The Dallas Mavericks won Game 4 over the Golden State Warriors, keeping their NBA Finals hopes alive. Now, the series heads back to San Francisco for Game 5 on Thursday night.
The Mavericks' play has dropped off quite a bit in the series, as their bigs have been perhaps the biggest contributor to that problem. Specfically, Maxi Kleber came into the Western Conference Finals playing lights out. He was shooting the ball well from beyond the arc, which caused significant problems for the Suns and Jazz's bigs in the first two rounds.
In the first three games of the WCF against the Warriors, he shot just two-for-14 (14.3%) from behind the three-point line. He scored just six points total in those three losses along with eight rebounds. Due to the Mavs not having a true rebounding big, Kleber's efforts in that aspect are crucial to the team's success.
In addition to Kleber, fellow frontcourt member Dwight Powell has just eight total rebounds through four games in the WCF. While his 22 MPG numbers from the regular season are significantly down, those rebounding inefficiencies from two of their bigs has been disappointing. In fact, Warriors star Stephen Curry has more rebounds than Kleber and Powell combined in the series so far, per BayonettaBasher on Reddit. Curry has 30 rebounds in comparison to Kleber's 16 and Powell's eight.
While the Mavs haven't shot the ball well at all, their lack of rebounding from the bigs has hurt as well. If Curry continues to out-rebound the Mavs' frontcourt, it's likely the Warriors finish out the series.