Dallas shot 51.9% on opening night. Anyone handed that figure without the scoreboard might reasonably expect an account of an offense finding its way. At halftime, however, the Mavericks trailed Houston 70-38.
That is a rather large detail for a shooting percentage to leave out.
The Rockets won 128-110 Wednesday at Toyota Center, handing Dusty May a difficult first regular-season game as an NBA head coach. Dallas's final shooting line was accurate and encouraging in isolation: 41 baskets on 79 attempts. The uncomfortable part is everything that percentage cannot describe, beginning with the twelve minutes that broke the game open.
Houston led 32-26 after the first quarter. In the second, Dallas made four field goals on nineteen attempts and failed to hit a three. The Rockets scored 38 while the Mavericks scored twelve. A six-point game became a 32-point game before either team reached the halftime locker room. That stretch deserves more attention than the eventual recovery of Dallas's shooting average.
The second-quarter misses are specific to that period. The possession problems that accompanied the full game are a separate, equally serious concern: Dallas committed 21 turnovers, while Houston collected seventeen offensive rebounds to the Mavericks' eight. Those totals describe repeated opportunities lost with the ball and repeated failures to finish an opponent's possession after a miss.
The distinction matters when deciding what to fix. Improving a shooting percentage addresses only attempts that actually happen. A turnover prevents an attempt altogether.
An opponent's offensive rebound gives that opponent another chance before Dallas can begin its next attack. The margins are not interchangeable, and simply adding them would not create a reliable measure of possessions. Each nevertheless represents work that making a higher proportion of shots cannot perform.
Houston finished with 88 field-goal attempts, nine more than Dallas, and made 47 of them. Its own 53.4% shooting was excellent. The Mavericks were therefore facing an opponent that combined efficient finishing with a larger supply of attempts. Against that combination, a respectable Dallas percentage became a limited consolation.
It would be convenient to assign the defeat to one Maverick having an exceptionally messy night. The distribution resists that explanation. Cooper Flagg, Kyrie Irving and P.J. Washington each had four turnovers. Three prominent players contributed the same number to a team problem, even though their scoring nights differed substantially. Flagg scored 32; Irving scored fifteen; Washington scored ten.
