GAME 29: POR (16-13) @ DAL (15-14) | 130-110 win

[DanSchwartzgan]

And yet again solid 1-big defense from Wood 
It seems to be much more of an issue when he's paired with another big like McGee and he's asked to guard the perimeter

Not really it at all.  Wood has played a total of 35 minutes with Powell and 20 minutes with McGee ALL SEASON.  The issue hasn’t been the failures of Wood with McGee/Powell.  It basically hasn’t happened.  The issue has been Kidd’s unwillingness to try Wood without his caddie Maxi.  The Maxi/Wood minutes have been great.  I posted earlier Wood w/Maxi has a D-Rating of 109.

The question has always been would the Wood-solo big minutes be good.  The D is 10 points per 100 worse with Wood but no Maxi.  But, almost all of those minutes have been short bursts of time when lineups were in transition.  The Wood minutes in the other games Maxi has missed until the last two weren’t all that good in aggregate (there was one really good game early).

But now, for two nights in a row, we’ve seen the team play good D with Wood as solo-big.  It is super encouraging because it is also being done w/o Green.  As I asked in the Cleveland game thread (I think)…is this the turning of a corner or something unique about the opponent(s)...like big plodding centers.    Desperation is the mother of invention.  Kidd doesn’t have much choice but to let this play out and see the answer.