It was former Nets star point guard Deron William’s first game against his old team since leaving Brooklyn. However it was a classic Dallas Mavericks team basketball performance that solidified their 91-79 victory over the Brooklyn Nets.
The former All-Star was aggressive to start, taking a team-high 10 shots before halftime. Despite being aggressive, Williams struggled with his shot on the night, connecting on just 21 percent of his shots from the field to garner a total of only eight points in his return.
Though forward Chandler Parsons led his team with 19 points, coach Rick Carlisle made sure to spread the love on offense. Outside of Dirk Nowitzki, who has undoubtfully earned the privilege to take as many one-on-one looks as he wants, each Dallas starter had three or more assists.
Dallas center Zaza Pachulia played well with 16 points, 12 rebounds, and three assists on the night in one of his best games of the season. Surprisingly he was approximately 14,000 votes short of being voted into this years All-Star game in Toronto. Despite the popular belief that he was not anywhere close to worthy, the big man has played his way into averaging a double-double.
Pachulia did struggle to contain the Nets’ Brook Lopez, who led all scorers with 28 points to go with 12 rebounds. Despite seeing more double teams this year with the lack of other offensive weapons around him he has really been hitting his stride lately. The seven footer also just dropped 31 points in Sunday’s victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Lopez didn’t get much help in this one with his teammates struggling to move the ball without Jarrett Jack in the lineup. It wasn’t until late in the third quarter that a fifth player hit a shot for Brooklyn.
Just when we thought Bojan Bogdanovic was beginning to get things going after two big games and establish himself as the team’s sixth man, he reverted to the Bogdanovic fans had been accustomed to seeing all season. He missed all four of his shots - many of them open threes from the corner - and collected one rebound in 19 minutes.
It wasn’t until the fourth quarter when Andrei Bargnani hit the lone field goal that the Nets’ bench accumulated in this 48-minute long contest.
The Nets’ 12-point loss overshadows just how ugly this team looked outside of Brook Lopez. The Dallas victory over this team also says a lot about how much less productive their offense is compared to the Western Conference elite, who routinely bash the Brooklyn Nets.
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