Dwight “Dwight Power” Powell, as the season had gone along, has been attempting to make the difficult transition from “big guy who can only dunk” to “big who can dunk but also shoot long jumpers”. Until tonight, I wouldn’t say that his attempts had been met with much success. He could hit the jumper, sometimes, but it wasn’t something you could count on night in, night out.
Notice the “Until tonight” part of that last sentence. Notice also the “Career High” part of the video title. Notice those two things and tandem and try to figure out what kind of a game Dwight Power had tonight. That’s right! A career-high on the back of a bunch of jumpers, including some threes! Who needs dunks when you can launch the ball from over 20 feet away and have it go in just as good?
I would say that this means that the Mavericks have a Dirk replacement ready to go for next season, but it turns out that Dirk isn’t even retiring. Still, even if he doesn’t get to directly replace Dirk, he’s setting himself up well for the future. Stretch bigs are a neccesity for all NBA teams, and if Powell can consistently hit these shots (he probably can’t, TBH) he’ll probably get paid big bucks at some point.