Stats Rundown: 3 Numbers To Know From The Mavericks Loss To The Pelicans

The Dallas Mavericks lost 129-111 to the New Orleans Pelicans Monday night in New Orleans. This was the Mavericks fourth game in five nights, a rarity in the modern NBA, and the team certainly looked sluggish.

New Orleans waxed the Mavericks from about midway through the first quarter and never truly looked back. The Pelicans had a double-digit lead for most of the game and were never threatened after taking a six point lead at the end of the first quarter.

Zion Williamson led the Pelicans with 27 points on only 13 shot attempts. Naji Marshall led the Mavericks and all scorers with 32 points. The Mavericks will now take on the red-shot Atlanta Hawks next, winners of 10 straight games.

Here are the numbers we noticed.

68: Pelicans points in the paint

The easiest number to look at after a blowout is how much paint points did the team give up, and Dallas didn’t disappoint there: the Pelicans nearly notched 70 points in the paint and rampaged toward the basket with ease all night.

Dallas started PJ Washington at center for the second straight game and this time got punished for it. The Cavaliers basically had just Evan Mobley as the only threatening big on Sunday, and couldn’t do much to punish the Mavericks small ball lineup. New Orleans plays a ton of bigs — Williamson, Yves Missi, Karlo Matkovic, and rookie Derik Queen. All four of those guys had positive impacts on the game, with Williamson shooting a nearly perfect 11-of-13 from the floor.

New Orleans as a team shot 29-of-41 from the restricted area. The makes and attempts are really bad for the Mavericks there, and they had zero juice on the their second back-to-back in five days.

2: Cooper Flagg free throw attempts

Cooper Flagg is getting a rookie whistle, which is going to drive Mavericks fans nuts, but it’s OK. It happens. Tonight’s game was particularly egregious though: Flagg shot 17 shots in the paint and only had two free throw attempts to show for it.

The highlight (or really lowlight) was in the second half when Flagg got the rim, got his shot blocked, but the Pelicans player in his follow through came down across Flagg’s face and whacked him in the head. I get it, NBA players are allowed to commit felonies as long as they get the ball first, but this was silly. Even if it’s not a shooting foul it felt like it should have been *something*, and it was just an a bad moment.

It’s annoying that this really only gets solved with Flagg not being a rookie anymore, and that doesn’t change for seven or so more months. Sigh.

39: Fastbreak points for the Mavericks

This was a wickedly fast game, both teams got up and down the floor a bunch. It’s not very often you’ll see a team score nearly 40 points in transition and get blown out.

This was just such an weird game. I don’t have much more to say about this stat other than it caught my eye. It’s hard to score 39 transition points and lose, and not only lose, but lose by a lot!