2021-2022 MAVS NEWS: 4th in West | WCF loss [ARCHIVED]

[dirkfansince1998]

THJ does indeed try hard but we've been getting torched by perimeter guys his entire time here. More than anything him and Luka as a starting backcourt may be the worst defensive backcourt in the league if you are playing them straight up with the other guards defensively at least. We tend to hide Luka by not doing that. 

And of course he had better #s than those guys. He wasn't guarding Kawhi and Paul George haha. The role guys kept going off tho which he was guarding alot of the time. 

I agree KP was bad defensively. Not arguing that at all. He was horrible. And so was Hardaway in that series. When you get matched up against role guys and they are going off on you... that's a problem. 

There is a chance KP is back to a solid defender next year. There is 0 chance Hardaway is. There's also a chance, KP improve his overall offensive game. Hardaway probably isn't improving much more offensively.

I mentioned the tracking data because it shows the individual match up numbers and THJ/Luka had more success than DFS/Maxi when they defended Kawhi or PG. You are right that THJ is not the best defender but I actually thought that he was the best among the mentioned guys against the Clippers. And as you mentioned. He plays hard and hustles. Finished 7th in total charges drawn this season.

I absolutely agree that the Mavs perimeter defense is a big weakness but it goes beyond the individual ability of the mentioned players. It´s not possible to stop guys like Kawhi or PG one on one. That´s why the center is so important. He is supposed to be the main help defender. Just look at teams with elite rim protection or guys that can switch the pick and roll. Defenders can play more agressive on ball defense because they have someone behind them. That´s how Bojan Bogdanovic and Joe Ingles this season or Tyler Herro and Duncan Robinson last season turned into plus defenders. Smart players with some physical limitations that can make an impact on defense in the right scheme but not if they are left on an island against the best iso scorers in the league.

That´s what happened in Dallas. No help defense. Drop defense in the pick and roll. Defendere gets beaten. Layup/dunk. Defender cannot get over the pick. Open shot.

But we saw what happened when KP was out. They played a more switch heavy scheme and started the season with the 2nd ranked defense (first nine games without KP). Same trend continued during the regular season. Mavs won a game against the Jazz with a Kleber/Melli front court that completly shut down the Jazz pick and roll.
Mind you that it is not all about KP. Coaches are to blame as well. They tried a lot of things and realized that they couldn´t play the switch heavy scheme with KP. Felt like they just reverted back to the 19/20 scheme with a worse version of KP. They also tried to hide him and started to pre rotate the pick and roll. Asking DFS or Kleber to switch onto the screener and keep KP out of the pick and roll.
In the end nothing really worked and the series against the Clippers exposed the mentioned weaknesses even more.

Question is how the new staff will fix this. Can KP improve? Can they find a scheme that can hide his lack of mobilty? Is it even worth it to try or is it smarter to just go with defensive minded role players in the front court?
If they want to go with KP they need to find better perimeter defenders. If they move on and replace him with a better defender the current combination of THJ/DFS could be just fine.