technical basketball details etc

i think these playoffs will tell us a lot about the current state of luka. he is a perpetual top 5 player so he should be held to a high standard; on the other hand there isn't any lead player drafted in his class or after him that has anywhere near as many playoff wins. the thunder could make the finals this year and SGA still wouldn't have as many playoff wins as luka & that's including games where he was chris paul's sidekick. if the mavs win another playoff series this year, given what is on their roster, i think i'd have a hard time worrying about whether luka's "impact" is overstated

he just needs to win one playoff series and the questions about his game are moot

i mean, no. i said i get why he is held to a high standard. but i also think if he continues to demonstrate the ability to win playoff series when other stars his age cannot/do not, that some of the criticisms start to seem a bit silly

Luka Doncic is leading the league in scoring and is 2nd in assists, but for there's a long term trend related to the scoreboard that doesn't match that production

yeah i wonder why that could be one sec lemme check their roster

mavs roster always seems to be bad its weird lemme check what some of their past players are up to

yeah when he had a really good young player on his team luka put up 32/10/7 and led his team to the conference finals hopefully one day archeologists are able to uncover his impact there, it's a huge mystery

i was watching mavs celtics last game with my dad who is a big box score reader but not that big of a game watcher outside the celtics and he was getting all fired up about luka to kind of an annoying degree tho tbf luka was cooking the celtics were just guarding him straight up letting him get his i was like just watch him get tired as the game goes on and sure enough by mid third quarter he was chucking stepback 3s then in the fourth he had one basket and the celtics wrecked the mavs easily, his style of play its just obviously not good its not the good way to play basketball

mavs barely squeaked into the conf finals and got destroyed, they were a second round quality team that year, i mean it was nice for them dont get me wrong and they were on a roll for sure but stuff like that happens no one is consulting the history books over it

like the lakers last year sometimes there just a bunch of pretty good teams and one of them wins a couple rounds

i think one reasonable theory about lukas game is that its a high floor and not necessarily capped ceiling but its more difficult to raise the ceiling of his teams to contender status because he doesnt play good team ball, of course thats just speculation at this point since hes never had a contending quality roster

the suns that year were defending conference champs, brought back the same nucleus, won 64 games, and were the 1 seed by 8 games so gonna have to disagree w/ you on that one. don't retcon that game 7 into them being some mediocre opponent

i agree w/ you & have consistently agreed that he has conditioning, stamina, modulation issues that he has to figure out as his career progresses so if "style of play" just means a decrease in usage so that he can last longer across games/the playoffs then yeah. but the heliocentric possessions where ppl stand around and watch luka thing that you guys really pick at i just don't think is as big of a problem bcuz he's simply too good. i'm not chalking james harden's playoff failures up to "style of play" and then pinning that on luka

he just stands around when he doesnt have the ball and that includes defense its really bad its harmful not sure what else to say about that hes giving back a bunch there

xp didnt say the suns were mediocre tho they did have some issues what i said was the mavs barley squeaked through (seven game series) then got wrecked (five games series)

sorry but beating the 1 seed on the road in game 7 by 40 points does not count to me as squeaking through but whatever

i watched that celtics game too and maybe your analysis of it is correct, it's subjective. luka was out of his mind incredible in the first half and did not match that in the second half. but my take away from that game was that the mavs are built on the concept of having two high level star players and if kyrie is going to go 9-23 and 1-7 from three vs a team as good as boston then the mavs are not going to be competitive

you're presenting a theoretical scenario where luka tries less hard and passes more in the first half of that game, gets his teammates involved more and is able to have more stamina to dominate in the fourth quarter. i would submit that if luka wasn't playing like the best basketball player of all time in the first half the mavs would've been down by 20+ and nothing that happened in the second half would've even mattered. so i guess it's a matter of perspective

but again people have been talking about luka figuring out a better balance between domination and stamina since he was putting up first half triple doubles vs the clippers in the 21 playoffs and i don't think he has taken a serious critical approach to that aspect of his game so all of that stuff i agree w/

that celtics game they were targeting him on defense was part of the reason he was so tired the other part is he plays a very tiring style, good teams are going to do the same until theres a solution for it, he could get in better shape we dont have any idea how much hes capable of increasing his stamina, its seems like probably some but also he likely doesnt have naturally high stamina, his style of expending a ton of energy with the ball then resting the rest of the time just makes him vulnerable to scheming

you really want your perennial mvp candidates to elicit the reaction from opponents wtf are we supposed to do with that, like whatre you gonna do vs joker whats the plan here you got nothing, giannis youre like wall him off hope the bucks dont hit threes its not great but its what you have, embiid the obvious plan is to have al horford haha jk he has stamina issues too, but luka the plan is pretty clear youre gonna go after him on d which tbf is just good for scoring points and it will tire him out and then you hope he fades in the second half it has a decent chance of working

maybe in the regular season where he's not playing as hard sure, that is real. in that suns series they were putting luka in every single pick and roll every single time they could and some games it was fruitful and in other games it was a disaster. he is big so you can only take so much advantage of him on defense, i don't think ppl feel like we're dealing w/ a trae or early steph curry level point of attack defender where just purely from a size perspective there is very little that person can do, tho steph is also a great example of how guys can continue to get stronger and better at defense over the years to the point where the defense is no longer dragging down the offense. you can also more easily scheme away from having the same guy getting picked on every time in the playoffs than you can or do in the regular season. so yeah idk

luka is legitimately an extremely bad defender hes not close to where he should be

i agree that he is not close to where he should be but the individual numbers on his defense do not suggest that he is extremely bad specifically and the mavs have played great defense for long stretches w/ him on the floor

