The great tank race

I don’t mean to offend here, but the Mavericks are a bad basketball team at the moment. Which is understandable, considering they have traded away four of their five highest minute/most proven players. And the reason they made the trades to begin with, well he’s sitting on the bench watching.

A byproduct of said trades, has been the team sinking like a rock in the standings, something they did towards the end of last season as well. It seemed like a concerted effort to make it happen then, but this year? This is just who this team is. They are playing their guys, but it simply isn’t enough. And now they’re getting awfully flirty in regards to keeping that pick.

They are currently tied with Washington for the 7th best lottery odds, and a game out of having the 6th best. I’m not here to suggest that they should do what they can to keep that pick, what I am saying is you should be keeping an eye not only on the Mavs outcomes, but teams like Washington and Memphis as well.

Keeping that pick would be a huge bonus for this team and their long term plans, so we should all be hoping for a little lottery luck.

Will someone please make some shots? 

The Dallas Mavericks are 1-9 in their last ten games. The biggest reason for that, well there are lots of them, but the inability to make open shots has just been brutal.

As we said earlier, that’s understandable with all the trades, but ultimately this is a professional basketball team hitting shots at a rate that a college team would scoff at. And the execution isn’t even that bad. They get plenty of good ones, especially playing through Luka with his incredible playmaking instincts, but the guys are just clanking  away.

The part that’s so unfortunate, is that I don’t think there is any solution. Playing Breokhoff more? Maybe. But he’s a limited minute, role player type guy who likely won’t single handedly change their fortune from deep.

These are the guys they have for this last stretch of the season, and if this trend continues, there are going to be many more ugly offensive outings.

More Luka heroics?

The last time these two teams met at the American Airlines Center, Luka Doncic registered what might have been his first Rookie of the Year moment.

The Mavericks were trailing by nine with only a few minutes to play, when the Wonderboy completely took over. He went on a personal 11-0 run, featuring multiple patented stepback threes amplified by the eruption of the AAC crowd.

It was the first of many clutch moments, and the birth of “Luka Magic” in Dallas.

A lot has changed since then. Luka is better, but the team as a whole is much worse. So, the odds of this being a close enough game for “Luka Magic” to bring it home, probably aren’t great, but wouldn’t it be awesome to watch him crush the hearts of a hated division rival once more?