Final: Wolves 111, Mavs 87
Box Score | Highlights
Behind the Box Score
With a made bucket at the 11:45 mark of the second quarter, Dirk Nowitzki (10,751) moved past Hakeem Olajuwon into eighth place on the all-time career made field goals list.
The Mavericks allowed just 43 points in the first half, a new season-low. The previous lowest was 44, done three times.
Notebook
This was a tale of two halves in many ways for rookie point guard Dennis Smith Jr. and his team. The Mavericks took a 55-43 lead into the break thanks in large part to Smith’s play, but then the third quarter reared its ugly head and the offense took a turn for the worse. On the positive side, the ball was flying all over the place in the first half and a lot of that has to do with how Smith was willing to share the ball. Dallas is at its best when the ball doesn’t stick and instead finds itself in the hands of players at every position in all areas of the floor. On two occasions, Smith was able to use a downhill attack to open things up for a shooter. First, he drove it and forced the defense to collapse before finding Wesley Matthews.
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Then, for the first time his rim-running off the ball created some gravity to pull Harrison Barnes’ defender into the paint and leave Barnes open for 3.
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Typically only a big man will have such an extreme effect on a help defender when moving toward the rim, but Smith has become a pretty fearsome dunker so it was only a matter of time before defenses started showing him respect in those situations. That’s what worked well for Dallas in the first half.
There are still growing pains with Smith — as to be expected for any teenager playing heavy minutes in a position of responsibility at this level — and many of those things showed up in the second half. The Dallas offense slowed down quite a bit after halftime, which hurt the inside-out game that the Mavs thrived on in the first two quarters. It’s much tougher for the Mavs to attack early in the shot clock off a make than it is a miss, and it’s tougher for them to stop the other team off a miss than a make, so that chain presents a problem when shots aren’t falling: The offense isn’t helping the defense, which isn’t helping the offense, which isn’t helping the defense, and so on. The Mavs have to improve in the third quarter. It’s certainly unfair to blame Smith any more than you would blame another player on the roster; Rick Carlisle himself said the entire team is at fault for something like this. Part of Smith’s development is finding ways to continue attacking a defense after the halftime break, during which opposing teams regroup and make adjustments. I suspect as time goes on he’ll improve in that area.
In yet another lineup shake-up, Maxi Kleber got the first start of his career, joining the typical core of Smith-Matthews-Barnes-Dirk. Kleber has been a pretty consistent on-off positive for the team most of this season, and frankly he earned more minutes after his performance Tuesday night against San Antonio. Kleber had a pretty quiet night on the stat sheet but sometimes that’s going to happen to you when you go up against a star like Karl-Anthony Towns. It’ll be interesting to see who gets the start tomorrow night against Milwaukee.
What’s Next
The Mavs (2-14) will play the Milwaukee Bucks (8-6) on Saturday at American Airlines Center at 8 p.m. Central.
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