LOS ANGELES — The Dallas Mavericks won 24 of their final 33 regular-season games in 2023-24, including two pointless losses while resting their starters to end the season. was also included. They reached 7 games with two consecutive wins. Their trade deadline moves fueled a late surge.
There was only one stumbling block. Right after the All-Star break, Dallas lost five of his six games. That brief relapse was notable after the Mavericks suffered a 109-97 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers in Game 1, which was more convincing than the final margin.
In the midseason 10 days that accounted for more than half of the team's losses after the trade deadline, Dallas' opponents used a consistent strategy against the nightmare of how to protect Luka Doncic. Its implementation varied by opponent and personnel, but those teams dared Doncic to score. They huddled in the paint and took away his lob passes, but rarely sent complete double teams. When running the pick-and-roll this season, Doncic was trapped and blitzed by multiple defenders about six times per game. In a period where they lost five of six games, it was half that (2.9).
And in Game 1 on Sunday, Tyronn Lue's Clippers were winless. not even once. The Clippers changed their defense against Doncic and targeted him like any other opponent, but they never double-teamed him beyond the 3-point line.
“We took what he gave us,” Mavericks coach Jason Kidd said after Monday's practice. “They didn't want to give him assists. They wanted him to be a scorer.”
The Mavericks' eight-point stumble in the second quarter was the fewest in the postseason for any team since 2016, and it's clear the Clippers' approach is bothering Doncic. What happened is not explained. It takes a cacophony of mistakes, poor play, and general insensitivity to create this kind of notoriety. But it was the offense that caused Dallas to lose Sunday's series opener and miss an opportunity to take the lead in this series without Kawhi Leonard.
To bounce back in Game 2, the Mavericks need to understand why they failed so miserably in Game 1.
Doncic started most of his offense against Clippers center Ivica Zubac, making him a virtually unplayable opponent in the two teams' 2021 first-round matchup. This was in sharp contrast to the Clippers' approach, which always used Doncic's man as a pick-and-roll screener. Dallas rarely targeted Los Angeles' James Harden in the same way.
Los Angeles varied defensive pick-and-roll coverage against Doncic, but most often used Zubac on deep drops, positioning his body near or behind the free-throw line, like this:
In the first postseason matchup between these teams in 2020, Doncic struggled against Zubac's drop coverage. He hadn't fully developed his midrange jumper, so he was often stuck between shooting contested layups and throwing impossible alley-oops while Zubac covered both. .
The following season, Doncic honed his scoring ability in the midfield. He increased his shooting percentage from 44 percent to 51 percent in the floater area (shooting from 3 feet to 10 feet from the rim) and became one of the league's most lethal disruptors in drop coverage. Ta. (The Milwaukee Bucks, the team best known for implementing this scheme over the past decade, are the team against which Doncic averaged the most assists in his career.) The Mavericks and Clippers will return in 2021. When matched up, Doncic obliterates drop coverage and then echoes Lue's attempts to force Zubac to switch screens.
So why didn't the same thing happen in Game 1?
Here's one sequence from Dallas' disastrous second quarter that helps explain why.
Doncic may have been frustrated after being trailed by 16 points. This was one of the most egregious examples of his impatience and the failure of the entire team to carry out its main attacking action, but it was not the only one. With Zubac so far back, Doncic could have gotten a 2-on-1 advantage by swinging past defenders. But he didn't even try to make it.
Rookie center Derek Lively II, who screened him, wasn't expecting Doncic to pirouette and didn't even touch L.A.'s Terrence Mann, who remained connected to Doncic throughout the play. This game isn't Lively's, but neither he nor starting center Daniel Gafford were able to consistently create enough space for Doncic throughout the first half.
“After the first few screens, we realized we needed to hold the screen, we needed to hit, and we needed to make sure we got the ball handler open,” Lively said after practice Monday. Ta. “And sometimes, if I miss something, I have to go back and re-show it.”
The team's consistent message after Game 1 was that they were not ready for the physicality of the Clippers. That was also true for Doncic. One of his many traits that make him great is his ability to overwhelm almost any defender due to his massive size and strength. But he failed there, especially in the first half of Game 1, as in this example.
Although Lively's screen wasn't at a perfect angle, this is a great example of a center not being able to “hit” the intended defender. However, Doncic's defender, Amir Coffey, still lagged behind Doncic while avoiding Doncic. Pick-and-roll maestros like Doncic often take advantage of this delay to do what coaches call “putting defenders in jail.”
