The NBA Opening Night will see the Dallas Mavericks travel to take on the Los Angeles Lakers in an exciting contest. The game is scheduled for an 10:30 pm start time and it will be televised nationally on TNT. Currently the odds for the game have the Lakers favored by 8.5 points, while the totals line is set at 185.5 points. Opening lines had the Lakers favored by 9 points, while the totals line was set at 186 points.
Game Analysis:
We are in front of an interesting game, but that won't have any play on it, as there isn't enough data to make an accurate read of the two teams, especially when we have Kobe Bryant and Chris Kaman banged up and questionable for tonight. Both teams left some indications on the preseason, but the sample is small and the team's priorities weren't exactly winning those games.
Dallas Mavericks:
Dallas has nothing to do with the previous seasons, so we can throw any past data we have on them through the window. If Kaman plays tonight, Dallas will just have one played on their starting lineup that was already on the team last season: Shawn Marion! Coach Rick Carlisle has still a lot of work ahead of him, but the team's identity was revealed during the preseason games.
The Mavericks had the most veteran team in the league last season and their premium backcourt players Jason Kidd and Jason Terry simply lacked speed and explosiveness, so the team was playing half court basketball and living off Dirk Nowitzki's offensive talent. Now with Darren Collison and O.J. Mayo on the team, Dallas wants to push up the pace from the backcourt in order to score easy points.
This was exactly their main focus on the preseason. However, we are in front of a team with several new players, they are still lacking chemistry and therefore, Dallas had a lot of problems with turnovers on the preseason. After two games against European teams, Dallas had 17.2 turnovers per game on the six games where they faced NBA teams. A team that wants to have a high volume of transition plays is more prone to turnovers and that was exactly what happened with Dallas. However, the fact is that they scored a ton of transition points! They finished the preseason by being #1 on the league with 20.1 fast break points per game! And if we ignore the two games against European teams, these numbers jump into 24.2 fast break points per game!
The main problem with Dallas has been on the rebounding. Dallas's defense has been solid in opposing eFG%, but they have been just pounded in the glass by being clearly the worst team on the preseason! New Orleans had 20 offensive rebounds against them while the Mavs had just 4 and even Charlotte had 25 offensive rebounds against them! Dallas doesn't look to be a good rebounding team, even when Dirk Nowitzki and Chris Kaman comeback to the lineup, but without both, Rick Carlisle had to use Elton Brand in the center position in some moments of the games and that's a big concern for Dallas! I can't imagine Rick Carlisle putting Elton Brand as center while facing Dwight Howard, so he will have to solve this problem in some other fashion.
Los Angeles Lakers
I don't need to talk about the fact that the Lakers failed to win a single game on the preseason, but that means literally nothing! Dwight Howard played just the last three preseason games, Kobe Bryant didn't play the last ones and obviously, Mike Brown used those games to rotate a lot the team, while showing that they have really little "quality" depth on their roster.
The biggest problem of the Lakers on defense was avoiding transition points. Of course, they faced in five of their eight games two teams like Utah and Sacramento that will surely have good transition numbers this season and the Lakers ended the preseason as the worst team in allowing fast break points with 20.8 fast break points allowed per game! On the other hand, if we count just the five games against Utah and Sacramento, they allowed an average of 23.2 fast break points per game! Obviously Mike Brown and the rest of the staff will know that, but like I've said previously, Dallas's new identity is all about scoring in transition and this will be a problem for the Lakers defense tonight, something that most people haven't noticed yet.
The Lakers offense is still a work in progress with Steve Nash and Dwight Howard trying to fit on the team. They committed a lot of turnovers and they were offensively inconsistent, as they capable of scoring 57 points in the first half against Sacramento, but then just 35 points in the second half. But what impressed me the most was their incredible 71.0% assists/rate (71% of their field goals made were assisted!) - clearly the best mark in the preseason. Dallas will be undersized down low tonight and with a guard like Steve Nash feeding Pau Gasol and/or Dwight Howard, the Lakers will have a great matchup in here to explore and it will be up to Mike Brown to explore it as much as he can.
Kobe Bryant's status for tonight is still unknown, but even without him, I wouldn't be worried, assuming that Steve Nash is healthy and he will be able to play more than 30 minutes with no problems. With Kobe Bryant out, Jodie Meeks will be the starter and he has been a good outside shooter during this career. Mike Brown won't need to make any "bizarre" game plan change in here: just put the ball in Nash's hands and run pick n rolls ALL THE TIME! Steve Nash will find the open man and he is more than smart enough to recognize the mismatches and make the right decision.
These were the vital points that I've checked when I studied this game. In order to take a betting decision for this game tonight, I would need to force too much, having in account other opportunities that we have tonight to cash. Therefore, let's just have some fun and watch the game!
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