3 things the Mavericks need to improve by start of the regular season

1. Shot distribution

The Dallas Mavericks ranked third in the NBA last season in total 3-pointers attempted per game at 41.0. Where did they end up fizzling out in terms of the points in the paint they averaged per game in the NBA last season? Dead last, as a season starting with a promise from head coach Jason Kidd to shoot fewer three-pointers materialized into a sum of all fears scenario for Dallas last year.

Oftentimes the Mavericks' offense stalled out last season as it relied solely on Luka Doncic's dribble penetration and heliocentric play style to feed open looks to shooters.

The process of Luka dominating the ball till he draws multiple defenders and is forced to dish it out sounds good in theory and it works a lot of the time, but the Mavericks personnel last season was riddled with one-dimensional players on the wing whose game would completely fall apart if they weren't hitting their 3-point shot.

But with a full season of Doncic and Irving together coupled with internal improvements and new additions on the wing, Dallas is poised to get to the rim and make defenses less prone to closing out hard on their shooters every time.

Dallas has struggled with shot distribution a little bit in preseason thus far. They struggled to create offense out of isolation scenarios without Doncic and Irving in the lineup as they shot 46 3-pointers in each of their first three preseason games at a combined rate of only 31.9 percent team-wide.

However, Dallas went 17-40 on 3-pointers in their final preseason game versus Detroit, and it seemed like they were using their ability to generate offense into defense as well as an increased emphasis on getting into their half-court sets faster en route to helping their pressure they put on the rim open up even better looks from downtown.

Dallas has some talented shooters on this roster and by no means should they be making a vast effort to drive down their three-point attempts a ton, but they'll need to continue varying their shot distribution better by putting more pressure on the rim and self-creating from the mid-range.

With prominent role players such as newly-extended Josh Green and Jaden Hardy potentially taking a bigger step offensively along with the new Mavericks' additions over the offseason helping out, we should see more pressure on the rim and less stagnation that results in chucking up ill-advised three-pointers this season.

But even if we don't, we'll still have you covered with the latest surrounding the Dallas Mavericks as we approach the start of the season and find out if any of these improvements the Mavericks need to make come to fruition or not.