Game Recap: Dallas Mavericks, hot shooting, beat the Utah Jazz 95-83

April Game Streams -- Mavs Moneyball -- Mavericks vs Jazz coverage

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What a crazy game between the Dallas Mavericks and the Utah Jazz. Utah looked great early with an active defense that took advantage of turn overs, but the Mavs just couldn't miss. Almost literally, as they went 16 for 17 in the first quarter. Richard Jefferson was on fire early, and Derrick Favors was working hard out there until he picked up his second foul.The Jazz bench chipped away in the second against theirs, good play from Enes Kanter and Alec Burks made a difference. Kanter, in particular, was beasting on the offensive glass. RJ, though, did enough to keep the game out of reach. After doing okay in the first quarter he became a mason in the second quarter. He bricked his way to a 4/12 shooting mark by halftime.

For the Mavs Dirk was Dirk. And the rest of their vets were playing well enough to make sure we stayed out of arm's reach. Four players had 9 or more points at half for Dallas. As a team they shot 6/11 from downtown, and 26/37 from the field. That's making 70.3 fg%. Yikes. It was no surprise then that the halftime score was 61-46. Kanter had 11 and 9 off the bench. Favors had 8 points, but only 2 rebounds. And yes, RJ had 11 points off of 12 shots.

Making things worse, if possible, is that Marvin played in the first quarter, and was shut down for the game after that. Those are 8 minutes that could have gone to Katner, Jeremy Evans, or Rudy Gobert instead. Marvin was 0-fer in his outing, had no points, or rebounds, and finished with a -4 in +/-. I love Marvin, he's our best player, but if he's not even going to be here next year shouldn't we commit to the guys who will be?

Tyrone Corbin started Trey Burke, Alec Burks, Gordon Hayward, Jeremy Evans, and Derrick Favors. It didn't make much of a difference. The Jazz were down 81-65 after three.

In the fourth Jeremy Evans had a pretty nice follow slam off a miss. Richard Jefferson had some nice dunks as well. The Jazz made it close, 9 at one point, but Dirk came back in and finished us off. Derrick led the Jazz with 19 and 7. Gordon had another triple couple with 11 / 4 / 5 / 2. RJ had 15. Trey did not have a great game. Alec was hot and cold. The final score was not indicative of how the game actually was. We were never a threat to win.

Three Positives:

1. Enes Kanter: Our guy came off the bench and had 15 and 19, with 2 blocks and 1 steal in 27 minutes
   
2. Offensive Rebounding: The Jazz had 23 offensive rebounds in this game. Of course, if you look at how many shots they missed it makes a little more sense.
   
3. Jeremy Evans: He was super active, and finished with 11 rebounds off the bench. Had some good ball denial defense as well, even if his shots weren't falling.
   

Three Negatives:

1. Defense: Dallas shot better from FG% than they did from FT%. I'm not going to go into it.
   
2. Three point shooting (offense): The Jazz went 4/24 from downtown. That's not going to get it done in today's NBA. RJ went  2/8, G-Time went 1/6, and Diante Garrett made one too.
3. Three point shooting (defense): Think of the opposite of what we did, that's what Dallas did.

The Jazz play four more games this season: vs Portland Trail Blazers, @ Denver Nuggets, vs Los Angeles Lakers, @ Minnesota Timberwolves.