavericks to run a guard-driven offense with high-scoring wings. Dirk Nowitzki is seven feet tall, but his perimeter-oriented game is more wing-like than what you’d traditionally expect from a center. Thus, basically the last 20 years of Mavs basketball have been about guards and perimeter guys doing the scoring while the center does the dirty work. That’s not an exaggeration, either; no Mavs center has averaged more than 10.5 points per game since the 1997-98 season, per Basketball-Reference. But that’s not the case anymore, it appears, as through three games DeAndre Jordan is averaging 17.0 points per game and Dwight Powell is adding 15.7 of his own off the bench. Together, those two have connected on 35 of 46 2-point shots, good for 76.1 percent, and they’re adding 17.7 rebounds, 3.0 blocks, and 2.0 steals per game. Those are astonishing numbers, ones we simply haven’t seen from the center position around here in, well, ever.

    Now, it’s only been three games, and some things will surely change — like, for example, Jordan will probably not shoot 90 percent from the free throw line this season, and Dwight Powell will probably not shoot 88 percent on 2s. But it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that those guys will make hay in the pick-and-roll, considering they are two of the best roll men in the league over the last couple years, and longer in Jordan’s case. J.J. Barea, Dennis Smith Jr., and Luka Doncic are finding those guys for easy looks all day long, so the points are there to be had. (Maxi Kleber and Dorian Finney-Smith are each 5 of 7 on 2s, and most of their looks have come point-blank as well.) I don’t know how you stop those guys from getting theirs, and luckily I’m not paid to try to figure that out.

  • The big guys have in part allowed Dallas to play a more modern style of basketball. Through three games, the Mavericks have now used a grand total of 12 isolation possessions, constituting just 3.4 percent of their total possessions on the season, per Synergy, and they’ve taken a whopping 20 total mid-range shots, against more than 200 combined at the rim or beyond the 3-point line. “Welcome the future” isn’t only a slogan for the roster make-up. We’re seeing a completely new brand of offense. I suspect the mid-range attempts will go up a little bit once Dirk Nowitzki and Harrison Barnes come back (Barnes could return as early as Friday), simply because those guys are very good mid-range shooters, and a lot of Barnes’ work comes in isolation against switched guards or big men. It’s unlikely that more than 80 percent of their field goal attempts will come either in the restricted area or beyond the arc. But, generally, I would imagine they’d like to keep that number pretty darn high. It’s been working so far to the tune of 117.2 points per 100 possessions, good for second-best in the league as of Monday night.

    What’s Next

    The Mavs (2-1) will head east to face the Atlanta Hawks on Wednesday. Tipoff is at 6 p.m.

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