Mavs Avoid Disaster - X's and Owens

Going into today’s Mavericks game facing the Sacramento Kings, I’ll be completely honest, I had zero faith in our abilities to win this game. And after watching that mess of a performance by our Dallas squad, I have come to the conclusion that we should not have won that game. We simply did not deserve it. Yet again we suffered from laziness on the defensive end (with the exception of Luka Doncic who played exceptional defense towards the end of this game), our three point shooting was yet again hard to watch going 9/41 from deep, a three percent increase from Tuesdays 6/31.

I wholeheartedly understand the mentality in basketball of “shooters shoot, and Being able to keep shooting after struggling from range is one of the key attributes of all great shooters. However, after I watch a possession in which the Mavericks shoot 4 wide open threes and brick every single one of them I begin to seriously question the validity of this philosophy. One part of Luka’s game that both me and Mavs color commentator Derek Harper are very fond of is his ability to post up smaller guards and draw fouls or get easy buckets. Running plays to get the ball to Doncic in the midpost during times in which we cannot get shots to drop in is a very viable option that I hope to see in the coming matchups.

Although it was ugly, we got the win. The Mavs are now 1-2 in the bubble and have a very tough schedule ahead of them. Hopefully we can take the momentum from our somewhat dominant overtime performance into Thursday's matchup against the Los Angeles Clippers. Thursday's game is looking to be a playoff preview. This year we are 1-2 in our matchups against the Clippers, so it is important that we perform well in order to build our confidence come playoff time.

Yes, we looked terrible out there. Yes, watching that game made me very upset at some of our players. Yes that win does not leave me feeling optimistic about the near future as we face more competitive opponents. However the answer is not to keep this game in our minds and build mini feuds against individual players on the Mavs. Luka was fantastic, logging 34-20-12 making history as the youngest player in history to have a 30 20 10 game in NBA history. Think back to our February matchup vs the very same Sacramento Kings team. The Final score was 130-111 Mavs advantage, and it was a great team win in which everyone on the Dallas roster scored and it was awesome to watch. This team is more than capable of blowing out bad teams and beating good teams. They are very young and there will be bumps in the road. Be patient. I have confidence that they will get out of this funk that they are currently in and come playoff time will be able to compete no matter the opponent.

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