The Dallas Mavericks beat the Washington Wizards 109-87 early Saturday night on the road. They did it fairly briefly, as three starters in Kristaps Porzingis, Maxi Kleber, and Josh Richardson all missed the game for different reasons. To read more about the game and what happened, click here to read the summary.
Let’s look at some of the numbers that help explain the why, or are there some interesting data points to think about.
64: Jalen Brunson’s 2-point shooting percentage since March 24
I absolutely pick an appointment and count from there, but since the Minnesota Timberwolves game, Brunson has been a man of two points. He’s shot under 33% of three the last few games, but that does not matter because his short-range shooting is excellent.
For the second game in a row, Brunson’s management was the key to opening the Dallas attack. He forces so little and his driving game near the edge is up to the point where I expect them to go in. He also did not miss a free throw in three consecutive games.
19: Dallas are unbeaten in NINETEEN games where they lead to one
This is something I have to explain to myself, as I am struggling to find a correlation past ” a good start leads to a good finish for the Mavericks ”. They won 27 games in total, so they took the lead after one of 19 of them was wild. Just like the fact that they are only 8-21. Commentators, feed me your theories.
21: Minutes for Josh Green
It was just Josh Smith’s third highest minutes total in a game this season, but it was easily his most since January. While this may be mainly due to necessity, it’s nice to see Green get some playing time. His offense is nothing short of cruel, but he played a solid defense and bounced the ball back well on both sides. The Mavericks need him to play, otherwise their wing rotation will be exhausted by the playoffs. If he can manage to connect three every now and then (it seems like it’s a bit given his efforts to date), his minutes should go up.
If you look really hard, you can see what the Mavericks are interested in with Green, he just needs time to learn to play.