The Dallas Mavericks have been named one of the NBA’s scariest teams to face on Halloween.
The Mavericks are the fourth “scariest” team in the league to play on the holiday, winning 67% of their games in the specified timeframe, according to a study conducted by Gambling.com, which considered results and historical data from Basketball Reference dating back to 2001. The metrics considered in the ranking included each team’s points per game.
The study ranked all 30 teams by their winning percentage on Halloween and used total points as a tiebreaker. The Mavericks trailed only the Utah Jazz, the Los Angeles Lakers, and the Toronto Raptors, who have each won 71% of their games played on Halloween. The Miami Heat has also won 67% of its Halloween games, but the team scored fewer points than Dallas.
The rest of the top 10 include the Los Angeles Clippers, the Philadelphia 76ers, the Milwaukee Bucks, the Indiana Pacers, and the Chicago Bulls. The Detroit Pistons have the lowest winning percentage (14%), having won just once in seven games played on the holiday over the last 22 years.
The San Antonio Spurs were also among the bottom 10 teams.
The Mavericks have played six times on Halloween since 2001. They have a 4-2 record and have scored 596 points (99.33 per game) in such games. Oddly, five of the six games have been on the road. Dallas holds a 3-2 record in road Halloween games and a 1-0 record at home.
Dallas (3-0) does not play on Halloween this season but did beat the Memphis Grizzlies (0-4), 125-110, on October 30 and will be returning to the court to play the Chicago Bulls (2-2) at the American Airlines Center on November 1.
The last time the Mavericks played on Halloween was in 2021, when they beat the Sacramento Kings to improve to 4-2 in the season. Their last loss on the holiday was against the Los Angeles Lakers in 2018.
