tv set: TNT, 9 pm ET
BetMGM line: Mavericks-2.5
For half of Friday, the Dallas Mavericks appeared ready to tie the Golden State Warriors 1-1 in the finals of the Western Conference. Luka Doncic was the best player on the court with 24 points in the first half as Dallas had a 14-point difference in half-time.
Then the wheels fell. Warriors gather, And the Mavericks face another 2-0 series deficit and have a chance to turn the series around at home. Can they float on the victory of Game 3?
1: Can the Mavericks find an attack inside the three-point arc?
The Mavericks have done their best to turn Game 2 into a 3-point shoot contest. It worked for two-quarters against the Golden State Zone. Dallas brought a 72-58 lead in half-time in Game 2 on Friday, thanks to most of the scorching efforts across the arc, after scoring 87 points overall in Game 1. The Mavericks connected 15 out of 27 (55.5%) and tried to control the game with 3 points in the first half.
However, 55.5% is not at a sustainable pace. The retreat was hit hard after half-time as the Mavericks calmed down in the third quarter of 13 points and reduced the deficit to 85-83 before the Warriors took the lead early in the fourth quarter. The Mavericks 3-point rate returned to Earth with 33% effort (18-6) after half-time, but the Warriors team started two of the best 3-point shooters ever at Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson. bottom. ..
When the Mavericks climbed 45 (57.7%) out of 78 field goal attempts across the arc, the Warriors attempted only 34.1% (28 out of 82) from a 3-point distance. The deep looks they got came in at a rate of 50% (14 of 28).Meanwhile, they defeated the double-digit Mavericks lead by working for high-quality shots inside with a shooting performance of 56.1% (46 of 82) in the league. 7th rated regular season defense..
Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd knows that his team can’t make mistakes and can’t expect to compete.
“If you rely on 3 for 2 to 13, you could die for 3,” Kid said Friday about Mavericks’ third-quarter efforts. “And we died in the third quarter because we shot that number of three and came up with only two.”
Meanwhile, the Mavericks struggled for an answer to the Warriors Zone as they tried to move the ball inside.
It’s up to Kid and Doncic to find the game 3 tweaks.
2: How does the Mavericks react at home?
The Mavericks lost their first match at home to Utah Jazz this postseason. Since then, they haven’t lost in Dallas. They won games 2 and 5 against jazz at home and ended Utah with game 6. Before closing Phoenix in Game 7, I swept Games 3, 4, and 6 against Sands. These five home wins are 15.4 points. Expect another Dallas team on Sunday.
Is the 3: 2-0 deficit on the verge of ruin for Dallas?
Dallas fans will tell you they have been here before. The Mavericks seemed to win after two games against the Sands when they fell into the 2-0 hole in the semi-finals of the conference. After 5 games, they caused an amazing upset Rout of historic game 7 Of the NBA’s best regular season team to advance to the West finals.
The rally was a statistical anomaly. Every basketball landOf the 441 teams that lag 2-0 in the NBA Playoffs series, only 32 teams have come together to move forward. That number includes the Mavericks victory over the Sands. In total, the winning percentage of the 2-0 team is 92.7%.
Similarly, history is not a good precursor to Dallas, considering only the finals of the conference where the team leading 2-0 has a record of 71-6 (92.2%) per TNT. If Dallas could do this in two consecutive series, it would be a truly historic feat.
