GAME 50: IND (18-33) @ DAL (29-21) | 105-132 WIN!

[DanSchwartzgan]

Brunson and Doncic combined for 20ast/2tov. With the improved half court defense the Mavs are unlikely to lose any games against bottom feeders as long as they aren´t making mistakes. Avoid life ball turnover. Don´t give up easy transition opportunities. Pacers, Thunder or Magic won´t beat the Mavs in a half court game.

Agreed.  We've been taking care of business against weaker opponents since Brunson joined Luka as a starter at the beginning of the month.  We are 12-3 during that time.  The losses were bad @ NY, @ GS and home against PHO.  But, we also started to beat some playoff teams like DEN, GS, CHI, MEM (twice) and TOR.  That wasn't happening to start the season.  All of those wins were at home except one of the MEM wins.  So, we are doing what good teams do...1. winning at home and 2. beating bad teams.  

The Luka/Brunson together minutes are under performing the team at +3.5 Net this month.  But, I think we get less heliocentric "Luka-Ball" when the two of them are together.  The ball is moving more overall.  I used to get bored watching Luka pound the ball and loved the ball movement with the bench unit.  Now we are getting that kind of movement the entire game as a result of the second ball handler.

Pre-Kidd logic would dictate that Lineups with Powell and Green wouldn't work because of the lack of a three point shot both bring.  I'm loving the Bullock/Powell/Green bench lineups (+21.6 this month).  Powell/Green/Luka lineups have also been great at +22.5 and Powell/Bullock/Luka have been +36.8.

I think we found our best starting lineup.  It is certainly logical, but it feels like the net rating should be stronger than the 5.8 achieved during a total of only 90 minutes so far.  Blowouts tend to skew the numbers.  NBA.com has a lineups tool called Lineups Visuals.  It takes out some of the noise and shows a picture of lineup net ratings.  The current starting lineup is the fifth best of the most used lineups.  Interestingly, Powell and DFS are in all four of the lineups that are better than the starting unit and Powell, DFS and Bullock are in all of the top three.  That is entire season data, not just January.

For the second night in a row, Frank did just fine eating up some of Hardaway's minutes.  Please keep this up.

I'm soooo glad we replaced Willie with Chriss and aren't seeing Moses any more.  Chriss isn't perfect, but he fits what we do so much better than the others.  It took Chriss a few games to get acclimated, but in 12 appearances in January his TS% is .591 and O/D ratings are 113/101.  His per 36 during that time would be 19/11 points and boards.

 
https://www.nba.com/stats/lineups/lineup...on=2021-22&SeasonType=Regular%20Season&MeasureType=Base