Fans of the Dallas Mavericks have grown accustomed to watching their team succeed, but last season they had precious few opportunities to celebrate.

The Mavs struggled to a 33-49 record — dead last in the Southwest Division — and they missed the playoffs for just the second time in 17 years. One bright spot for Dallas fans was the solid (if not spectacular) play of new addition, Harrison Barnes. The 25 year-old forward was the leading scorer for the Mavs last year and the team has invested in him as a cornerstone of the franchise for the foreseeable future.

Barnes doesn’t have the passing instincts or quick-twitch reaction time necessary to create scoring opportunities for his teammates on a consistent basis (shortcomings that are likely to prevent him from ever becoming the No. 1 option on a successful NBA team). But, Barnes does have a real knack for creating shots for himself.

Last season, he generated more of his scoring opportunities via isolation than pretty much any other player in the league (with the exception of Jamal Crawford). For example, watch as Barnes knocks down a pull-up jumper, here, after using a step-back dribble to create space between himself and Spurs defender Danny Green:

Iso-heavy offense has lost some of its luster in the NBA’s era of efficiency, but the clip shows why one-on-one scoring will always be impactful; sometimes it’s just the only option left. Choreographed plays take time to develop and — when the shot clock is winding down — having a player like Barnes who can score without any help is really useful.

Last season, Barnes attempted more field goals at the end of the shot clock (i.e., during the last seven seconds or at the end of quarters when the clock was turned off) than any other player in the NBA. The league had an average effective field goal percentage of 51.4 percent overall in 2016-17, but the effective percentage on late-clock field goals was much lower, just 43.9 percent.

Extraordinarily, unlike most of his peers, Barnes’ late-clock shooting stats were actually slightly better than his overall numbers (+0.1 percentage points in eFG). Among the twenty most prolific late-clock shooters last season (listed above), Barnes was the only one who didn’t experience a drop-off in efficiency as the buzzer neared and he was the second-most efficient in the group during those late-clock situations (trailing only Karl-Anthony Towns).

There is a certain invincibility and inevitability to the scoring efforts of iso specialists like DeMar DeRozan and Devin Booker. Likewise, Barnes demonstrated last year that he can get his shot off pretty much whenever he wants, even if he’s not necessarily the most efficient option available to the Mavs at all times.

Still, as a team, Dallas let the hourglass dwindle too often last season, attempting about a quarter of their field goals late in the shot clock. In fact, the Mavs’ average possession lasted an interminable 16.2 seconds, making theirs the slowest-paced offense in the league. Only a team equipped with an elite defense could afford to attack so deliberately, and with Seth Curry and Dirk Nowitzki in the starting lineup, the Maverick defense was, uh, not elite. So, this season, it will be crucial for the Mavs to find themselves more of those juicy early-possession scoring opportunities and rely a little less heavily on Barnes’ end-of-clock heroics.