The Mavericks aren't dead yet, but I don't begrudge anyone who feels that way. Dallas has lost five of six games, with four of those five losses being complete failures and the fifth being a memorable fourth-quarter collapse.
A year ago, the picture was much bleaker. The Mavericks lost two straight to the Hornets towards the end of March, dropping the team to 36-39 and three games below .500. They are now one game behind the No. 10 seed, the final spot in the play-in tournament. That moment felt like the clincher for the Mavericks' season, and it proved to be true. The Mavericks are currently 34-28, six games over .500, and six games behind the 11th place Utah Jazz with 20 games remaining. That wasn't the case last season. At least so far.
That will be of little consolation to Mavericks fans, who watched their team be humiliated for the second consecutive home game with another heartbreaking 137-120 loss to the Indiana Pacers. The blowout loss to the Pacers was the second in a week, continuing the Mavericks' trend of disastrous post-All-Star break. As I watched Tuesday night's game, a theme popped into my head: What is this team doing?
Defense is the main culprit and gets all the headlines, and rightly so. Over the past two weeks, the Mavericks have ranked last in defense, allowing 126.1 points per 100 possessions, according to Cleaning the Glass. For comparison, the worst defense of the season so far belongs to the Washington Wizards, whose season mark is 121.9 points per 100 possessions. That means the Mavericks have been guarding far worse over the last two weeks than the worst defensive team in the NBA this season. That's dark.
The main cause of bad defense appears to be too much support. It's about rotating players when they shouldn't be rotating or helping players when they don't need help. Dallas ranks 24th in corner threes allowed this season, making 11.1 percent of opponents' attempts, the second-most profitable shot in basketball. The numbers haven't gotten dramatically worse since the All-Star break, with the share only being his 11.3 percent. Still bad, but not dramatically worse. So why the big changes? Primarily shooting differences, scheduling, and the Mavericks dropping out elsewhere. The Mavericks' opponent free throw percentage has increased by a full percentage point since the All-Star break (19.4 percent during the season, 20.5 percent since February 22nd), and each team's effective field goal percentage has increased since the All-Star break. recorded at 59%. The team's forced turnover rate has decreased, currently at 13.5 percent during the season and 12 percent since the All-Star break. The schedule has also expanded significantly, with six of the Mavericks' last seven games coming against powerhouse teams in the playoffs. What I can read is that each team has enough tape on the Mavericks, and with the extended layoff, no matter what the Mavericks are doing (which was already not that great aside from 6 straight games), more practice time and the latest scouting reports are now available. (before the break) is fully exposed.
Tuesday night's game against the Pacers was a disaster of questionable decisions and questionable efforts.After Pacers stretch center Myles Turner caught fire in Dallas last week, the Mavericks chose to protect him. in exactly the same way Tuesday's game will start primarily with Derek Lively in drop coverage, with the big sag back in the paint and the guard pushing the ball handler over the screen into midrange. This works against teams with weak pull-up shooting guards or against teams with poor shooting guards, and surprisingly, the Pacers have both. Tyrese Haliburton fed Turner early and often, and Turner scored 20 points in the first half on 7-of-10 shooting. Coach Jason Kidd finally made the adjustment after halftime.I'm starting to suspect that Kid himself made the adjustments. Please read my first tweet — Put PJ Washington on Turner and swap all Haliburton/Turner pick-and-rolls. Another surprise, it worked! Turner had zero points in the second half, missing all four attempts. That's a good thing, right? Unfortunately, the Mavericks' fatal flaw was giving up corner threes.
Pacers rookie guard Ben Shepard has scored in double figures just four times this season, two of which came against the Mavericks. He is setting a career-high in points in each game for the Mavericks. This season, he attempted 129 shots, 89 of which were 3-pointers. Of his 89 3-point shots, 44 were from the corners and he made 20 of them. Needless to say, Shepard really only shoots three-pointers, especially from the corners. Some may think that if Shepard is going to be allowed to shoot, he should shoot somewhere other than the corner 3.
In two games against the Mavericks, Shepard is 8-of-9 on corner 3s. In those two games, he attempted a total of 13 shots. He batted 4-of-5 on Tuesday night, and the Mavericks ran the gauntlet in a bad way to give them up.
In the play above, Haliburton is running a pick-and-roll with Turner, and Turner is rolling toward Turner. Weakness of the floor while Shepard is parked in the strong side corner. The player responsible for the rotation tagging the screener is the weakside help defender. That's because you need your ball handler to make a perfect cross-court pass to break that defense (Luka Doncic does this regularly because he's a genius passer). So why did Washington also shade toward the roll man and give up short, easy passes to deadly corner shooters?
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Look at the turner rolling in the image above. There are basically three Mavericks surrounding Turner, but Shepard is drilling open threes. This was a terrible defense, made worse by the fact that it felt like Washington was being told to do this.
Why does it feel like the coaching is bad when the players are playing poorly? Because it keeps happening. Sunday's dagger three against Philadelphia also had to do with Washington leaving corner shooters alone to help drives that didn't need help.
