Color me shocked, right? I found myself sitting on the couch watching the Dallas Mavericks playing the Golden State Warriors on TNT, and I expected the two relatively struggling teams to have a decent game against each other. What I didn’t expect is for the struggling, mightily might I add, Kelly Oubre to put up a career high 40 points, and be really efficient doing it.
Now, before I go much further, I have to admit that some of the buckets that Oubre was getting did come around garbage time, and that should be taken into consideration. However, I was impressed with what I saw. I think a lot of people, myself included, expected him to perform much better than he has this year. After the year he had in Phoenix, it was only looking up for Oubre and what he could bring to a basketball team. This season, however, has been rough to say the least.
If you take away the explosion of offense last night, Oubre had only averaged 12 points per game, and had 8 outings of single digit points. I don’t want to get into his shooting splits, but they were awful. Oubre missed his first 20 or so three point attempts, and that’s just the start of it. The Warriors this season have the worst three point percentage in the league, which is a mighty fall from what we’ve come to be familiar with the past five years. However, if you were to erase all of Ourbe’s three point attempts from the history and the box score, the Warriors would be a top-3 shooting team. Absolutely crazy.
I knew after the Warriors acquired Oubre in a trade that it would be a less than ideal fit, but I didn’t mind it too much. Obviously with the Warriors system, you’d want playmakers and shooters to keep the motion offense going. Oubre is more of a slasher, but in my eyes, he’s the type of slasher that would excel in this role. Hopefully, for his sake, he’s now hitting his stride for the team, and for himself.
While watching the game, it was fun to watch Oubre score. Not just the amount of points he was scoring, but how he was scoring as well. Slashing, catch-and-shoot, dribble hand offs, transition pull-ups. Everything was falling for Oubre last night, and the Warriors couldn’t be happier. If it wasn’t for this outburst, the Warriors might have taken another loss.
The Mavericks, to their credit, had a really good game all things considered. Luka Doncic did his thing with 27/6/6, Kristaps showed up with 25 points, and the Mavs had bench scoring too with Tim Hardaway Jr. chipping in 19, and Jalen Brunson contributing 18. The Mavs did everything they needed to win, and Oubre and the Warriors thwarted their attempt.
I really do hope that this is the start of a successful tenure in Golden State for Oubre. I love his play style, and I think that he could really be an asset for the Warriors to get back to their winning form. I’ll believe it when I see it, but as of right now, I’m hopeful.
Round The Game 
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