First video of the year for Maxi Kleber! I was beginning to worry that he’d just go the whole season without scoring more than 13 points despite playing decent minutes. Normally, a role-player of Kleber’s quality would have notched up to 10 DTB videos by this point in the season. But Kleber seemed content to only occasionally score in double-figures, never truly asserting himself on offense.
I don’t know if he really asserted himself all that much harder in this game, but he managed to get up 11 shot attempts, one short of a season-high (which came in a game where he went 1 for 8 from deep, wow, I lied when I said that he never asserted himself on offense). And, oh, look at that, the Mavericks won. For the first time in the month. I know tanking is a real thing, but I see a correlation here that I want to see more of.
If Kleber really wants to be the next Dirk, and he is in better position than anybody to do such a thing because Kristaps Porzingis cannot be the next Dirk because he isn’t German, then he’ll have to start upping the scoring at some point. Being a low-usage role-player is fun until all of a sudden you look at the calendar, you’ve been in the league for a decade, and you haven’t even scored 25 in a game. That is the fate that awaits Kleber if he doesn’t work out in the offseason with Dirk and have him share some strategies on being an effective shot shooter.