Scouting the Playoffs: The Dallas Mavericks
Luka Doncic, confused coaching and five-out closing lineups
With the regular season entering into its final stanza and the playoffs approaching, it is time to start thinking about playoff match-ups. The Thunder currently have the joint-best record in the Western Conference and should finish the season with homecourt advantage in the first round of the playoffs.
It is a scarcely believable turnaround from last season where the Thunder scrapped their way into the Play-In before being torn apart by a pack of ravenous Timberwolves. The Thunder’s consistent winning ways has been fuelled by excellent team basketball and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander playing the best basketball of his young career.
Oklahoma City will likely finish the season in the top two seeds in the Western Conference and play a Play-In Tournament team in the first round. At present, this means that Oklahoma City could end up playing one of the Phoenix Suns, Dallas Mavericks, Los Angeles Lakers or Golden State Warriors.
All four of these potential opponents entered the season with designs on winning it all but have badly underperformed in the regular season. The playoffs are often regarded as a second season and all of these teams will look forward to playing a young Thunder team in the first round.
Outside of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Luguentz Dort, the Thunder are light on playoff experience. The last time that the Thunder played a playoff series was in the Bubble and Andre Roberson was on the roster. A team like the Lakers or the Dallas Mavericks will be licking their lips at the possibility of feasting on a seemingly easy first round match-up. It will be up to the Thunder to prove the doubters wrong and send these paper tigers home.
Luka:
Let’s start with the Dallas Mavericks who the Thunder beat last week. Oklahoma City scratched out a win on Thursday against a Mavericks that did not have Luka Doncic. Doncic is an otherworldly talent who can win games on his own with his offensive creation.
In another year and perhaps with a better team record, Doncic would have been considered more strongly for MVP. Luka is averaging 34.3 points per game, the highest scoring average since James Harden in 2018-19, on 57.6% effective field goal percentage. His efficiency as a scorer is incredible when you consider his volume, Luka currently takes 23.7 field goal attempts per game.
If you look at guards who have played more than 50 games this season and have a usage of more than 30%, Doncic grades out very well. This grouping is very small and includes only SGA, Luka, Steph Curry, De’Aaron Fox and Anthony Edwards. Doncic ranks second in effective field goal percentage, second in offensive rating and second in assist-turnover ratio in what is a very talented peer group. The only player who boasts a higher effective field percentage, offensive and A:TO is Shai Gilgeous-Alexander but it is fine margins that separate the two players.
Doncic’s scoring is complemented by creative, thoughtful passing. These two skills work in tandem, opposing teams are hell-bent on stopping drives to the rim which then allows Daniel Gafford or Dereck Lively to hop above the rim and finish with pure venom. In such a short space of time, Doncic has developed an excellent chemistry with the two bouncy centers and it has provided the Mavericks with vertical spacing.
Doncic is averaging 16.7 potential assists per game which puts him third in the league behind only Tyrese Haliburton and Trae Young. It is pretty evident that Doncic regularly produces quality passes but his teammates are poor at finishing off their opportunities. Tim Hardaway Jr, Derrick Jones Jr and Jaden Hardy are all league average outside shooters.
With all of this being said, there is a valid argument that Doncic’s high usage ices his own teammates out and does not put them in the best position to knock down open jumpers. If you look at NBA players with similar usage in the last ten years, this is not an uncommon trend.
Russell Westbrook in 2016-17 had a usage rate of 41% and controlled every single Thunder possession from start to finish. It was equally brilliant and equally astonishing to watch one player manage an entire game without ever really letting one of his co-stars into the driving seat.
Do not get me wrong, I completely understand why Russell did what he did but the complete and utter dependency on Russell made the Thunder very vulnerable in the minutes he sat. The Thunder were outscored by 58 points in 46 minutes when Westbrook was off the floor in the Houston series and a large part of this came down to the fact that the team seemed incapable of operating without him.
James Harden in 2018-19 had a usage rate of 40% as he attempted to drag Houston to the playoffs without Chris Paul to support him. Mike D’Antoni ran the ball through Harden on every single possession and they played an ugly brand of basketball in which his teammates touched the ball intermittently for minutes at a time.
High-usage basketball by an elite player is a good floor-raiser and papers over cracks but it is a style of play that rarely establishes good chemistry. In the postseason, chemistry is invaluable and that is still something that the Mavericks are working on.
In the regular season, the Thunder have guarded Luka with a number of different players with each option bringing something different to the table. Luguentz Dort has been used by Daigneault as a point of attack defender on Doncic. Dort’s had some success on Doncic in terms of ball denial but Dort’s lack of size in this match-up is not a deterrent against Luka’s inside scoring.
Jalen Williams has also been used by Daigneault to guard Luka and Jalen has been more effective in matching up with Luka. J-Dub’s wingspan and quick feet allow him to match Doncic stride for stride and crucially keep the Slovenian guard in front of him.
The Thunder are fortunate to have a few wing-sized players who Daigneault can cycle through on a nightly basis to see who is a best fit for Luka in that particular game. Kenrich Williams’ physicality would be very useful in wearing Doncic down and encouraging Luka into poor decisions.
