'3-Ball, Corner Pocket': Mavs, Bertans Find New Blueprint in Win Over Heat?
On Tuesday night, the Dallas Mavericks were down 59-51 on the road against the Eastern Conference-leading Miami Heat at halftime. This was after falling behind by as many as 13 points in the half. Miami's physical brand of basketball was making life hard on superstar Luka Doncic and others, but there was one spot where Dallas kept finding success - the corner three.
Through the first two periods, the Mavs shot a total of 10 three-pointers from the corner and converted on five of them. The Dallas coaching staff quickly realized that Miami was showing a weak point in its defense and made sure the players kept attacking it throughout the game.
"At halftime we talked about it," said head coach Jason Kidd after his team stormed back to capture a 107-99 win. "Whoever wants to make a corner three, get to the corner because it's going to be open tonight."
Sure enough, the Mavs heard that message loud and clear, as they generated eight more corner threes in the second half and knocked down half of them yet again. On the night, Dallas shot 18-41 (43.9 percent) from deep and 9-of-18 (50 percent) from corner threes specifically.
"The only thing that went through my mind was having fun," said Davis Bertans, who scored 12 points off the bench in his Mavericks debut. "I was enjoying myself on the court. ... The very basics of what the coaching staff is asking on both sides of the floor is very simple. ... When the ball starts moving, when the players start moving, it's just easy."
Corner threes the shortest, and therefore theoretically the easiest, of all three-point shots. This is especially true for Bertans, who has only shot 32 percent from deep this season, but sees those percentages skyrocket when just looking at the corners. He hit 3-of-7 from deep overall against the Heat, but 2-of-3 from the corners.
“We think Davis [Bertans] is going to surprise a lot of people,” Cuban told DallasBasketball.com in an exclusive interview following the trade of Kristaps Porzingis to the Washington Wizards.
"We generate a lot of corner threes, and Davis should do really well as a result. Even in a down year, he is shooting 57 percent from the corners and has shot more than 56 percent from the corners in four of the past five years."
Although many viewed Bertans' contract as an albatross given how he's played since signing it two offseasons ago, perhaps his former team just simply wasn't using him the way he needed to be used. Morale could have something to do with it as well, as Bertans recently exposed some of what was going on with the chemistry issues in Washington.
It's only one game, so we're not going to predict that this will see this kind of production from Bertans and the Mavs every game going forward. But that production sure did seem to come surprisingly easily against one of the best teams in the league on Tuesday night.
For a team that was just hoping to get pretty much anything in return of getting off of Porzingis' contract, Dallas will definitely take it, whether its a sustainable new blueprint for success or not.