This happened several times in this match. Including in the first half, Maxi Kleber was guarding a strong-side corner shooter, shaded too far to cover a potential mismatch, and Andrew Nembhard was hit with an open shot on one pass.
Back to Shepard, he got even freer on a corner 3 in the second half and made a more questionable decision. In this play, Pacers guard TJ McConnell drives into the paint and Lively rotates to support Josh Green. Lively's man is Pascal Siakam, standing at the top of the key. Siakam has been a good 3-point shooter at Indiana, but historically he hasn't been a great 3-point shooter beyond the break. So what happens is Kyrie Irving leaves Haliburton. teeth Historically a good 3-point shooter, Doncic was forced to help Shepard in the corner to get to Haliburton. Lively then had to sprint from the free throw line to the corner to reach Shepard, but was too late.
Hell, even if Lively arrives in time, the Mavericks' floor balance is completely off — Shepard will be chasing Lively, and Irving is currently guarding Siakam, a complete mismatch. Again, this is a case of over-support, and the Pacers know it. It was no coincidence that Haliburton and Shepard were standing next to each other, knowing Irving would help put the Mavericks in the blender. If Irving was just home in Haliburton, Siakam would be able to shoot at a slightly lower percentage, hold the ball and let the Mavericks defense reset, and Livery, who was already in the paint after helping on the first drive I ended up driving to.
Shepard's corner three at the end of the second half, which I didn't mention here, has less to do with tactics and requires more effort. Once McConnell got the ball up the floor, the Mavericks had more players back in transition defense than the Pacers did on offense this time. Despite the advantage, Doncic slams into a screen, McConnell flies past him, and Shepard goes for another easy corner kick.
Luka shouldn't be defeated easily on a screen like this. Either Daniel Gafford couldn't get his teammates heads up, or Doncic just wasn't ready to guard. Neither option is a good answer. This is just a scenario the Mavericks need to get better. This is not about planning, it's about talking, communicating, and making efforts.
It's natural that defense is discussed, but offense isn't free either. Dallas has been scoring well in total since the All-Star break (ranked 4th in points per 100 possessions, according to Cleaning the Glass), but each team has made a conscious decision to change the way they defend the Mavericks. of a game that is causing problems for the Mavericks at key moments. Before the All-Star break, Doncic was the most blitzed player in the league, and blitzing meant defenses sending two on the ball when Doncic ran a pick-and-roll. This strategy made sense when the team wasn't afraid of Doncic's teammates at all, but with the addition of Kyrie Irving last season and now the development of Dante Exum, P.J. Washington, and Josh Green. Things have changed a little. Doncic was able to finish off blitzes because he had teammates who were able to take wide-open shots and manipulate the space on the floor that Doncic provided.
Now the team is switching gears. They guard both Doncic and Irving straight up with little help, so the role players no longer have the space and open shots to work with. When Doncic runs a pick-and-roll, teams are now either hedging and recovering (while the big man defender plays at the level of the screen and the perimeter defender recovers) or just switching straight up. . On Tuesday night, Doncic took 13 3-pointers and made just four as he settled for stepback after stepback against a switching defense that couldn't give the Mavericks a real advantage. Ta.
Even if Doncic didn't take a step back, he still worked primarily one-on-one. Right now, Doncic is a quality isolation scorer. According to NBA.com, he is scoring his 1.13 points per possession in isolation, which equates to his 88.1 percentile in the league. And Doncic torched the Pacers defense in the first half Tuesday, scoring 28 points on 11-of-17 shooting. However, there are two things defenses are looking for from him:
- They're willing to let Doncic go and hope he wears out in the second half.
- They know the Mavericks are most dangerous when Doncic is beating defenses with his passes. The team trusts their role players to guard the Mavericks' role players one-on-one without fear of being put in the blender.
So far, that has shown to be true. Doncic and Irving have put up a ton of points since the All-Star break, but the Mavericks' role players always look poor because of their production. Dallas isn't an assist-heavy team, averaging 25.2 assists a season, which ranks 21st in the league, but since the All-Star break, the team has been held to 25 or fewer total assists in six of seven games.
That led to the Mavericks scoring 18 points in the third quarter on Tuesday, essentially ending the game. There is no movement or offensive creativity at all at the moment. Where is the counter? Dallas could also try screening screeners more, running Irving off screens along the baseline, and running pindowns and dribble handoffs to Doncic and Irving. He can do anything to get the defense moving, so even if the possession ends up working one-on-one with Doncic or Irving or a high screen and roll, at least the defense is shifted and the floor has a chance to be advantageous. there is. Maybe Irving or Doncic will have screens for each other. Anything is better than this stagnation.
The difficult part is that the Mavericks have been slow to adjust for most of the season. The Mavericks only have 20 games left, but this is what the team looks like. Thankfully, The Mavericks have played teams below .500 in 10 of their 20 games. And the Mavericks are 19-5 against those bad teams. The Mavericks could theoretically lose that many games even if nothing actually changes. Dallas should be relatively okay.
But the question is, is it OK for a team with 25-year-old Luka Doncic to scrap to earn a play-in spot for the second consecutive season? Probably not. But at this point, the Mavericks may not have an answer to that question.
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