Doncic is such a good chess player on the court that the best way to stop him is to mix the match-ups and not allow him the time to work out how to exploit every single match-up. In a playoff series, Luka will have more time to delve into the details but this approach may work just long enough for the Thunder to steal a couple of crucial wins.
Team Defense and Erratic Coaching:
Jason Kidd was appointed as head coach of the Dallas Mavericks by Mark Cuban in June 2021 after the ignominious exit of Rick Carlisle. Kidd’s reputation had been rehabilitated after a stint on the Lakers’ bench as part of Frank Vogel’s staff. In his first season with the Mavericks, he delivered a run to the Western Conference finals behind good team play and energetic defense.
It was impressive work and his fit with the Mavericks made a lot of sense. Two years down the line, criticism of Kidd’s approach has started to filter back into the public arena and a lot of what is being said sounds quite familiar to what was said about Kidd during his last year with the Bucks in 2018.
In his first two seasons in Milwaukee, Kidd had earned plaudits for carefully managing the development of Giannis Antetokounmpo and for bringing Milwaukee back to the playoffs. In his final season with the Bucks, the team stagnated and the previously reliable, sturdy defense collapsed.
Kidd’s brand of defense involved blitzing the ball-handler with alarming regularity and then relying on athleticism to cover ground in 4v3 situations. The aim of the game was to force turnovers and hurry the opposing team in bad shots.
This style of play can work situationally but it’s an approach that has a small operating window. One rushed, poorly timed rotation can collapse the entire defensive shell and the opposing team gets an easy basket.
In Dallas, we have seen Kidd mix his coverages up more but there is still a dependence on blitzing the ball-handler. The Mavericks have tried this approach, among others, in the regular season with Gafford or Lively blitzing the ball-handler.
Both players have the size but not the speed to press the ball-handler and then quickly shuttle back to their defensive match-up. We have seen Shai pick these situations apart by simply passing the ball off to Jalen Williams or Chet Holmgren and letting them go to work. With the center so far away from the painted area, it is usually an easy finish at the basket for either player.
Dallas have also played more traditionally by using drop coverages to keep their big near the basket where Lively can affect the game with rejections and contested shots. The drop coverage has worked to some extent but it has been easy for the Thunder to counter.
In these situations, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander or Jalen Williams will take two dribbles and nail the mid-range jumper. It’s a shot that both players can reliably hit and the Thunder’s offense can be sustained without becoming stagnant on a steady diet of middies.
The other counter involves Chet Holmgren popping or flaring out to the 3-point line and vacating the center of the floor. Holmgren’s ability to shoot the long ball poses Dallas’ defense with a tough question that they have yet to find an answer for. Lively and Gafford can follow Chet out to the perimeter but that leaves open vast swathes of interior space for a driver to exploit.
Dallas have experimented with switching the match-up off the ball so the center can stay near the basket and the strong-side corner defender rotates out in pursuit of Holmgren. Again the Thunder have punished these switches by having Giddey or Aaron Wiggins cut to the basket while the switch is occurring and match-ups are not fully formed.
Due to these concepts not working effectively for the Mavericks, Coach Kidd opted in the last game to play Maxi Kleber and downsize the Mavericks’ closing lineup. In previous seasons, Kleber was a reliable rim protector and knockdown shooter who could be relied upon to anchor the defense.
This season has been a different story. Kleber is only shooting 30% from distance and he has looked hesitant shooting the long ball. His interior defense has been adequate but not close to the level that he previously played at.
The only strategy that has consistently worked for Kidd’s men has been zone defense with soft switches. Dallas employed this strategy in their February blowout win and it was highly effective. The zone stymied the Thunder’s driving game and took away a core part of the Thunder’s offense.
Since that game, Kidd has not revisited this strategy but I would not be surprised to see it appear in a playoff setting. Coach Kidd has been more fluid and less dogmatic with how his team is set up on defense much like the Los Angeles Lakers were under Frank Vogel.
The Lakers won the championship in 2020 due to the fact that their roster was able to play different styles of defense without missing a beat. Against Portland, Vogel went small and used his wings, namely KCP and Alex Caruso, to pressure Lillard out of the game.
Against the Denver Nuggets, Vogel dusted off his bruisers and used two center lineups to wear Nikola Jokic down. It was masterful coaching and Vogel was excellent at managing his personnel to match the danger presented by each individual match-up.
Kidd has tried to employ the same sort of flexible approach with the Mavericks in games against the Thunder but his application has been more erratic and confusing. It makes very little sense to ask a player like Daniel Gafford to push up past the 3-point line on one possession to pressure the ball-handler and then have Gafford drop all the way back on the next possession while giving up easy middies.
To coach in the way that Vogel did, a coach needs to have a complete understanding of his roster capabilities and I do not think that Jason Kidd currently possesses that. Some of this is not his fault, it must be incredibly difficult to retool your roster midseason and bring every player up to speed.
Dallas’ core weakness is that they have a set of defensive principles that are incredibly fluid and a coach who can be erratic with the coverages he selects. On a team where chemistry is still being developed and roles are being established, Kidd’s confused coaching could be a fault line on which the team falls apart.
Oklahoma City’s keys to winning a series against the Mavericks are pretty evident. Doncic must be kept off-balance through the usage of different match-ups and the Mavericks’ inconsistencies on defense must be exploited.