Dallas Basketball

‘We Could Easily Be 4-0’: Biggest Takeaways from Mavs’ Thrilling Win Over Nets

Luka Doncic was spectacular, and the Dallas Mavericks jumped back into the win column on Thursday night at Barclays Center. Here are four big takeaways from Dallas’ overtime thriller against the Brooklyn Nets.

Dalton Trigg

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On a night where a handful of the NBA’s biggest stars aligned in Brooklyn, Luka Doncic shined the brightest as the Dallas Mavericks outlasted the Nets in an overtime thriller, 129-125.

Doncic finished the game with 41 points, 11 rebounds, 14 assists and three steals — something no player in league history had accomplished until Thursday night. Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving put up 76 points combined, but it still wasn’t enough to offset Doncic’s historic night.

With the win, the Mavs improved to 2-2 on the season, but they know things could be even better right now if they had taken care of business in games against the Phoenix Suns and New Orleans Pelicans.

“We could easily be 4-0,” said Doncic. “But we’re 2-2. We didn’t execute the last game and at Phoenix. But we worked on it. Tonight, we executed very well.”

Before the Mavs take on the Oklahoma City Thunder at American Airlines Center on Saturday night, let’s take a look at some of the biggest takeaways from Dallas’ win over Brooklyn.

Doncic is Finally Making His Free Throws

As stellar as Doncic has been since being drafted in 2018, one big knock on his game has been his free-throw shooting. The highest mark he's hit on free throws during a season was 75.8 percent during his second year. That's not terrible, but it's also not ideal for a superstar player that gets to the line 8-9 times per game.

Through four games in this young season, Doncic is putting up monster numbers of 36.3 points (league-high), 9.5 rebounds, 9.3 assists and two steals per game while shooting 50 percent from deep. His absurdly-high usage percentage is concerning when looking at the long-term picture, but for now, the 23 year old is currently doing it all with relative ease.

As impressive as those stats are, Doncic shooting 86.1 percent on free throws is what sticks out the most. If he's able to keep up this pace throughout the entire season, the MVP might be a lock for him if the Mavs win enough games ... because the gaudy averages will certainly be where they need to be to get his foot in the door.

The Josh Green Hype Train LIVES

After the Mavs' loss to the Pelicans on Tuesday night, we wrote about how Josh Green's play had been underwhelming through the first three games of this season. His shooting percentages have been fine, but the assumed "breakout year" just didn't seem to be materializing after an encouraging offseason.

Perhaps his performance against the Nets on Thursday will jumpstart that breakout. Green finished with 10 points in 13 minutes off the bench while shooting a perfect 3-3 from the field – all corner 3s. If Green can play like this on a more consistent basis, Dallas' ceiling will be raised.

Dinwiddie’s Early-Season Efficiency is Impressive — But is It Sustainable?

Many wondered if Spencer Dinwiddie's brief regular-season run with the Mavs was fool's gold last season given how his overall efficiency plummeted in the postseason. So far, he's showing that his early numbers with Dallas from last year might not have been a fluke after all.

Dinwiddie is averaging 16.3 points and 3.8 assist in 30.4 minutes per game for the Mavs. He's currently shooting 51.1 percent from the field, including a scorching 56.5 percent from deep. Obviously, that kind of clip from beyond the arc isn't sustainable, but if Dinwiddie can put together a full season where he hovers around 40 percent on 3s, the Mavs won't have too much trouble racking up enough wins to secure home-court advantage in the playoffs for the second straight year.

Mavs Are Nearly Unbeatable When 3s Are Falling

In what will be breaking news to nobody, we'll remind you that this is a make-or-miss league. When the Mavs are clicking from deep like they were in overtime against the Nets, they look unstoppable. When they struggle, it can get ugly in a hurry like we saw on Tuesday in New Orleans.

A positive sign for Dallas is that its two loses have only come by two points each, and it had an opportunity to win both of those games on the final play – and this is with Doncic and Dorian Finney-Smith not having found their 3-point stroke yet. Doncic is shooting just 26.3 percent from deep, and Finney-Smith is shooting 21.4 percent.

Once some of those numbers start to regress to the mean, the Mavs should string together multiple wins and look like a real contender in the Western Conference. 

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Dalton Trigg
DALTON TRIGG

Dalton Trigg is the Editor-In-Chief for Dallas Basketball, as well as the Executive Editor overseeing Inside The Rockets, Inside The Spurs, All Knicks, and The Magic Insider. He is the founder and host for the Mavs Step Back Podcast, which is a proud part of the Blue Wire podcast network. Trigg graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi’s College of Business and Economic Development with a bachelor’s degree in entrepreneurship in 2016. After spending a few years with multiple Dallas Mavericks-related blogs, including SB Nation’s Mavs Moneyball, Trigg joined DallasBasketball.com as a staff writer in 2018 and never looked back. At the start of 2022, he was promoted to the EIC title he holds now. Through the years, Trigg has conducted a handful of high-profile one-on-one interviews to add to his resume — in both writing and podcasting. Some of his biggest interviews have been with Mavs owner Mark Cuban, Mavs GM Nico Harrison, now-retired legend Dirk Nowitzki and many other current/former players and team staffers. Many of those interviews and other articles by Trigg have been aggregated by other well-known sports media websites, such as Yahoo Sports, CBS Sports, Bleacher Report and others. You can find Trigg on all major social media channels, but his most prevalent platform is on Twitter. Whether it’s posting links to his DBcom work, live-tweeting Mavs games or merely giving his opinions on things going on with Dallas and the rest of the NBA, the daily content never stops rolling. For any inquiries, please email Dalton@MavsStepBack.com.

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