MAVS NEWS: Luka Is Hurt, But is Trudging On | DLive's Mom Passes Away| Maxi OUT

[DanSchwartzgan]

Jason Kidd says starting Maxi Kleber was a defense assignment for tonight and to protect Dereck Lively II from foul trouble.

“As we go forward, we understand that Lively will start at some point… He’s about the team and you saw that tonight and that’s what makes him special.”

https://twitter.com/sixfivelando/status/...8898009285

I don’t think you can beat Kidd up for this decision.  It worked.  Even the most optimistic Lively Fan Boys among us didn’t see this coming.  We can’t know if we’d have seen the same thing had he started.

The Maxi minutes were awful.  He had two positive stints (early second and end of third).  Both of those would have been against subs.  All of his minutes against starters were just awful.  But, Lively can’t play 48. I’m actually more shocked at 30 minutes than I am at the scoring.  He’s going to get points off of lobs.  The pleasant surprise (and we saw this in preseason) is the non lob scoring.  There is more to his game than the Duke highlights show.  History tells me we will eventually be fine between Powell and Maxi in the non-Lively minutes once Kidd puts Lively in the starting lineup.

Since this is a Green thread, I’ll mention that the Lively, GWill, Green, Luka and Irving minutes were outstanding last night.  They played together mid-second (+3) and to close the second (+6).  Same thing in the second half.  They were together mid-fourth (-6) and closed the game +9.  That grouping isn’t an issue whether you call Green a starter or not.

What we really need is one more guy who takes the DJJ/Exum/Curry minutes (23 last night).  We essentially ran a playoff-tight 7 man rotation with these three guys sharing an 8th spot.  Each of them has an NBA skill, but not all the skills a rotation player needs.  This kind of points out the beauty of someone like Green.  He does all of the things that are the best skills of those three guys (D, secondary creation and outside shooting) at a fairly high level and is only 22.  We could probably use another Green, not less of the one we have.