The Dallas Mavericks were beaten by the Charlotte Hornets, 117-90 in a game that fell well short of competitive.<\/p>\n
Dallas, still short-handed and without Cooper Flagg, was dispatched with ease by the NBA\u2019s hottest team. With the win, the Hornetts are back to .500 and looking towards the postseason for the first time in a long time.<\/p>\n
+51: Charlotte\u2019s 3-point scoring differential<\/p>\n
That Dallas was even in this game as long as they were is something of an anomaly. The Hornets came out of the gates hot and didn\u2019t cool down all night. At the end of the first quarter, Charlotte led 31-to-23 after the first quarter, powered by a 6-of-16 effort from deep. That\u2019s compared to Dallas\u2019 0-of-6 mark through the first quarter.<\/p>\n
Much of the damage came from some familiar faces. Two former Mavericks, Josh Green and Grant Williams, combined to go 7-of-11 from three off the bench. The Hornets\u2019 ROY-leading Kon Knueppel didn\u2019t even get into the mix until later in the game. He was 2-for-9 for just four points at the half.<\/p>\n
By the end, though, the Hornets had taken 51 three-point attempts and made 20, while the Mavs struggled to a 3-of-22 night from beyond the arc. Charlotte took 88 total field goals, so their 51 three-point attempts made up well over half of their shot diet as a team. Not a bad strategy if you\u2019re going to shoot it at 39%.<\/p>\n
+23: Dallas\u2019 free-throw differential<\/p>\n
On the complete opposite side of the coin, it was Dallas earning a huge free-throw disparity by trying to work the ball into the paint most of the night. The Mavs attempted 42 free throws and made 31. That\u2019s 31 points out of a total of 90 on the night.<\/p>\n
To cast it in a positive light, it\u2019s an impressively gritty achievement for a team that wasn\u2019t playing for much tonight. It certainly would\u2019ve been much easier to pack it in and let it fly from deep or lazy jumpers instead for guys like Ryan Nembhard, who took some lumps tonight because of his focus on getting some paint penetration with his dribble.<\/p>\n
0-2: John Poulakidas shooting night<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been said that there will always be a place in the league for guys who can knock down shots. That was probably the line of thinking behind signing Yale-grad John Poulakidas from the G-League to a two-way contract. The 22-year old was shooting 38.5% on five attempts per game in the G-League after shooting over 40% his final three years in college, but he\u2019s off to a bit of a slow offensive start in his NBA debut. He took a single three-pointer and another jumper just outside the paint and missed them both.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t leave the stat sheet blank, though. Poulakidas managed to grab five boards and a pair of assists in only 14 minutes. He wasn\u2019t brought in to clean the glass, but it\u2019s good to see he stayed active despite not getting many shots up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dallas Mavericks were beaten by the Charlotte Hornets, 117-90 in a game that fell well short of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,2663],"class_list":["post-189416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-mavericks-game-coverage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}