Tip Off: 7:30 PM (PST)

Projected Starters

Dallas                                                                     Golden State

PG – Jason Kidd                                                  Monta Ellis

SG –  Vince Carter                                               Dominic McGuire

SF –  Shawn Marion                                           Dorell Wright

PF –  Dirk Nowitzki                                           David Lee

C –     Ian Mahinmi                                              Ekpe Udoh

Scope the opposition: Get your Mavericks fix at The Two-Man Game.

Preview: After getting blown out at home Wednesday night by the Memphis Grizzlies, the Golden State Warriors will host the Dallas Mavericks tonight at Oracle Arena. The Mavs will be playing their third game in as many nights and have lost the previous two contests so far to Phoenix and Sacramento.


On offense, the Mavs have an offensive efficiency of 99.4 (20th in the NBA) and convert 43.6 percent of their field goal attempts (19th in the league).

Interestingly enough, the Mavericks have a mediocre offense and yet leave you with the impression that they are better than their numbers suggest.

Dallas likes to play the two-man game on one side of the court, where they try to run a pick-and-roll with a scorer — more often than not Dirk Nowitzki — and if the defense converges on him they will swing the ball to the weak side of the court for an uncontested shot or drive attempt.

They can also go to some post ups with players such as Dirk and Vince Carter to take advantage of matchups, especially if teams switch on defense. The end result is that the Mavs often end up with a multitude of good looks at the basket, but because they are a jump shooting team, they rarely get easy opportunities right at the rim.

According to Hoopdata, the Mavericks attempt 21.2 shots directly at the rim per game (26th in the association).

With that said, when the game slows down late and execution becomes paramount to obtaining a victory, the Mavericks have the toughest matchup in all of basketball in Dirk Nowitzki. He is not only their go-to scorer but he is also a willing passer out of the double-team, which causes huge problems for opposing defenses, especially when they switch on screens.

On the other side of the ball, Dallas sports a 97.0 defensive efficiency figure (tied for fourth in the NBA) and allows 42.3 percent field goal shooting (tied for fourth in the league).

The Mavs may not have a dominant defensive anchor but they are still one of the best teams on that side of the floor in the league. They will alternate between playing man-to-man defense and zone to take teams out of their favorable matchups; and they also like to switch on screen-and-rolls to limit the amount of open looks that teams get out of the rotating defense.

Indeed, the Mavs may not necessarily have a multitude of great individual defenders, but they help each other out beautifully by sagging down into the lane to help and then recover back to their initial assignment.

Shawn Marion is by far their best individual defender while Jason Kidd is probably the best team defender on the roster. Indeed, Kidd gets into passing lanes, deflects passes and is often able to take teams out of their offense simply by anticipating where the ball is going and forcing a tough decision.

The active bodies on defense that routinely sag into the lane help the Mavs limit opponents to 38 points in the paint per game (fifth best in the NBA).

Given that Golden State does a poor job of scoring in the paint, it will be interesting to see if the Mavs devote as much emphasis as usual on this front or if instead they will choose to hug shooters and force them to put the ball on the floor.

Questions or comments? Feel free to leave them in the comments section or you can contact me by email at [email protected].