Did you watch the Mavs’ preseason game last night? It’s OK if you didn’t; it’s preseason.
But Dallas treated the third of their four preliminary games — the final one takes place tomorrow night — as something of a dress rehearsal, trotting out their starting lineup and launching a ton of 3s (something they’d hesitated to do thus far) and generally giving a pretty good shit what was happening.
Turns out, when that happens, the Mavericks can look lethal. So lethal that they walloped the Charlotte Hornets 127-59. You read that correctly. The Mavericks really did double their opponents’ score (and then some). They really did win by a larger margin of points than Charlotte scored. They really did win the most lopsided preseason game between NBA teams since 1995, per the Elias Sports Bureau. The only preseason game with a larger margin of victory took place two years ago, when the Houston Rockets obliterated the Shanghai Sharks by 69.
Look, it’s preseason. None of Dallas’ starters played more than 26 minutes; the Hornets, meanwhile, barely trotted out most of theirs. There are precious few things to mine from this time of year that carry real weight. Final scores don’t convey much. Check back in tomorrow on StrongSide, and Iztok Franko, our guy in Slovenia, will clue you in on the stuff that really matters.
For today, though, just bask in a truly hilarious preseason moment before the heavy stuff gets underway.
