Dallas Mavericks rout Pelicans in dominant 2nd half performance

The Dallas Mavericks got an easy win over the New Orleans Pelicans in which they were able to rest their starters a little bit. Dallas should be ready to go for the second night of the back-to-back once again.

There have been a lot of wins to choose from in the Dallas Mavericks season so far, but today’s win over the New Orleans Pelicans was probably the most dominant of them all. This is the third time this year that Dallas has won by over 40 points, although all three are against bottom five teams in the league.

Despite New Orleans being near the bottom of the standings, they still score the ball fairly well. Between Brandon Ingram, Jrue Holiday, J.J. Redick and others, the Pels are 6th in the league in scoring at 114.5 points per game. They obviously aren’t near that level defensively, but the issue for them has not been on the offensive end.

Today, it was as the Mavericks held them to a season low in points with 84. This was just a few days after the Mavs held the Pelicans to 97, only the second time they had been held under 100 all year. The point I am making is that this Mavericks defense is getting better. Obviously the Pelicans aren’t the best defensive test in the league, but no one else has been able to slow them down like Dallas did today.

Most of the defensive effort came in the second half. The score at halftime was a respectable 64-52. Dallas was already on pace to slow the Pelicans from their normal scoring efforts, but what happened in the second half was a perfect mix of great defense and terrible offense.

The Pelicans scored their first bucket of the second half with 10:19 seconds left in the third. A made free throw at 9:04 and a three-pointer from Ingram at 7:52 made it a 17-point game as the Mavs were scoring at their normal pace. With 5:19 left in the third, Ingram scored the next basket for the Pels, now trailing 83-60. By the time they scored their next basket, the Mavs were up by 37 and this game was long gone.

Dallas ended up outscoring the Pelicans in all four quarters: 31-28 in the first, 33-24 in the second, 40-14 in the third, and 26-18 in the fourth. Dallas led by as many as 50 in the fourth quarter and coasted into a win behind only 26 minutes for Luka Doncic and no more than 20 minutes for Kristaps Porzingis and the rest of the starters.

Luka finished with 26 points, 9 assists and 7 rebounds, giving him 18 straight games of at least 20 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists. This ties Michael Jordan for the most consecutive games with at least those numbers in NBA history. Luka will look to pass Jordan tomorrow against the Sacramento Kings.

The bigger star of the night (literally) was Boban Marjanovic, who set a season high in minutes (23), points (15), rebounds (16), blocks (2) and tied his assist mark (2). The Mavs bench matched the starters as each group scored 65 points in the game. Every Mavs player that got on the court scored at least four points except Delon Wright, who left the game in the first with an injury.

The Mavs got the big win on the first night of a back-to-back once again. This is exactly what they did in their previous back-to-back last week that resulted in wins over the Pelicans and Timberwolves. Tomorrow’s game will tip-off at 6:00pm central time and will be played in Dallas.