Dallas Mavericks will look a bit different as they make moves for second half of season
Thursday will mark one year since COVID-19 infiltrated the NBA, bringing the 2019-20 season to a sneaker-screeching halt. Play eventually resumed, in the Orlando “bubble,” without fans and amid skepticism that was heavily coated with worry.
This season just passed the halfway mark, but the coronavirus let it be known that it has some game left when 76ers’ stars Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons were both ruled out of Sunday’s All-Star game after being exposed to COVID-19.
When the Dallas Mavericks returned to the practice court on Tuesday, one of the first questions asked was regarding if the players were healthy and free of COVID-19 going into the second half of the season.
“As of right now, yes,” head coach Rick Carlisle said, his face hidden behind a black mask. “You know, my understanding is that we got through all the testing things during the break with no issue. If we hadn’t, we would’ve have had everyone to practice today, obviously today I guess. Coming out of this practice, to my knowledge, everyone is healthy, yes.”
The ominous COVID cloud
Key words: As of right now.
Remember that in January that the Mavericks were hit hard by COVID-19, with a number of players, including Jalen Brunson, Maxi Kleber, Josh Richardson, Josh Powell and Dorian-Finney Smith, missing time. All-Star guard Luka Doncic continued to perform at a high level and Tim Hardaway Jr. was a consistent scorer, but the Mavs went 3-8 over the last 18 days of the month.
Once everyone returned Dallas rebounded, and as of right now the team is looking to keep going strong after winning nine of their last 11 games before the break. This was largely thanks to Doncic, who is averaging 31.7 points on 51.9 percent shooting with 7.6 rebounds and 8.0 assists per game in his last 10 games.
Going into Wednesday night’s matchup with the San Antonio Spurs, the Mavs are running high on a three-game winning streak and are 18-16 on the season.
“We’ve done a lot of good things the last three weeks, which we had to do given all the other circumstances,” Carlisle said before the break, according to Yahoo Sports. “There’s a long way to go. And then when we pick up out of the break, it’s going to be even busier than it was in the first half.”
Still, exhaustioncould creep up in the coming months because of a ridged schedule and that, combined with the looming threat of COVID — on Wednesday Texas lifted its mask mandate though the virus still has plenty of punch — could create a maelstrom of issues.
Rookies return to team
Young blood returns to the Mavs’ picture as rookies Josh Green and Tyler Bey join the team from the G League, where they were on assignments with the Salt Lake City Stars.
Green, who was selected with the 18th pick in the 2020 NBA Draft, averaged 13.5 points, 4.8 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 2.2 steals in 29.7 minutes per game during his six games with the Stars.
“We decided to have Josh go play in the G League bubble because he wasn’t getting consistent minutes here when the Covid-19 protocol guys came back,” Carlisle said. “He did a great job there.”
The two did not play for the Texas Legends, the Mavs G League affiliates, since the Legends opted out of going to the G League bubble in Orlando.
Before heading to the G League, Green had played 17 games for the Mavs and started five of those. He averaged 2.5 points and 2.3 rebounds and shot 47.2 percent from the floor in 12.5 minutes per game. Following practice on Tuesday, Green spoke about the challenges coming into the season. In a typical year, rookies would have had a chance to get in playing time during the NBA summer league, but due to the pandemic, the NBA scrapped that schedule.
Didn’t really help that training camp was only a week and preseason games were snipped short.
“Probably like four practices and then going into your first (regular season) game is pretty challenging,” Green said about his introduction to the NBA. “I think overall a lot of these (rookies) in other years have had months to prepare for their teams. It’s really hard just coming into an NBA setting and just being able to adjust to it.”
Can they move up in the West
As of right now, the Mavericks are nestled into that No. 8 seed in the Western Conference and are looking to move up during the second half. With Doncic, this is a reasonable expectation since he tends to exceed any and all expectations when it comes to his on-the-court performance.
This also comes at an easier pace if the Mavs can nail their shots from behind the arc. Currently, Dallas is hitting 35 percent of their 3s, ranking them 25th in the league, the Athletic reports. When it comes to wide-open 3s, the Mavs are dead last this season.
However, Dallas has “started reversing these trends in their past 13 games, in which they’ve won 10 of 13.,” the Athletic said. “In that span, they’ve improved to fourth in all 3-point attempts (40.2) and 11th in percentage (38.1).”
Kleber, Trey Burke, Brunson and Hardaway are among the Mavs’ best 3-point shooters.
The Mavericks are scoring an above average 131.4 per 100 possessions on the season, according to SB Nation.
But, as of right now, their roller coaster death ride they call defense is atrocious; the Mavs are allowing 120.8 points per 100 possessions.
“While the improvement on defense over the last six games is encouraging but the sample size is too small to say the Mavericks finally turned a corner,” SB Nation said.
