Vegas Game 5 wrap: Mavericks 74, Thunder 54
This post got messed up big time. It didn’t save right and when it got published and it cut off like all of it. I restored some of it, but not all. Too bad for you, because I had some really brilliant thoughts in there about a Summer League basketball game. Sorry about that.
A couple quick thoughts about today’s game against Dallas:
- The Mavs started out today on a 10-0 run, then took it to 16-2 hitting 4-4 from deep. Roddy Beaubois hit two DEEP threes and Shan Foster hit a pair as well. The Thunder kind of looked like they were ready to hit the casinos tonight and really didn’t appear all that excited to be playing their 10th game in 13 days.
- The Thunder scored just 54 points today and their quarter by quarter went 11, 20, 11, 12. Pretty awesome offense there.
- B.J. Mullens with another beautiful example of his lack of post game: With 5:03 left in the first quarter, James Harden dropped a pretty bounce pass to Mullens who was standing on the block. His defender had left him to go get Harden and the Maverick rotation was a little late. So Mullens was basically standing alone on the block momentarily. He caught the pass, faced up and immediately launched an eight-footer. Literally two dribbles and he’s dunking the ball. Loud sigh.
- Oh and just chew on Mullens’ line for a second: 10 minutes, two points, zero rebounds, zero assists, zero blocks and two turns. I think he’s ready for a break.
- For all the bad play OKC had today, Shaun Livingston looked really good (five points, four assists) in limted time. He hit a 3, made some brilliant passes and had his mid-range game going a little. He played a lot at small forward today while Harden ran the point. It’s been a few days since I’ve said it, so here we go again: I LOVE the versatility of this roster.
- Beaubois is pretty darn good. He had 23 on 9-12 shooting, hit four threes and had five assists.
- Moses Ehambe got in early today and did some positive things. He hit a 3 at the end of the 24 and made a beautiful full-court bounce pass to Harden for an and-1. His performance earned him a start in the second half, but things didn’t go as well. He finished with seven points on 3-7 shooting and missed his next four threes.
- And another poor shooting performance by Robert Vaden. He looked to be forcing things again today and didn’t take great shots. In his defense, he had two threes rattle in and out, but still 2-10 from the field ain’t that good. He did somehow block three shots though.
Here’s some Vegas stats:
