After a painful defeat on Friday night, the Mavericks recovered in style and defeated Portland 132-92.
The game started with Damian Lillard and Luka Doncic coming and going impressively, with Doncic and Lillard scoring 12 and 11 points in the first quarter, respectively. The Mavericks lost by three after one. This punch-by-punch nature of both teams continued until the middle of the second quarter, when Dallas made eight consecutive points to take the 51-44 lead and used that momentum to extend their lead to 65-54 in the interval. The Mavericks would not look back, as they overcame the Trailblazers by 38-15 in the third period and ended up winning the game by 40 points.
Tyler Bey, Nate Hinton and Josh Green received extended running in the fourth quarter and Josh Green along with Nate Hinton looked solid in their time on the floor. Green and Hinton scored four points and scored one and two assists, respectively.
Josh Richardson scored 21 big points and Dorian Finney-Smith returned after losing two games due to the birth of his son.
Luka Doncic is very good at basketball
Do you remember when Luka Doncic started the year shooting less than 10 percent in three? Me neither. Doncic made the bad shot a distant memory and was almost perfect beyond the arc tonight, while he made eight of his nine attempts. Part of the reason why Dallas was able to pull away after the break was because Doncic was four of five distances in the room.
Luka finished with 37 points, four assists and seven rebounds in just 29 minutes. He showed his entire arsenal of unstoppable movements, including the three steps back and the change of pace that led to easy buckets on the rim. While the Mavericks continue to win, Doncic is making an increasingly strong case for being in the MVP conversation.
Doncic has scored 117 points in his last three games.
Mavericks can be very good at defending when they want to
If the Mavericks had not scored in the fourth period, they would have scored the same amount of points in the second half as Portland. They kept the Pioneers with just 38 points in the second half, including 15 in the huge third quarter. Dame and CJ McCollum both had less than 20 points in shots below 50 percent, after both scored 30 on Friday night.
The Mavericks’ defense seemed cohesive and active since the end of the first quarter, even when the rookies played a stretch of more than six minutes in the quarter. This team has shown that it is capable of maintaining a team, even a top offensive team like Portland, with less than 100 points on any given night, it just doesn’t do it consistently.
Kristaps Porzingis continues to improve in defense, scoring 2 blocks and a steal in 25 minutes of action. He found Enes Kanter on the ledge and had a major block in his attempt to bury. The Unicorn also managed eight rebounds.
The addition of Dorian Finney-Smith to the starting lineup was a welcome sight and there is no doubt that he added to the defensive presence that the Mavericks exhibited.
Kristaps Porzingis continues to fight offensively
I mentioned that Kristaps is in an upward trend on the defensive end, but in attack, he is trending in the opposite direction. Not only is this his third consecutive game with less than 15 points, but it is the third consecutive game in which he has hit less than 50 percent of the field.
It has been manipulated on the post by significantly smaller players and the three-ball has not fallen high enough to compensate for its inefficiency within the arc. He has also not received so many touches; only 32 shooting attempts for Porzingis in his last three games.
The Mavericks are 2-1 in those games, they have made an impact elsewhere, and this offensive fight is not a cause for concern in the long term. Everyone goes through firing shots, but perhaps this stretch shows his offensive limitations and what he needs to work on if the Mavericks want to take their game to the next level.