Coming off a double overtime letdown against the LA Clippers, Dallas will have a chance to earn a win at home against a young and upstart Trailblazers squad.
Dallas is still searching for their first post-Harrison win, something that might finally wash away the pall that was cast over much of the start of the season.
Deni Avdjia is having a breakout season for Portland, leading the team with nearly 26 points per game, and will be a great matchup for Cooper Flagg to flex his defensive prowess.
Dallas is already struggling as a team with turnovers this season. Perhaps an expected side effect of having no true point guards on the roster. That problem is unlikely to solve itself, as Dallas will face a Blazers team that ranks third in the NBA in forced turnovers.
Portland is swiping 17.5 steals per game, behind only the Oklahoma City Thunder and Cleveland Cavaliers, tied for first with 17.8 per game. Portland scores over 18% of its points off opponent turnovers, nearly 22 points per game, and the sixth-highest rate in the league.
That’s scary news for a Dallas team that turns it over 17.1 times a game, third worst in the league this season. Dallas’s turnover troubles are a symptom of an offense that has been lagging all year, and a burden that has been too big to overcome on the defensive side of the ball, even though they’ve been much more competitive in that aspect of the game. In close games like losses against the Bucks and the 2OT loss to LA, turnovers were a glaring issue.
Firing Nico Harrison has satisfied the fanbase’s rage for now, but for both the home crowd and an increasingly despondent rookie Cooper Flagg, it would be nice to get a win at home.
Even among those who consider the best course of action to be to begin a rebuild and secure a high lottery pick in a stacked 2026 draft, hopefully, there’s still some sense of joy derived from getting a dub. It bears mentioning that Dallas will likely not need much help in losing a bunch of games this season, so getting a good home win to assuage the fan vitriol the team has been feeling to start the season would go a long way. Building a successful team in the future doesn’t need to start by making everyone miserable.
Speaking of building for the future, it’s been fun getting to watch Flagg get his NBA legs, but so far this season, we’ve not been able to see much of the other half of the young core the Mav could potentially build around.
Dereck Lively returned against the Clippers and played 17 minutes. Getting some two man action between Flagg and Lively, especially while the team waits on the return of Anthony Davis, is the fastest way to get some fan buy in.
The tiny, 13-minute sample size of Flagg, Lively, Naji Marshall, Max Christie, and D’Angelo Russell is among the best Dallas has run out this season, and it makes sense. Flagg has looked markedly better when he’s on the floor with a point guard. Russell, mercurial as he is, has the skill to boost Dallas’ lagging offense. Same goes for Christie, who has been the sole reliable three-point shooter so far this season (not how a team with Klay Thompson under contract wants to operate, presumably.)
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