07-07-2025, 12:34 AM
"The issue for me is they took a massive drop off in elite creation from Luka to AD..."
Luka as an individual is unquestionably an elite creator of offense in quantity. But how much of that was because his game is so heliocentric (ie, to what extent was it to the detriment or even prevention of anyone else doing so)?
It's hard to feather out Luka offense vs DAL as a whole last season since they played way more without him than with him (he only played 22). But in LA, Luka's personal offensive rating ppp was not any different than LA as a whole, which was middle tier (12th) in the league. I would expect the delta of Luka-in-LA vs LA to be significant and it's not.
I think it's possible the Mavs offense would have been okay after the trade, with it being spread among many (Kyrie doing more, plus AD added, plus others doing more than they had) who would each increase a bit, but we never had a chance to see, so who knows.
IMO the big drop-off is more from the loss of Kyrie as a big piece in a more diverse offense, and basically only DAR added to try to fill that hole. Having Flagg on the floor will help, perhaps a lot, but can Flagg + DAR = Kyrie in offense? If not, it could be ugly offense. (FWIW I would wager we will see not only a more diverse O but also a faster push-the-pace-every-time approach, which might make a huge diff and be very productive.)
However, even if O is ugly, all is not necessarily lost -- maybe they can make up the diff on the other end. Neither Luka nor Kyrie was exactly dominant defensively (heck, Luka often failed to even show on D, preferring to whine to refs instead, which really did piss me off a lot and felt lazy). So it should be interesting to see how it plays out as a whole. And I suspect Kyrie will return sooner than he wants to say (imo he's just satisfying and managing fan interest and expectations -- Nico should watch and learn).
Luka as an individual is unquestionably an elite creator of offense in quantity. But how much of that was because his game is so heliocentric (ie, to what extent was it to the detriment or even prevention of anyone else doing so)?
It's hard to feather out Luka offense vs DAL as a whole last season since they played way more without him than with him (he only played 22). But in LA, Luka's personal offensive rating ppp was not any different than LA as a whole, which was middle tier (12th) in the league. I would expect the delta of Luka-in-LA vs LA to be significant and it's not.
I think it's possible the Mavs offense would have been okay after the trade, with it being spread among many (Kyrie doing more, plus AD added, plus others doing more than they had) who would each increase a bit, but we never had a chance to see, so who knows.
IMO the big drop-off is more from the loss of Kyrie as a big piece in a more diverse offense, and basically only DAR added to try to fill that hole. Having Flagg on the floor will help, perhaps a lot, but can Flagg + DAR = Kyrie in offense? If not, it could be ugly offense. (FWIW I would wager we will see not only a more diverse O but also a faster push-the-pace-every-time approach, which might make a huge diff and be very productive.)
However, even if O is ugly, all is not necessarily lost -- maybe they can make up the diff on the other end. Neither Luka nor Kyrie was exactly dominant defensively (heck, Luka often failed to even show on D, preferring to whine to refs instead, which really did piss me off a lot and felt lazy). So it should be interesting to see how it plays out as a whole. And I suspect Kyrie will return sooner than he wants to say (imo he's just satisfying and managing fan interest and expectations -- Nico should watch and learn).
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