Luka Doncic And the Prevailing Power of the Pass

[SleepingHero]

My hope is next year Jaden is ready and develops some chemistry with Luka.  Right now he doesn’t have any.  If Luka let’s him cook, it may be a good time to give Luka some rest.  

You can see a vast difference with the Luka only minutes vs the Kyrie only minutes.  Not saying one is better than the other but when it is a tired ball dependent Luka, the results have much less variance imo.

First off thanks for the thoughts.

I'm not so sure if just adding more creators will fix this issue with the non-Kyrie minutes. He had 2 hot scorers with him on the court against PHX and it didn't matter. I think it has to come from Luka with a mindset change. Thing is, it's hard to argue against a guy averaging 34 points a game on 50% shooting. Luka's offense IS efficient. It does work. But it does have some major downsides, and we saw that in this PHX game. This is sort of dealing with the game within the game that many great point guards like to allude to. I think Luka already knows how to play that game, and right now it's up to Kidd to get him to recognize these moments. 

First of all, great analysis. Draws me back in. 

Those defensive possessions are tough to watch but it looks like they were baiting the corner threes. You'd expect Wainwright to make one or two, not four. The Durant and Lindale dunks were 100% on Wood.

The offensive possessions were eye opening. I didn't realize Luka dominated the ball to that extent, but it certainly feels different when Kyrie runs the show. The on/off metrics match the eye test. Something to watch.

I'm with you that it was 100% the game plan to give up those corner threes. Mavs tried their everything to make everyone but Durant and Booker beat them and lost. But it does stand to reason that those open corner threes didn't have to be that wide open. If they hustled just a bit more, those shots would've been a bit harder to knock down. Luka sank too far in on those Wainwright threes, but do I blame him for letting him shoot those? No! Not at all. Even Luka looked at the bench a bit confused that Wainwright sunk 2 in a row given the scouting report probably said "This dude sucks let him shoot"

The offensive possessions was my main gripe with this post, even though I dedicated 2 "chapters" to defense. I found it shocking how Luka didn't pass once in 3 minutes. It was totally out of character and something that has to be righted if this team wants to succeed. And I know Luka will do it, hence the title I grabbed from J. Kyle Mann