Simply put, lean your body towards the players behind you and avoid worrying about what's ahead. However, Doncic rushed this possession without that killing effect, allowing Coffey to recover in time to prevent the shot. Lively's poor screens and Doncic's inability to take advantage of his size were the same factors that led to P.J. Washington's difficult missed shots when he was this far away from Zubac.
Compare this to 2021, where Doncic created an advantage out of these situations on nearly every possession. Doncic hesitated with his elbow to potentially take out a trailing defender, but it turns out he didn't need to because Dwight Powell's screen had already done that. (This clip is athletic 2021 mid-series article on Doncic's adjustments to this scheme. )
On Sunday, Doncic couldn't make any shots between them. He also occasionally missed step-back threes, both when he was substituted and when his primary defender got caught on a ball screen. Doncic's 3-point shooting has become lethal this season. Even if the Mavericks' superstar duo hit the same shots, it's unlikely Doncic and Kyrie Irving would go 5-of-19 in the first half again. However, despite their shot-making talent, these two players were unable to generate enough looks for a number of reasons, many of which include the Mavericks attacking the Clippers' aforementioned pick-and-roll defensive scheme. This was due to a problem with the system.
Lue designed his game plan around making Doncic the scorer rather than a full double team, but the Clippers still sent in reinforcements. The Clippers were aggressive in crowding the paint, using off-ball defenders to fend off corner shooters, tagging big men rolling into the lane and occupying spaces that Doncic might want to use.
Doncic slowed down when he saw multiple players in front of him, often picking off dribbles from his elbow instead of driving deep into the paint. When he did manage to get close to the basket, his passing flair created opportunities near the rim. The play below ended with a missed lob dunk by Lively, and although Zubac contested well, Doncic's short-range touches in crowded spaces still made it likely the Mavericks would score points.
However, Clippers players stayed close enough to the shooters around Doncic to cast shadows in the paint, like Harden in the image above. This iteration of the Mavericks is the most talented and arguably the most athletic of the Doncic era. But Doncic could also feature the worst group of shooters the franchise has ever played with.
Many of Doncic's current teammates can Knockdown shots are possible, but few people fire at will. The value of the corner 3 lies in its proximity to the rim, but it also provides the quickest closeout for extended defenders. By assisting without fully doubling, the Clippers effectively walled themselves in the paint without having to scramble back to the perimeter. Doncic, like Irving, can intimidate any team into giving them too much help when he attacks, but neither player did that enough in the first half.
The second half showed some optimism about the Mavericks' adjustments, but it's worth noting that Lue said it was by design in the Clippers' plans.
“Once we got into the fourth quarter, they started to pick things up a little bit. But, you know, we didn't want to give them 3s, so we took them off their defensive scheme. We were up by 26 points. So we took threes. You don't want to give up threes to guys who are making them,'' Lue said after Monday's practice. “That's the best way to come back. They kind of went one-on-one and we expect them to do that when they play one-on-one.”
Dallas' most effective adjustments didn't come from what the team made in the second half of Game 1. They will come from what the team always knew Doncic would do to take advantage of conservative coverages like drops. It should also be selected from role players who have to take more shots and be more decisive against defenders who recover from them.
There are general changes Dallas could make to take advantage of the scheme the Clippers used in Game 1, but Lue, the best coaching genius in the postseason, will copy the same strategy verbatim for Tuesday's game. & Paste is not always possible. Dallas could take a different route, such as using Harden as a screener. Kidd will have to decide whether he should stick with his Game 1 plan in hopes that his team will do better, or whether he should realistically refocus his team's motivation for Game 2. In this league, on-court execution is more important than any specific strategy developed by a coach.
Still, just one small adjustment that helped in the second half: Dallas preferred stacking sequences (sequences involving two screeners instead of one in the primary action) rather than single pick-and-roll initiations. had much more success with. Like this play, this play, and the play below.
With Leonard's return looming in this series, the Game 1 loss remains a huge missed opportunity for Dallas. But until that happens, the Mavericks are favored over the Clippers in this matchup, and that's assuming he returns as a top-10 worst player this regular season.
Ultimately, Leonard's absence caused the Mavericks to fiddle too much in the first half of Game 1, using that stretch as an experiment to see what adjustments would work, making it the point of an exhilarating film session. It could give room to provide tape for what was supposed to be.
“The key word is series. It's not just one game,” Kidd said. “Yes, we want to win the first game. Unfortunately, that's not the case. We made adjustments. This is about paying attention to the details and what we have to do to win the second game. It's about understanding what doesn't happen.”
They need to understand Doncic, especially having been here before. However, they will have to show it in the second match.
(Top photo: Jayne Kamin-Oncea / USA Today)
