Dallas Mavericks start 5-3: The good, the bad, and the ugly

Dallas Mavericks

The Ugly: Team Shooting Efficiency

Okay, yeah… it’s very possible the worst thing currently about this team is that they are shooting pretty horrifically from the court. The team for the last three years has built itself on spacing the floor with signings like Tim Hardaway Jr, Reggie Bullock, Sterling Brown, Frank Ntilikina, and Maxi Kleber to name a few.

But how bad have they been exactly?

Last week, the Mavericks were 31 percent from the three-point arc and 47.4 percent from inside. As of this week, Dallas is shooting 30.7 percent from three and 50 percent from inside the arc. It’s encouraging that the team has gotten better at converting near the rim and in the mid-range area, but the team is currently 27th in the league in three-point efficency.

Will it improve? Who knows! Three-point shooting across the league has been noticeably worse than last year with about half the league’s teams shooting at or below 35 percent. It’s possible the ball change from Spalding to Wilson has negatively impacted the finest sharp-shooters the league has to offer, and seeing how the impact is league-wide maybe there’s some substance to this argument?

Looking at the individual play of those on the roster, the only players shooting more efficiently from three than last season are Maxi Kleber (47.8 percent) and Jalen Brunson (42.3 percent). (Without accounting for sample size, Eugene Omoruyi (50 percent), Dwight Powell (40 percent) and Trey Burke (40 percent) all make this list)

Tim Hardaway Jr is currently shooting 36.4 percent from three, Reggie Bullock is shooting 32 percent from three, Luka Doncic is shooting 25 percent from three, and Kristaps Porzingis is shooting 23.5 percent from three. Hardaway hasn’t shot like this since his New York Knick days, Bullock hasn’t shot like this since his first year in New York, Doncic hasn’t shot like this since last December, and Porzingis hasn’t had this rough of a stretch in his career.

I haven’t even mentioned Dorian Finney-Smith who’s shooting 20 percent on five attempts a game.

It hasn’t been great for the Mavericks and with this many games into the season, it’s tough to guess if the team will rebound and regress to the mean of previous years. Is the energy spent on defense is negatively impacting their offensive efficiency or is it really just the ball?

Hopefully this is an issue that resolves itself because Dallas needs to start beating playoff teams again. Their ability to do this in the past was dependent on their three point shooting efficiency. Given the current roster construction, which has been the same for the past three years, odds are three-point shooting efficiency will once again dictate the success of Dallas. Yay!