About last night... Scrimmage vs Lakers

    Last night was the very first scrimmage for the Mavs in the Orlando bubble, kicking off their restart. Like most basketball fans, I was locked in. Highlights were back! NBA drama was back! Crossovers, deep threes and the refs giving calls to.... nevermind. I'm super excited for the season restart, even more than I thought I would be going in, so here are my way too early takeaways from last night's scrimmage win:

Luka is Luka

If there was any doubt in your mind about Luka's conditioning, he shut that down with a drive to the rim off a screen slam dunk. He got up so high that his wrist smashed the edge of the rim! (thank god he wasn't injured) I'll be thinking that on every play he & KP fly in the air or drive to the paint...

In the limited scrimmage minutes he ended with 14 pts, 6 AST, 5 boards. Typical Luka. His stepback three swished in for his first shot and ate Kyle Kuzma up any time he tried to guard him. BBQ chicken. I was relieved by his first two freethrows going down smoothly, but then back to the old ways when he clanked the next two. Keep an eye on that as we go forward. Luka did leave with the trainer, Casey Smith, for a brief period. It gave everyone a good scare, but turns out he was just stretching! (whew) 

Seth Curry is GOOD

Oh my god can those Curry boys shoot! Seth couldn't miss last night... like he didn't miss one single shot. 23 points, 8-8 from the field and 6-6 from three. (sheesh!)  This is nothing out of the ordinary for 2020 Seth, though. Since 2020 began, Seth has averaged nearly 16 a game on 55% shooting and 51% from behind the arc taking 5.8 threes a game. That's insane! I love him in the starting lineup, and think he's the perfect pairing with the way Luka plays. What I don't know is how THJ fits with Seth there. Having a ton of shooters on the floor together is never a bad thing, but from what I've seen, THJ is a pure confidence shooter. Once he knows his role on the team he fills it and torches defenses. Having Curry start with him is going to mean a changed role. Curious as to how it plays out 

The bench

The bench looked...not good. Delon Wright NEEDS to play aggressive! It would change everything. He has the speed and the handle to push the pace, get in the lane and get a bucket, draw a foul or pass out to an open shooter. For some reason he just doesn't do it. We've seen him do that in Toronto, Memphis, even early in the year for the Mavs! He's really the only player on that bench unit that can get past his man and make a play that isn't a JJ pick n roll with Maxi. It will be interesting to see how Trey Burke fits into all of this, maybe taking JJ minutes because he just didn't look like he had it. Another player that needs to play aggressive is Justin Jackson. I don't know if his aggressiveness will prove to be a good thing but please for the love of god lets just see what you can do. He's going to be getting a ton of minutes consistently in his career, so no more excuses. Let's see if you got it or not. That floater is a thing of beauty though....

Kristaps

Knick fans were quick to roast the unicorn for his stats, but he didn't play bad. Some tickytack fouls early kept him sidelined, and I'm sure Carlisle is being uber cautious with his usage til games actually matter. The one thing I am worried about is how much he struggles with athletic centers. Javale torched the Mavericks. It looked the same every time. KP would rotate a little too heavy and the ball handler would dish it to Mcgee waiting to slam it home. Luckily few teams have players like that in the playoffs. Both LA teams with Howard, Mcgee, and Harrell. But that's about it. (Capella in the east now) Point is, those types of bigs give the Mavericks problems, but seeing as how we didn't bring many bigs to counter that, KP needs to make better decisions. I'm sure his reaction times will increase as we get warmed up & into the swing of things 

Let me know what you all think about last night's scrimmage.