We’ve all wondered how the Mavericks will survive when their strong three-point shooting abandons them, as it occasionally is bound to do in a long NBA season.
On Thursday, we found out that it’s not going to be easy to weather those shooting droughts.
However – and this is the hard part to admit – but the Mavericks will be better in the long run for learning from their 119-101 loss to Minnesota on Thursday night at AAC.
The Mavericks will have to find ways to score when they aren’t stroking it from long range. And, to their credit, the off nights have been few and far between so far as they have built a 15-9 record.
But against the Wolves, they were just 7-of-32 from three-point range.
“The ball touches the paint, they collapse, we get wide-open looks,” coach Jason Kidd explained about the offensive formula that has worked well through the season’s first trimester. “We made those against the Lakers (on Tuesday). We didn’t make them tonight. It’s one game.
“But if we can be consistent where the ball’s touching the paint and we’re collapsing the defense, shooters are going to have to take those shots. We’re promoting taking wide-open threes. And this game is about who’s going to make those shots. If you do make them, there’s a good percentage that you have a chance of winning that night.”
The old saying in the NBA is that defense travels. But the Mavericks so far are doing just fine emphasizing the three-ball and scoring in bunches, Thursday’s outcome notwithstanding.
Here’s our other takeaways from the Wolves’ win.
Support crew makes a difference: The Mavericks almost always have an advantage when they go to their reserves. Tim Hardaway Jr. and Co. usually win the battle of the backups, but on this night, Naz Reid led Minnesota’s reserves with 27 points as the Wolves outscored the Mavericks 56-25 off the bench. “He’s had a great year for them,” Kidd said of Reid. “Coming off the bench, he can put it on the floor, get to the basket. He’s a big (guy) that can handle it. And he can shoot it. We talked about him before the game and at halftime. We got to keep him off the three-point line and we just didn’t do a good job. We got to look at being better at that. Their bench was better than ours tonight.”
Live and learn: The Wolves are one of the biggest teams in the league, starting two legitimate center/power forwards in Rudy Gobert and Karl-Anthony Towns. And the Mavericks play them twice more in the next month. Kidd said it requires some adjustments when playing the Wolves. “Minnesota’s different than Portland (who they will play Friday). Gobert, KAT, Reid, they had most of the time two bigs out there.” That contributed mightily to the Wolves’ 45-34 rebounding advantage.
Costly turnovers: The Mavericks don’t usually turn the ball over a lot, but they had 11 giveaways in the second half, which was out of the norm for them. “The ability to play with pace is something we did well,” Kidd said. “We had some turnovers that we normally don’t have. We had 11 in the second half. That’s something we don’t normally do. We normally have the turnovers in the first half then limit it to two or one or zero in the second half and tonight we had 11.”
X: @ESefko
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