NBA Picks 4/7 – Houston Rockets @ Dallas Mavericks
by Thomas Quaynor for Wannamakeabet.com
The Houston Rockets (38-39, 11th in the West) visit the Dallas Mavericks (47-30, 5th in the West) this afternoon at American Airlines Center on NBA TV. Dallas is a 7.5-point favorite and the total is 226.5. The teams are meeting for the fourth and final time on the season. Dallas won two of the three games including a 125-107 rout at Houston on Mar. 31 in their most recent meeting. The win snapped Houston’s 11-game winning streak. Dallas has dominated Houston of late, winning 9 of the last 11 head-to-head matchups.
Houston is coming off a 119-104 loss at home to the Miami Heat on Friday night. They’ve now dropped four in a row after going on an 11-game winning streak that pulled them within one game of the final Play-In spot. Dallas enters today’s game red hot after picking up a 108-106 victory over Golden State on Friday night, they won the game without their superstar Luka Doncic. Dallas has won 13 of their last 15 games.
GAME STORYLINES: HOUSTON
After trading away disgruntled superstar James Harden in January 2021, the Houston Rockets began the process of rebuilding their team from scratch with high draft picks and young players. The last two and a half years without Harden has brought a lot of misery for Houston as they’ve lost 60+ games in each of the last three seasons. Fortunately for Houston, the three consecutive 60-loss season allowed them to select high in the draft and add several young players with unlimited potential.
Houston’s poor records over the last three seasons has netted them three top five picks in the NBA draft, and two more first-round picks outside of the lottery. Houston drafted Jalen Green with the No. 2 pick and Alperen Sengun with the No. 16 pick in the 2021 NBA draft. In 2022, Houston selected Auburn forward Jabari Smith Jr. third overall. The 2023 draft saw Houston choose forward Amen Thompson with the No. 4 pick and then Villanova forward Cam Whitmore at pick No. 20. All five players are now starters and/or rotation players for Houston. Four of them – Sengun, Green, Smith, Whitmore – are double-digit scorers this season. Whitmore is averaging 12.3 ppg in just 18.3 minutes per game.
In addition to the outstanding drafting, Houston made two additional moves that were instrumental in this season’s turnaround. In April 2023, Houston hired Ime Udoka as its head coach and signed him to a massive 4-year, $28 million contract. Udoka was credited for guiding the young 2021-22 Boston Celtics to NBA Finals. Houston then signed 30-year-old point guard Fred VanVleet to a 3-year, $130 million contract in June. These series of moves have already led to a 16-game improvement for Houston this season as they’ve gone from one of the worst teams in the NBA to having a good shot at finishing above .500 and possibly qualifying for the playoffs.
Center Alperen Sengun led the team with 21.1 points and 9.3 rebounds per game, he also added 5 assists and 1.2 steals on 53.7 percent shooting from the floor. Unfortunately, the 21-year-old Sengun suffered a right leg injury during a Mar. 10 win against Sacramento and will likely miss the rest of the season. Guard Jalen Green is averaging 19.9 points, 5.1 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 2.3 threes through 77 games. The 22-year-old Green averaged 27.7 ppg in March as Houston went 13-2 for the month and went on an 11-game win streak. The young duo of Sengun and Green have the potential to lead the Rockets to prominence in the very near future.
GAME STORYLINES: DALLAS
During the 2018 NBA draft, the Dallas Mavericks traded the No. 5 pick Trae Young to the Atlanta Hawks for the No. 3 pick Luka Doncic. The move turned out to be a franchise-altering decision for Dallas as Doncic became an elite player immediately. In his 6 NBA seasons, Doncic won Rookie of the Year, has made 5 All-Star teams and was named All-NBA four times. The 25-year-old Doncic may be having his best season as an NBA player currently as he’s averaging career-highs of 33.8 points, 9.8 assists, 1.5 steals and 4 threes per game. His 9.2 rebounds per game is just 0.2 off of his career-high rebounding average which he set during his second season in 2019-20.
The only blemish on Luka Doncic’s career has been the lack of postseason success as he’s only made it past the first round once. Dallas has tried to surround Doncic with All-Star level talent by first adding talented big man Kristaps Porzingis in January 2019 but that experiment failed as Dallas traded Porzingis to Washington in February 2022 at the trade deadline. About a year later, Dallas traded for talented and unpredictable free-agent-to-be point guard Kyrie Irving.
The Luka-Kyrie pairing appeared to be a colossal failure as Dallas finished last season with a disappointing 38-44 record and failed to make the playoffs. It was also widely speculated that Irving would sign elsewhere as a free agent, but in typical Kyrie Irving fashion, he did the unexpected and immediately signed a 3-year, $126 dollar contract to stay with Dallas on the first day of free agency. This season was also looking like a failure as injury stints for Luka and Kyrie resulted in Dallas spending most of the season hovering around the bottom-tier playoff teams in the Western Conference standings. But since March 7, Dallas has been on a blistering pace where they’ve won 13 of 15 games and are now firmly in the playoffs as the fifth seed. They are 2 games behind injury-riddled Los Angeles Clippers for the fourth seed.
Kyrie Irving is averaging 25.4 points, 5.2 assists, 4.9 rebounds, 1.3 steals and 3.1 threes on 49.3 percent shooting from the floor and 41.1 percent from long distance across 55 games. Kyrie and Luka are both playing their best basketball of the season heading into the playoffs which may spell doom for opposing teams in the playoffs. It won’t be easy to beat Dallas when the All-Star duo has it going like this.
Dallas received a significant boost from the February trade deadline acquisitions of athletic center Daniel Gafford and forward P.J. Washington. Gafford is averaging 11 points, 7.4 rebounds and 2 blocks while shooting 75.2 percent from the floor in 25 games with Dallas. Washington is averaging 12.1 points, 6 rebounds, 1.2 steals and 1 block across 25 games with Dallas. Washington scored a team-high 32 points in the Mavericks win against Golden State on Friday night. It was the most points he’s scored as a member of the Mavs. Both players combine to provide a steady diet of scoring, shot-blocking, rebounding and shooting which complement the enormous skillsets of Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving.
THE PICK: MAVS (-7.5)
Dallas is playing their best ball of the season while Houston appears to have flamed out after the impressive 11-game winning. I think Dallas blows them out again today just as they did exactly one week ago. Lay the Points and take the Mavs!