TDL Archived: The 2nd Rnd Pick Yankee Swap

[mvossman]

Prolly because the Mavs went from a top 10 defensive team to a rather bad defensive team and people are trying to figure out why the dramatic drop off  

And this is with a emerging Josh Green who looks like a game changing defender in the making. I am honestly not sure if DFS, Kleber are even that game changing on D. The truth is prolly closer to bottom 3 or 5 defense in the league if it weren't for Green.


Some data/facts:

• Spencer sitting on a D-Raptor worse than Trae Young, while Tim sitting on a D-Raptor better than Giannis/OG. Do i buy that Tim is that good? no way. But the difference is pretty crazy
  
• Do i buy that Luka is the main problem? [X] for doubt. Luka has 515 minutes this season without Spencer. In those 515 minutes the Mavs are more or less tied with best defense in the league at 109.74 DefRtg. In the minutes Luka + SD are on the floor that DefRtg jumps to 119.60, which is worst in the league. Neither numbers are small sample sizes
  
• Is Wood unplayable due to his defense? Luka + SD + Wood sitting on a 120.59 ORtg & a 123.11 DefRtg (336 min). There is the huge question mark if that trio is even playable for longer stretches, if you can't figure out the defense. While Luka + Wood without SD sitting on a ridiculous good 123.68 ORtg with a 109.27 DefRtg in 313 min. Luka + SD without Wood sitting on a 117/117 split.
  
• Then you have the 2 man lineup net ratings where Luka / SD is the worst combo from the main rotation other than Luka / Bullock
  

Barring no trade i have a hard time seeing how Kidd fixes the defensive problems without a starting 5 lineup change. I think there is reasonable evidence that the starting 5 could live without Spencer offense and the offense won't crumble too much. And he had success in a 6th man role last year.

- Luka won't get benched, i hope
- THJ can't get benched because he sucks without Luka. The most depending Luka player on the roster. But also does positive things for Luka on offense i think
- Wood shouldn't get benched
- Which just leaves Spencer?

Who had success as a 6th man. And has great net ratings with Frank (SD + Frank are +19 net). Are we surprised a good defender works well with SD on the floor? Maybe not. He also has Dwight Powell on the bench which just seems to work well in combo with SD. Pretty much the only guy besides Frank who look on the numbers.

If Green fixes the 4 amigos Luka/SD/Tim/Wood as the lone defender by himself, give him DPOY & declare him untouchable forever

I would argue the story of team defense this year is three phases:

In phase one, we started with McGee which was a disaster, Bullock who has looked terrible, Dorian who has not been good this season and Luka and Dinwiddie who are not good defenders to start with.  It was a mess.

In phase two, we replaced McGee with Powell and slowly started to eat into Bullocks minutes with Green.  During this phase we were playing as well as last season defensively.

In phase three, Maxi, Green and Dorian all went down.  We added Timmy to the starting lineup leaving us with no point of attack defender.  There was no chance of this defense being good during this phase.  

If we are going to talk about what went wrong, I would argue the injuries are the biggest impact, then Bullock going from above average to terrible, then Dorian going from really good to average at best, then the McGee fiasco.  Dinwiddie being bad at defense would be low on my list.  He wasn't good last year.

As far as the starting lineup with everyone healthy is concerned, I have been a strong proponent of needing a point of attack defender in the starting lineup and have made several arguments that Dinwiddie makes a lot of sense as 6th man.  I have never argued that Dinwiddie needs to be in the starting lineup.  My original point was that there needs to be some context around his current season net rating issues, and when you take that into account, he is not the net negative some have portrayed him to be.