Archx wrote:Yeah i will basically join Bob's opinion here because i would probably just write something similar. But Bob8 summed it up nicely. We watch Mavs for years and some of us watched Luka in Real Madrid and Slovenian NT. Drastic differences between coaches and players.
It's just on this level of basketball a lot of things need to click and Mavs simply haven't found the formula yet. Well they have but they managed to mess it up in only 1 year. (losing Brunson for nothing, replacing KP with questionable assests, etc.).
A lot of negative things also have to do with the fact that this team simply can't stay healthy. It's an absolute madness how many lineup changes they have had even this season. A lof of time GLeaguers had to step in rotation. Last season Pinson, AJ Lawson, younger Hardy, Ntilikina, Powell (5pt/5rb career center)... guys like that either start seeing major minutes or even started games.
I don't know what Jokic could have done better like people are saying but that's a bit premature to say since Luka hasn't even reached those so called best basketball years. But like Bob8 said, when Shai got a much better team in OKC, his other impact numbers went up.
Last year Kidd played Doncic for over 40 mins already in December, he played him entire 2nd half in multiple games. Luka had insane numbers one of which was 60/20/10 games. And that was just for them to beat teams who were either barely or well below .500 mark.
It's incredibly hard to understand why his On/Off are so low but 99% of Mavs fanbase either on reddit, here or twitter or anyone else, will tell you that no matter what, this team wouldn't be much better with almost any player guiding them. Well maybe Jokic could do better sure, but still, when you check the insane production from Doncic 49 PTS, 13 AST, 10 REB on 54.2% FG, 37% 3P, 85% FT over his last 3 games and playing over 44mpg and Mavs were still only 2-1.
Luka issue? Kidd's offensive system issue? So many health problems with the team? I don't know, you tell me
Also look at this. This doesn't scream to me that he is a low impact player.
So, I'm absolutely willing to listen to Slovenian-team-based arguments for a model for the ideal way to build around Luka, and I'm not looking to suggest the Mavs have done everything right...thing is we know what a top tier superstar with a poor supporting cast tends to look like on/off-wise, and that's just not what we've seen from Luka over any long stretch of play in the NBA.
Fundamentally, I think folks need to acknowledge that it's freaking weird that Luka isn't able to have a great on/off in a situation where the issue is that his teammates are so, so much worse than him. That's not how basketball traditionally works.
Re: don't know Jokic could have done better. What Jokic showed right from the beginning is an ability to add on/off-style impact the moment he showed up in the NBA. Jokic has a career On/Off of +11.2, and he was basically at that level right from the start. The gap between Jokic & Doncic on this front isn't some small things, it's astonishingly huge.
I would also suggest that we naively would have expected Doncic to start having impact much sooner than Jokic because Doncic got to dictate the entire course of offensive possessions from the star, while Jokic was a nobody off the bench playing in a scheme not designed to make use of his strengths.
Now I'll emphasize again: I think it's possible that Luka's heliocentric approach will eventually be so resilient against playoff opponents that he will make his team the won winning the most championships in this era. The mere fact that Jokic is more impactful as a matter of course in the regular season doesn't preclude this possibility, and should it occur, Doncic will be considered the greater player.
But that would only make it that much more interesting the lack of statistical evidence of this sort of impact that we see over the course of Doncic's regular season. It would give us an On/Off deviation from RS to PS that would be unprecedented in any data we have.
Re: I don't know, you tell me. I can get behind that epistemic cautiousness, and would like to emulate that model myself. I don't know all the answers. What I feel strongly about is that these are questions that need analysis.
But if forced to give answers, I'd mention some things I think I've already mentioned here.
I think Luka's come to use the possessions - which includes the possessions where the other team is on offense -where he doesn't have the ball as resting possessions, and I think on Luka's resting possessions, it's probably putting the team in a considerably worse place than if he were on the bench and another guy ready to use energy were out there.
I don't think Luka's alone in the basic pattern here, but I also think it's pretty clear that other guys have coasted through possessions without it being as big of an issue.
I think that the way past this is probably either:
a) Get better stamina; learn better habits
and/or
b) Adapt to a different offensive scheme that doesn't demand as much of him in full-strength possessions.
Re: look at this, not impactful? I'll put it this way:
Take any possession where a role player makes a basket.
There's an excellent chance that that role player was the MVP of that possession.
But that possession is only about 0.5% of the total of the game, and if that happens in that other 99.5% for that role player isn't good, then that role player isn't valuable.
Now consider that even if you do this for 18 possessions in a game - enough to get 36 points even if you don't take 3's - that's still only 9% of the total of the game. And if in those other 91% possessions of the game you're a negative, you're still probably a negative player overall.
Make sense?
So when Luka is doing the things that put him on those leaderboards, he's generally adding value, but what's happening in the rest of the game...which will always be >50% of the total game?
