MAVS NEWS:

[mvossman]

"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).

I don't think splitting up elite creation minutes across lessor creators is particularly effective.  I think Kyrie was at his best (and most comfortable) as the second creator, and there was a steep drop off after him.  I don't think AD can come close to taking up all of that slack, and I'm not sure Dlo is a significant upgrade from Dinwiddie.  That leaves Flagg to fill in the rest (or overexpose other guys which did not look effective based on what little I saw late last season).  The issues will be exacerbated with multiple non shooters on the floor.

As for Luka impact on Lakers, given that he was coming off injury, blindsided by the trade, learning a new system and going from a team constructed for him to one that was not close, I expected his immediate impact to be subdued.  However, looking at the numbers post all star break, he had the highest offensive rating and highest net rating (+9) on the team (Reaves was +3, Lebron was +0 and they were not any better prior to the trade).  He improved the teams overall net rating, but it looks like they had significant win/loss luck prior to the trade (they had a net rating close to zero but over 600 winning percentage).  The reality is that team was not good prior to the trade, and they got worse this offseason.

This team should be better defensively.  However, with no POA defender and oversized in general, I think they will struggle to defend on the perimeter so I am not sure they will be truly elite.  A top 10 defense and average offense is probably a play-in team in the West. (EDIT: just to be clear, this is with Kyrie out)