Once again, Dennis Smith Jr. pads his stats in the fourth quarter. Maybe “pads” isn’t the right word, so what, deal with it. Unlike the other times, though, the Mavericks were so far behind by the time he started going off that he couldn’t even bring them close.
Offseason plan for Dennis: go to an empty gym, find a timer that counts down from 48 minutes, and during the first 36 of those minutes, try as hard as you can to score lots and lots of buckets. This can be an individual drill, or a scrimmage of sorts, it doesn’t matter. He just has to really focus on scoring during those first 36 minutes. Once the last 12 minutes are happening, he can go back to how he usually plays. With practice, I think he can get equivalent play quality in those two segments of time.
For now, though, maybe the Mavericks can try some mind tricks to fool him into thinking it’s the fourth quarter all the time? No player introductions, no pregame or halftime shootarounds. Bribe the scorekeepers into putting a large amount of points on the board right away. It would be totally worth it because Dennis would score 40 that way no questions asked.