Game 3: Dallas Mavericks (1-0) @ Phoenix Suns (1-1) | Oct 26 | 7:00PM

[RedIndian]

Good job by Nurk punishing the Mavs when they went small. But still threw the ball away for 5 turnovers. He's also utterly useless in the dunker spot. Terrible as a roller, and he's not really been popping to the three either - his offensive role in this team is a big problem

Defensively, he's actually above average as a drop defender, and was helped today massively by Dunn and Royce's consistently good perimeter defense on Luka. But will always be a liability any time in space

[Saberestar]

Beautiful game, what I fun 4th quarter.

I like what I saw from Nurkic. He was disrespected by the Mavs trying to go small and put Kleber on him for a few minutes. Nurkic made them pay and he was active on both sides of the court.

Nice block at the end to finish strong. Some bad TOs yet, but he was a big positive in this one with 18 points and 14 boards shooting 7/12 from the field.

KD with ANOTHER great performance. 31 points, 9 rebounds and just 1 TO. Killer.

Dunn is gonna be a fan favorite for years to come. He is already making a huge impact on the court with his athleticism, defense and smooth 3p shooting.

O'Neale is our best role player. 3 games so far and a big +/- for him in all three.

Booker with a meh performance, so that tells you that our ceiling is higher than what some people are saying about it.

2-1 it's a very good start when you take into consideration that we played two games on the road and a back-to-back. NOICE.

[bwgood77]

Great game. Well Nurkic shut me up. His defense was improved, at least most of the time. The rebounding was great as well, and his scoring was nice with Beal out. With those contributions, I can handle a few turnovers from him, but 5 is too many.

Booker with an off shooting night but got to the line a lot which makes up for it, and had that great steal at the end to basically seal it.

Nice to see KD cut down on the turnovers, but he still put himself into a lot of situations where he easily could have turned it over, dribbling into traffic when iso'ing, but a great shooting night.

Dunn continues to impress. I was definitely wrong about him not getting onto the floor because he can't shoot, and very happy to be so. Already one of my favorite players. Leaves it all out there. Hard worker. That kind of shooting turnaround is extremely rare, but I'll take it. We deserve to hit on a draft pick after all of our busts over the last 10 years, and really we made like 2 good picks over the last 22 years, and the trade for Dragic's late pick. Booker and TJ where we got him. Cam was decent, but in hindsight Coby White would have been better than Cam and Saric. We already had a bunch of wings then. But it was still a good pick considering it seemed like a reach.

But too many Bender, Chriss, Ayton, Jalen Smith, Kendall Marshall, Morris over Kawhi, etc, type picks. To make 1 great pick and 2 decent ones since Amare is crazy, so nice to really hit what seems like a home run with a late pick in Dunn....kind of like we did with Finley, but 7 picks later.

[Funky Tut]

I ate a bunch of Costco pizza with the pregnant wife and then passed out and missed the game. I am pissed. If we can get this contribution from Ryan Dunn regularly, we will be hard to beat. We still need some time to gel, but I have high expectations for this team, whether it's finals or bust.

[darealjuice]

Man I have some crow to eat for my Dunn takes so far lol amazing how much better his shot and feel for the game are from Summer League. I know it's glorified pick-up, but he was not looking good. I really hope he can keep this up.

Awkward scenario for Bud. It's just one game, but Dunn fills a lot of the holes in our starting lineup if he can keep shooting a solid percentage from 3. Going to be interesting to see how the Beal situations plays out.

[dmastro32]

And so it begins. Beal already hurt.

Sent from my SM-F936U using RealGM mobile app

Missed this. Just didn't play?

Think it was a shoulder or ankle issue from last game.

Elbow soreness was on the report.

[Biff]

After this game I think we're a better off starting Dunn over Beal and turning Beal into a 6th man. Not sure if Beal would be happy in that role though.

Main thing Dunn needs to work on right now is learning how to be aggressive without fouling. Much happier that that is the case rather than shooting.

[Saberestar]

After this game I think we're a better off starting Dunn over Beal and turning Beal into a 6th man. Not sure if Beal would be happy in that role though.

Main thing Dunn needs to work on right now is learning how to be aggressive without fouling. Much happier that that is the case rather than shooting.

I think he is pretty solid already defending without fouling but he has defended LeBron, Harden and Doncic (in these first 3 games) who arguably are three of the best drawing fouls in the entire league.

[lilfishi22]

Man I have some crow to eat for my Dunn takes so far lol amazing how much better his shot and feel for the game are from Summer League. I know it's glorified pick-up, but he was not looking good. I really hope he can keep this up.

Awkward scenario for Bud. It's just one game, but Dunn fills a lot of the holes in our starting lineup if he can keep shooting a solid percentage from 3. Going to be interesting to see how the Beal situations plays out.

Dunn has been a real bright spot and my crow has defrosted and ready to go in the oven. It's still only game 3 so I can't really evaluate him (or the team for that matter) until we get 15-20 games in but he's already been so good shooting the 3 ball and his defense has been phenomenal.

