Marcus Sasser made four threes Wednesday. The rest of the Mavericks' shooting problems did not disappear, but at least Dallas had a player offering a practical answer to one of them.
In Dallas’s regular-season opener, Sasser scored seventeen points on six-of-eight shooting. Four of his five attempts from beyond the arc went in. Dallas lost 128-110 at Houston, so this was a contribution to examine rather than an appearance to decorate with a victory narrative.
The distinction is useful. A reserve can have a good game inside a poor team performance, and acknowledging it does not require pretending the team nearly won. Sasser supplied efficient scoring to an offense that had made the evening exceptionally difficult for itself before halftime.
His made threes accounted for four of Dallas's eleven. That gives the performance significance beyond a tidy individual percentage. The Mavericks attempted 37 threes overall and converted 29.7%. Sasser offered success in an area where the collective result was much less convincing.
It does not follow that he should expect to make four of five every night. A five-shot sample cannot establish a shooting level for a season, much less settle a rotation. What Wednesday establishes is simpler: when Dallas needed perimeter production in this game, Sasser provided it without requiring a large number of attempts.
His seventeen points came from several kinds of scoring: four threes, two other made field goals and one free throw. That distribution is worth keeping in view. The outside shooting led the contribution, but it was not the only way Sasser completed a useful offensive trip.
The scoring also was not confined to long shots. During the fourth quarter, Sasser completed a driving floater and the accompanying free throw. The three-point play finished a 8-0 Dallas burst, leaving Houston ahead 103-86 with 9:06 remaining. Sasser had supplied six points during that run.
That was a useful sequence, although a seventeen-point deficit is still a seventeen-point deficit. Dallas had created an interruption in Houston's control of the game, rather than reached an equal footing. The Rockets answered with an 8-2 stretch that included threes from Jabari Smith Jr. and Fred VanVleet, restoring a 111-88 advantage.
Those two passages should stay together in the assessment. Sasser's work helped create an opening. Houston's response demonstrated how much remained between an opening and a plausible winning position. Praising the former while remembering the latter gives the performance its actual size.
There were other useful individual contributions. Cooper Flagg scored 32 points efficiently, and Naji Marshall recorded sixteen points with six assists. The Mavericks therefore had more than one player producing. Their problem was fitting enough productive possessions together before the game required a rescue.
