Luka Doncic And the Prevailing Power of the Pass

[SleepingHero]

Before I begin on this rant, let me preface this and say I am as big of a Luka fan boy as there is. He is a golden child in my eyes, and he can rarely do anything wrong. He is a maestro. A savant. Probably the best young basketball prospect of the last 20 years.

Ok? We good? 

I want to turn our attention to the last PHX game. Specifically the final 3:31 of the third quarter. At this juncture, the Mavs were up by 8 (81-89), and Kyrie had just been subbed out by Holiday. With 3 minutes left, one would stand to reason the Mavs could close out the quarter at least up by 2 possessions. However, by the end of the third the final tally was 96-95. What went wrong as to the Mavs giving up 15 points in 3 minutes and only being able to score 6 themselves?

Chapter 1: Defensive Consistency

We're beating this drum to death again. I had to sneak in some defense even though I wanted to write about the offense. It has plagued the Mavs this entire season. This team just seems unable to get 2 or more defensive stops in a row. What's truly maddening is that the Mavs came in with a game plan and it was basically get anyone but KD or Booker to shoot it, and if it was a corner 3 they'd live with it. The Suns had 9 offensive possessions in the final 3:31. Here's how they shook out, 3 made corner threes, two 2 point shots, and a trip to the free throw line. 

What stood out to me was that 2 of these possessions were clearly preventable, either by not being able to box out (in this case Wood was the culprit), or miscommunication on defense with relaxed closeouts and rotations.

https://streamable.com/2t0dy4

First preventable possession: Holiday gets hung up by Landale and Wood and is late to closing out on Durant. He subsequently gets beaten off the dribble. Luka isn't really a rim protector, but he's late rotating over anyways. Wood tries but is also late. Easy Durant dunk. What could've prevented this? Holiday and Luka being earlier to their spots. Wood maybe sinking a bit deeper since Landale is not a 3 point threat. It's the small things that add up.

https://www.nba.com/stats/events?CFID=&CFPARAMS=&GameEventID=424&GameID=0022200962&Season=2022-23&flag=1&title=Landale%20REBOUND%20(Off%3A2%20Def%3A0)

Second preventable possession: Wood falls asleep here. Landale gets an uncontested rebound off of a relatively wide open corner 3 for Ross (foreshadowing). A quick kick out to Durant and it's a foul and 2 free shots at the FT line. What could've prevented this? I mean it's obvious. Doing the little things. A rebound here actually closes out the possession. I hope I don't lose the Wood faithful here. I'm not trying to dog on the guy since this IS supposed to be about Luka. But I have to point out the mistakes as I see them.

Chapter 2: The Corner 3 Massacre

It's here where I start to question the coach and his game plan. The two possessions above still kept the lead at a relatively comfortable distance 85-91. But after this point, the Suns hit 3 straight corner threes to put them ahead. Now on the face of it, if you tell me that you made PHX beat you by not having Durant and Booker shoot it, I'd say you're doing probably playing the smartest option. But it's how PHX got these threes where I'm frustrated, because the players are basically resigned at letting them shoot it versus just going a little bit harder and preventing the shot. 

Here are the 3 threes:

https://streamable.com/um2ihn

First one, Holiday gets caught up quite comically on Landale. It leads to a free shot by Craig after the late contest. If Holiday was a bit more aware he shouldn't have been caught up by the back screen like that and he could've been there just a bit earlier.

https://streamable.com/lqh38y

Here Luka is just sunk too far into the paint, which leads to a lazy contest for an open Wainwright. Now this isn't that bad because Luka actually tries to close out here versus the effort he was giving earlier in the season. Still, if he was just in slightly better position and earlier, that could've made the difference.

https://streamable.com/igehlu

No I didn't upload the same clip twice. Literally the same exact play and the same exact mistakes by Luka. And it happened on back to back possessions. How Kidd doesn't make an in game adjustment here is baffling. 

At this point the score is 94-93 and a career 35% 3pt shooter has hit 2 in a row. All momentum is PHX's and they close out the quarter. But why did the Mavs offense suddenly die here? Before these uninspiring last 3 minutes, they had scored 27 points in 8 minutes. A good amount for any team. And here is the main point of my post.

Chapter 3: A Star or a Black Hole?

When Kyrie checked out, the players on the court were Luka-THJ-Holiday-Frank-Wood. THJ has had an incredible night thus far, hitting 5-6 of threes for 18 quick points. Wood also hasn't been bad at all with 6 points on 100% shooting. But it is here where the offense dies in the last 3 minutes. We get a hefty serving of Luka Ball. I actually rewatched all of the Mavs possessions to see if anyone else touched the ball, and in fact literally no one else did. Luka took all 7 possessions for the Mavs and no one else received a single pass. 

The results? 6 points on 1-3 FG, 4-4 from FT, 2 turnovers, 2 missed threes. 

Now 6 points in 3 minutes isn't that bad, but one has to wonder why would literally no one else touch the ball? Especially if they're shooting well. Luka tries to one man army this when he doesn't have to. No plays are ran besides a pet favorite of Luka's- Spain PnR. Is Kidd fine with this? If you're THJ or Wood, are you fine with this?

Again, do not get me wrong. Luka is fully capable of beating teams on his own, but such a strategy is rarely the best conventional option. That game definitely did not qualify for Luka to try and take it over given his hurting thigh and poor shooting thus far. 

And this is quite jarring for me, because Luka has ALWAYS been a fantastic distributor. Stealing my title from J.Kyle Mann's old article before Luka entered the league (https://www.dimedrop.net/playerdeepdives...-deep-dive), Luka's brilliance has always been his ability to dictate defenses not only with his shot, but his pass.

I do not care if Luka shoots twenty shots, but they need to come within the offense, and this team's ceiling will be locked if Luka can't recognize when to get others involved vs. taking the do it all yourself approach.

Right now the on/off numbers (on super low sample sizes) are painting that teams are starting to figure out Luka's offense and it isn't working. I hate using net rating without context, but after watching that PHX game and seeing how Luka is trying to operate without Kyrie, and seeing these numbers, I'm getting a bit worried. 

Kyrie on Luka off +14.44 net rating (80min)

Luka on Kyrie off -22.99 net rating (70min)

Both of them on +6.65 net rating (186min)


In any case, I fully believe this team can work it out, because I believe in Luka. I'm interested to see if anyone else noticed this and what their thoughts are.  Looking forward to the game against UTA tomorrow!