On the topic of Dunn filling holes in our starting line up, I sure hope it gives Bud confidence we could keep running Dunn there and bring super sub Beal off the bench. I'm still a Beal fan and think he gets a bad rap on here but the redundancy is has always been hard to ignore; to the point where they had to change his entire game (to PG) just to fit with Book/KD last season. His role is more clear this season because of the addition of Jones but I'm still supportive of Dunn (or O'Neal) in the starting line up for the size and defense

[lilfishi22]

After this game I think we're a better off starting Dunn over Beal and turning Beal into a 6th man. Not sure if Beal would be happy in that role though.

Main thing Dunn needs to work on right now is learning how to be aggressive without fouling. Much happier that that is the case rather than shooting.

I think he is pretty solid already defending without fouling but he has defended LeBron, Harden and Doncic (in these first 3 games) who arguably are three of the best drawing fouls in the entire league.

Will need to see more games but he is leading the team in fouls at 8.4 per36 (3.3fpg in just 14mpg). That alone is going to put him on the bench. I do think for the calibre of players he's had to defend he's done pretty well but defending at that level without fouling is part of great defense. I have high hopes he'll figure it out (as he seemed to have with is shooting) but if you're limited to less than 15mpg because of fouls then that makes him a less effective defender than he could be

[Qwigglez]

Someone mentioned Dunn likely doesn't get in as much foul trouble if he didn't have to recover after PnR with Nurkic being so slow. I agree to an extent, but I think Dunn will just naturally improve his decision making and not get called for fouls so much. I'm not too worried about it to be honest, I love that he is being aggressive.

[lilfishi22]

Someone mentioned Dunn likely doesn't get in as much foul trouble if he didn't have to recover after PnR with Nurkic being so slow. I agree to an extent, but I think Dunn will just naturally improve his decision making and not get called for fouls so much. I'm not too worried about it to be honest, I love that he is being aggressive.

It's super normal and part of a young player's development to learn what they can and can't get away with in the NBA. With how he's seemingly worked out his 3PT shooting in such a short amount of time, it gives me confidence he'll figure out this fouling thing as well

[Ryu]

Man I have some crow to eat for my Dunn takes so far lol amazing how much better his shot and feel for the game are from Summer League. I know it's glorified pick-up, but he was not looking good. I really hope he can keep this up.

Awkward scenario for Bud. It's just one game, but Dunn fills a lot of the holes in our starting lineup if he can keep shooting a solid percentage from 3. Going to be interesting to see how the Beal situations plays out.

Well, Beal can be a serious contender for the Best sixth man award and he could look great scoring with our second unit. I hope he has a sense not to make a fuss about it.

[grumpysaddle]

I've noticed a lot of Dunn's fouls are on things like the swipe through from the ATG players he's had to defend every game. He'll learn that and drop the fouls naturally from figuring that out. I'm not worried about it.

[Revived]

This team looks significantly better with Beal off the bench. If Beal is an unselfish player that actually wants to win (especially considering he’s been a loser his whole life but thankfully he’s made out like a bandit financially), then he needs to go to the coach and volunteer to come off the bench.

Manu Ginobili was 10x the player that Beal ever was and he had no issues coming off the bench. So Beal shouldn’t either.

[dremill24]

I've noticed a lot of Dunn's fouls are on things like the swipe through from the ATG players he's had to defend every game. He'll learn that and drop the fouls naturally from figuring that out. I'm not worried about it.

I think he'll figure it out too but he is pretty handsy going for strips so its not just rip throughs n such. I think He'll either learn to pick his spots better or he'll end up as one of those guys who just does it so much the refs start letting him get away with it. Also he'll reduce a foul per game once he stops getting the rookie whistle I hope lol

[lilfishi22]

Great game. Well Nurkic shut me up. His defense was improved, at least most of the time. The rebounding was great as well, and his scoring was nice with Beal out. With those contributions, I can handle a few turnovers from him, but 5 is too many.

Booker with an off shooting night but got to the line a lot which makes up for it, and had that great steal at the end to basically seal it.

Nice to see KD cut down on the turnovers, but he still put himself into a lot of situations where he easily could have turned it over, dribbling into traffic when iso'ing, but a great shooting night.

Dunn continues to impress. I was definitely wrong about him not getting onto the floor because he can't shoot, and very happy to be so. Already one of my favorite players. Leaves it all out there. Hard worker. That kind of shooting turnaround is extremely rare, but I'll take it. We deserve to hit on a draft pick after all of our busts over the last 10 years, and really we made like 2 good picks over the last 22 years, and the trade for Dragic's late pick. Booker and TJ where we got him. Cam was decent, but in hindsight Coby White would have been better than Cam and Saric. We already had a bunch of wings then. But it was still a good pick considering it seemed like a reach.

But too many Bender, Chriss, Ayton, Jalen Smith, Kendall Marshall, Morris over Kawhi, etc, type picks. To make 1 great pick and 2 decent ones since Amare is crazy, so nice to really hit what seems like a home run with a late pick in Dunn....kind of like we did with Finley, but 7 picks later.

If Nurk cut just 2 of his turnovers, that would be our first sub double digit turnover game of the season. Last season we had a total of 6 of these games