08-19-2024, 01:09 PM
(08-19-2024, 12:28 PM)F Gump Wrote: I think the question of minutes by position is not possible to define in any meaningful way. The Mavs will play maybe 150-200 combos in the early games, not just starters and backups in platoons, and players will slide across multiple positions within the very same play. They will change who defends whom depending on the opponent's players. Sometimes they will play zone, adding a completely different nuance.
And once you get a single injury, it all changes. Last year they played 643 different combos
1 As for PF, I just think the Mavs will have a normal PF-type backup to PJW, rather than an oversized PG that they can slide into the position to make do. I also observe that Luka, as a starter, is going to typically be playing against starters. So the opportunity to have him playing regular and significant minutes as a backup PF against backups - and that being their answer for a backup PF - will tend to be limited. Just how I see it.
Another factor to consider is that Luka has also expressed a preference for the Mavs having a size advantage when he's on the floor. That happens more naturally when he plays PG not PF, so that his size advantage is not lost, and I would think they will skew more towards ways to play bully ball if they can (with a size advantage and dunks galore) rather than small ball.
2 I can't envision either OMax or Morris being a meaningful answer to excellent backup play at PF. OMax is not good, and not close, and should be in GL. When (if?) he ever gets his skills at a much higher level, by showing excellence in them at a lower level, okay -- but he is world's away right now. And we all know Morris is not an answer to playing time except in a catastrophic emergency.
This is more a question of depth than who gets penciled in as the backup PF. Maxi is probably the guy penciled in there, but my guess is that Naji plays more actual minutes in that role.
The question is what happens when say both Maxi and PJ are out? My guess is that the forward rotation will be 2 of Naji/Luka/Klay for any meaningful minutes (assuming Omax is not ready). That makes the lineup a little smaller, but really with Lively/Gafford at center its bigger than anything they WCF team could put out there. What backup PF are going to get that we would rather have on the court than one of those three guys?
I agree with your first point that its not really about backup PF minutes (or in my mind the backup PF position at all). This team has enough size that they can afford to miss a couple of players and still put a reasonably sized team on the court. I'm not sure why folks are still obsessed with making this team bigger. In the playoffs our easiest series was against the biggest team in the NBA (and that was without Maxi for most of it). The teams we struggled with (OKC, Boston) played much smaller. Besides, Naji is bigger than DJJ, Klay is bigger than THJ and Grimes and Din are as big or bigger than Green, Exum and Hardy. We already got bigger.