Facing a Nets team without Kyrie Irving or Kevin Durant, the Mavericks relied on a team effort to reach a 115-98 victory on the road.
To start the game, everything was offensive. Something to be expected, considering that the Mavs and the Nets are strong offensive teams and are in the bottom third of the league in the defensive classification. The Mavs had a 68-64 lead going into the break.
The second half is where things got interesting. Throughout most of the third quarter, it seemed that the Mavs were starting to distance themselves, as the lead reached double digits. But the start of the fourth period is when the game was won. The Mavs had a great race, increased their lead to 22 and never looked back.
Here are three things from the beautiful win that pushed Dallas back to 0.500.
A great game Luka Doncic not represented on the box scoreboard
Luka ended the night with a pedestrian (for him) 27 points out of 11 out of 21 pitches to go along with seven assists and six rebounds. For most NBA players, this is a career night. But for Luka, those numbers are very boring.
This was one of those Luka games, however, which does not appear entirely on the scoreboard of the box. He had his fingerprints all over this game from start to finish.
Its first quarter was a masterpiece. He made 15 points out of 6 out of 9 field shots and added four assists and three rebounds. He was losing coins, competing in defense and scoring points across the court. He set the tone for the attack, and the team found its intensity.
As the game progressed, it slowed down a bit in terms of numerical output, but was still confused. He even got his hands on the overtaking lanes, wreaking havoc across Brooklyn.
If you just score the box, it looks like a good match for Luka, but it was actually a classic superstar performance.
Dorian Finney-Smith, bow!
Dorian Finney-Smith has suffered a lot this season. He hasn’t been the guy Mavs need him to be. But tonight, he was everything they could have hoped for and more.
Finney-Smith scored 12 points out of 5 out of 6 field shots and 2 out of 3 bottom shots to go along with eight rebounds, four assists, two steals, a block and zero turnovers. It was an extraordinarily clean game from Finney-Smith, except, of course, when he was messing the game on purpose.
He was hunting dog in defense. He stayed active, used his length well and fought hard all night. Check out this piece:
He gets stuck on the screen, but instead of giving up, he chases a moving Harden and strikes his kick hard, leading to a fastbreak tray for Tim Hardaway Jr.
More / less generic never tells the whole story, but it’s no coincidence that Finney-Smith led the team in that category tonight with an absurd plus-24. More of that, please.
It was a wild Kristaps game – then a normal Kristaps game.
Tonight was Kristaps Porzingis’ experience in a nutshell.
He made the first bucket of the night, it looked like he was going to make a big game and then it quickly faded. At one point, he was frustrated at not getting the ball in a previous possession, so he pulled it up close to the middle of the court with about 21 seconds left on the kick clock. After that, he kicked a chair during a break.
Then, apparently suddenly, Porzingis started to look good again. The Mavs were (for some reason) posting it continuously. But was it … sort of working? He still made some strange decisions with the ball in his hands, but the ability to shoot was on display.
The biggest lesson of this game from Porzingis was that he seemed to move better in defense. He was more active than he has been recently, and that even led him to accumulate some blocks. It’s good to see that.
I suppose the other big lesson in terms of Porzingis is that Mavs’ big run in the fourth quarter took place with Porzingis on the bench. Coincidence? I don’t think so, but maybe it’s for a different story.