We blame Dwight for a reason... he tries so hard and is a good guy, but he can't be a good player consistently every night in this league. He's a good energy guy off the bench (good to see that his 3 point shot is coming back..he's being very judicious when he shoots it and very limited, but that's good), but he's not a starter.
I agree on KP floating in the lane. That needs to get reined in better, imho.
I'm going to say this, so don't laugh, but I'm going to use NBA2k as an example (here we go).
I play a lot with a Glass Cleaning Lockdown. Last year, I went with total defense, gigantic player, a ton of defensive badges, zero offense -- got a ton of blocks and rebounds, not many points if it wasn't a clear dunk...sometimes, I just get rebound/steal/block, make the outlet pass and start hitting my emotes and not come down to the other end of the floor. This year, I made the same build except I sacrificed a little of the size and weight and picked up some offensive game. I play with the same group of guys, so all of a sudden, I can score in the low post and they are giving me the ball a lot and I go to work...but even when I was successful, we still struggled winning. You have to have the three to win. So we actually started winning more when I started doing less on the offensive end, because every two I made, took away a 3 that we could make.
How that stupid video game nonsense applies, strangely enough, is now all of a sudden, KP has the green light to score...and he's like a kid with a new toy...and he's overusing it, and it's hurting the team.
Honestly, I haven't looked at the numbers, but the floating into Luka's driving lane is something I noticed early on in the season, and while I don't have numbers, to me, it seems to have been getting better. (At the beginning of the season, Dwight was doing it too, as well as Maxi, which was nuts... the other night, KP was on the block actually going to work on a guard 6 feet from the basket backing in and Maxi actually flashes and posts up 4 feet from the basket and I was like "what are you doing???" -- KP looked at him, he got a weird look on his face and then cleared out and KP scored.) The hard part is that Luka and KP aren't playing as much together to get the feel worked out due to injuries and such, I think.
I wonder if part of that is time and feel for the system and coaching. I mean, if you want a guy to be able to do it sometimes, you want him to be comfortable with it, so you don't want to just shut him down or just say "you get 2 a game, and we won't help you with the set to get you there (which is what I think Rick did, hoping him constantly failing would discourage him from wanting to do it...which I think had a negative effect overall on KP's play). I think Kidd is trying a different approach. I'll be watching through the season to see if there's a trend to balancing that out. I do notice KP passing out of the postup a lot more also, and they are usually good decisions.
Everything is working on something to be ready and good at it in the playoffs, so I'm just watching what they are spending time on now, to see what they think the playoff Mavs will look like (if we get there.).
I agree on KP floating in the lane. That needs to get reined in better, imho.
I'm going to say this, so don't laugh, but I'm going to use NBA2k as an example (here we go).
I play a lot with a Glass Cleaning Lockdown. Last year, I went with total defense, gigantic player, a ton of defensive badges, zero offense -- got a ton of blocks and rebounds, not many points if it wasn't a clear dunk...sometimes, I just get rebound/steal/block, make the outlet pass and start hitting my emotes and not come down to the other end of the floor. This year, I made the same build except I sacrificed a little of the size and weight and picked up some offensive game. I play with the same group of guys, so all of a sudden, I can score in the low post and they are giving me the ball a lot and I go to work...but even when I was successful, we still struggled winning. You have to have the three to win. So we actually started winning more when I started doing less on the offensive end, because every two I made, took away a 3 that we could make.
How that stupid video game nonsense applies, strangely enough, is now all of a sudden, KP has the green light to score...and he's like a kid with a new toy...and he's overusing it, and it's hurting the team.
Honestly, I haven't looked at the numbers, but the floating into Luka's driving lane is something I noticed early on in the season, and while I don't have numbers, to me, it seems to have been getting better. (At the beginning of the season, Dwight was doing it too, as well as Maxi, which was nuts... the other night, KP was on the block actually going to work on a guard 6 feet from the basket backing in and Maxi actually flashes and posts up 4 feet from the basket and I was like "what are you doing???" -- KP looked at him, he got a weird look on his face and then cleared out and KP scored.) The hard part is that Luka and KP aren't playing as much together to get the feel worked out due to injuries and such, I think.
I wonder if part of that is time and feel for the system and coaching. I mean, if you want a guy to be able to do it sometimes, you want him to be comfortable with it, so you don't want to just shut him down or just say "you get 2 a game, and we won't help you with the set to get you there (which is what I think Rick did, hoping him constantly failing would discourage him from wanting to do it...which I think had a negative effect overall on KP's play). I think Kidd is trying a different approach. I'll be watching through the season to see if there's a trend to balancing that out. I do notice KP passing out of the postup a lot more also, and they are usually good decisions.
Everything is working on something to be ready and good at it in the playoffs, so I'm just watching what they are spending time on now, to see what they think the playoff Mavs will look like (if we get there.).
"There are no friends on the court." - Luka Doncic