MAVS 98, SUNS 105

[mavsluvr]

I think your A- for KP is kind.  After making three of four in the first few minutes, he was 4 of 16 the rest of the way with some of the worst misses you'll ever see from an NBA player.  He tried to do too much and missed every single shot that he tried to create for himself except one.

Maybe you're right about the grade. I wouldn't dispute the point.

In assessing his (and everyone's) performance, I think we have to take into account that they were playing without Luka and Maxi. KP and a number of other players did miss a lot of shots, and did settle for some bad looks when maybe they could have been patient enough to work for better options.

I think it is interesting that we are usually ragging on Luka for taking bad shots, and sometimes criticizing his teammates for not stepping up and taking on part of that load. When he was not available for the game, it seemed to me that they reversed their normal tendencies. It appeared that they were all highly conscious of their need to take up the slack, and in their anxiety about doing so, may have made some reaches that exceeded their grasp. 

Since these guys are used to waiting on Luka to create good looks for them, I wonder if their eagerness to try to take over themselves reflected a lack of confidence that their half-court offense would even be able to produce a better look without Luka.

While acknowledging that Luka's absence may have negatively affected his teammates psychologically, possibly making them somewhat trigger-happy, I thought they actually performed substantially better than I expected, in general. I was afraid they might well be blown out, but they competed pretty well, considering. Sometimes, you just run into a better team, and I think the Mavs knew that's what they were up against.

Thanks for your observations. Very interesting.