if you took shai off OKC and put luka in his place and told j dub and chet that they had to stand around for 5 extra possessions a game as they watched luka cook i think OKC would prob be a worse regular season team but i don't think their playoff ceiling would be lower and it quite possibly could be higher. and if shai was on dallas i don't think anyone would be saying that they have a significantly better shot of winning a playoff series. so how much of it is the warts of the player vs the warts of the roster

the mavs have played great defense for long stretches w/ him on the floor

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Thursday, April 4, 2024 2:11 PM (twenty-eight seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

mavs playing good team defense in the regular season in stretches against just ok teams is one thing, throwing luka and kyrie out there against a quality prepared playoff opponent is a completely different proposition, the mavs could just try to effort and swarm their was through it switch a bunch fly around and so forth it could even work thats what they did in that suns series, but what they cant do is just play solid and make minor adjustments, a fwiw they are for the season a not good defensive team

luka on okc is an interesting thought experiment would we even know that jdub is a good player, prob not, maybe close watchers of the team would figure it out, tho would okc let luka play the way he likes to idk hard to say

but yeah putting luka on a better team would be good for him he should look into that, not the nugs tho that would just be unfair

it would be interesting to see if joker could get him to play better ball tho

they’re bffs it is fated I’m afraid

Luka really hit Coach Shammgod with his own move 😅🔥

(via @NBATV) pic.twitter.com/4yLXfKUlB6

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) June 6, 2024

no dip finals

No idea how Sam Hauser did this pic.twitter.com/utQW58rlYu

— Savage (@SavageSports_) June 7, 2024

no dip zone

does “dip” refer to the ball or knees?

the ball

this finals was a great series for my revolutionary theory of the step back three is a bad shot unless youre steph or something maybe but even then why not take an easier shot

classic case of "just bc you can doesnt mean you should" *stares at luka's 32% 3pct*

tatum shot awful all playoffs but managed to not kill the celtics because instead of doing his favorite thing, taking step back threes, he drove the ball

i mean he still took some step backs but not that many, progress!

he led the finals in assists despite the famous passer luka also playing in the series

on one of the pods someone made the point that luka always going left w/ his step back is the kinda thing you can routinely get off in the regular season but once you get 4 rounds deep, that level of granular scouting that every player is put thru, it’s not sustainable to just have a move where you only do one thing. we know this, but watching horford guard luka was a really good example. we know everyone was making a big deal out of luka hitting a step back off his right foot vs gobert … this is prob the sorta thing — whoops this move you use all the time w/o thinking just got exposed in the finals — that should be happening to luka

i actually think there is a good argument for having the step back in one’s playoff bag bcuz sometimes you do need to be able to create a decent shot when you have nothing going on offense. in the recent playoff games where james harden has been really great the stepback features prominently. i think there are some similarities in footwork for luka too in terms of how he gets some midrange jumpers off when teams start to overplay his 3 shooting and driving

iirc luka is also statistically just a lot better at that shot than everyone else. i think the thing that really bothers ppl about the tatum stuff is that the shots rarely go in

heres some numbers from a few years ago not sure where to find the current ones, someone was much better at stepbacks but it wasnt luka lol

Step-Back 3P% (Min. 100 3PA)
1. Steph Curry ......... 47.2%
2. Zach LaVine ........ 36.9
3. Jamal Murray .......36.9
4. James Harden ..... 36.8
5. Dame Lillard .........36.0
6. Luka Doncic ......... 35.7
7. Jayson Tatum ....... 34.6
8. Jordan Clarkson ... 33.3 pic.twitter.com/nsmV9Xw33C

— Kirk Goldsberry (@kirkgoldsberry) May 26, 2021

luka did have his best 3pt shooting year this year 38% compared to 34 for his career but he was prob at least partially just hot, and indeed he was at 32% for the offs

those are some ok percentages but aside from steph theyre not great and more importantly its just the kind of shot that can turn to dust against a good prepared defense an already very difficult shot becomes impossible with a defender in yr face, if you want to take it at the end of the shot clock fine yr already kinda fucked whatever, could also step in and take a long two going towards the basket tho

relatedly in saw a clip of luka taking a catch and shoot three in the finals and it was so bad he just kinda flung it there was no intentional foot work going into the catch he looked confused, his game isnt normal

they also showed him pregame practicing movement catch and shoots where he caught and turned on the move he was miced up telling someone "this is me next year" buddy try the easy ones first why not

start with just moving off ball see what happens

nba tracking data has luka as going 169-421 on step back threes this year which is 40.1%. i don’t see a leaderboard for this stat but obv a big improvement from 2021 and a rate that would’ve been way ahead of everyone in the league aside from steph

in the playoffs this year luka was 38-118 on step back threes which is 32%

in the finals he was 6-28 which is 21%

i don’t think the exact link is working on my phone but if you go to his NBA player page and select “splits” and “shooting” and scroll all the way to “shot type detail” you’ll see it

https://www.nba.com/player/1629029/luka-doncic/

a lot of his game plays off the step back, guys jumping up on him and then he uses that to get in front of the guy and pin him on his back and then he’s going to the rim exactly how he wants etc. you see this happen all the time when he plays. it’s a fine line to where the threat stops being worth it bcuz the shots keep missing but at 40% in the regular season he was far above the red line so to speak. 32% is a diff convo, 21% is not one at all

ah very nice thats a lot of data https://www.nba.com/stats/player/1629029/shooting

it declined from 39% to 34 in the mavs playoff run two years ago which is not that bad but idk i just feel like cant you find a better shot its not only difficult its also static iso offense, i think one reason he does it is compared to how he gets his other buckets its not that tiring