DALLAS -- It’d be foolish to overreact to a four-game sample size.

“It is early,” Dallas Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle said. “Don’t overanalyze it.”

With that warning out of the way, here’s a bold prediction, based in part on what we’ve seen during the Mavs’ 3-1 start: Dirk Nowitzki will put up the best shooting percentages of his career this season.

That’d be quite an accomplishment for a 36-year-old who has earned a reputation as the sweetest-shooting 7-footer in NBA history. However, with these Mavs, the quality of Nowitzki’s looks will be much better and the burden on him to create his own offense much less than in recent seasons.

So far, so sweet.

The Mavs lead the league in scoring, with Nowitzki averaging a team-high 20.8 points per game, shooting 57.9 percent from the floor and 42.9 percent from 3-point range. The best field goal percentage of his career was 51.7 in 2010-11; his best 3-point percentage was 42.1 in 2009-10.

According to NBA.com’s player-tracking data, 22.8 percent of Nowitzki’s shots this season have been wide-open (no defender within 6 feet) and 33.3 percent have been open (defender between 4 to 6 feet away). Those numbers compared very favorably to last season, when 15.7 percent of his shots were wide-open and 30.2 percent were open.

“We’re trying to get everybody good looks,” Carlisle said. “When you have attackers around him, it makes it a little easier to move him into open areas off of random play.”

Monta Ellis was the Mavs’ only consistent off-the-dribble attacker last season. Devin Harris was added to the mix at midseason, but he was working his way back from complicated toe surgery.

Now the Mavs have J.J. Barea, Jameer Nelson and Chandler Parsons joining Ellis and a healthy Harris as proven playmaking penetrators.

“I’m there to space the floor,” said Nowitzki, who efficiently averaged 21.7 points per game last season, shooting 49.7 percent from the floor and 39.8 percent from 3-point range. “I get occasional post-ups here and there, but I feel like I don’t have to grind that much. When we do get our stops, we feel like that’s an easy way to play. That’s a fun way to play where everybody’s touching it, we’re cutting, we’re moving, we’re pick-and-rolling and rolling to the basket and getting some lobs, getting open shots.”

Well over half of Nowitzki's shots have been open looks so far this season. Not coincidentally, he's knocking them down at a career-best clip. With this cast around him, it's reasonable to believe that will continue.