A Few Thoughts on Mavs 122, Magic 106

[Dahlsim]

 
Kristaps (34 min) had another brilliant game, with an almost unparalleled line of 24-10-5-5 (blocks). He has come a long way this season, playing with a confidence and swagger that was missing at the beginning of the term. With Powell's injury, KP has become less of a spot-up shooter, and much more involved in the offense, getting more touches and being used more in the PNR. He is an underrated facilitator, and had a gorgeous bounce pass through traffic to Luka for a layup on a give-and-go. The Luka-KP connection continues to flourish, and Porzee thinks that the best is ahead of the duo. Jet described Zinger as reaching a new level, and especially complimented his increasing familiarity with his teammates and the system, along with his rim protection and rebounding. 
 

KP has been on a different level for seven games now with six of them being great plus a bit of a stinker against Washington.  In those seven games he's averaged 24.3 points and 10.4 boards.  He's getting to the line 8 times a game, hitting 40% of his 3's and .517 from the field.  It comes to 1.44 points per shot attempt.

Something I find interesting...shot attempts for the season are 15.2 per game and he's only taking 16.8 shots per game in this stretch.  So, he's doing this on only 1.6 more shots per game.  He's just hitting more of them.  FG% has gone from .417 to .517.  FTA's have gone from 4.5 to 8.  He was getting shots before, but they were mostly stand above the break and we'll throw you the ball every once in a while (which works for Maxi).  But, that kind of inactivity may have been tough for KP to take.  Now he's more integral to the offense and much more involved in plays and it seems to get his juices flowing.  If we are still having this conversation in March, watch out.

Thanks for the KP numbers. It makes it so clear just much the Unicorn has really played his way back into All-Star form in just over a 1/2 season!  Its very unfortunate that an injury to Dwight Powell probably played into this expanded role for KP because DP was in process of emerging to another level himself. 

Fact is, we're really looking at true next man up process at work here with the Mavs because Maxi Kleber is also emerging and looking like his game has another level.  I thought from watching his year 1 that Kleber could be a sleeper and so far its really looking like a another great find for Donnie and his scouting team.   

Donnie should be up for some GM recognition btw.