clearlynotjesse wrote:Mike Prada had a great article in his newsletter about the Mavs' clutch struggles. Basically confirms what we all thought. Luka slows down too much and throws off the rhythm of both his and the rest of the team's offense. He doesn't have a great first step so it's hard for him to get by people when they're set and he has to settle for stepbacks. All of it can be solved by just picking up the pace a little at the end of games.
Yeaa watching him he still hasn't figured out how to balance his dominance within the team concept. It's very hot or cold with him where he'll go 2 or 3 possessions iso-ing and then the next 2 or 3 hell just pass it off to THJ and be like "ok you do something now". I think part of it is he maybe doesn't have the speed to draw in help like that. He's got just enough to keep his man on his hip and that dude acts as a barrier for the help where they're not gonna overcommit on the drive because they'd have to be in some ridiculous position to contest the shot so they'd rather Luka just do one of his tough finishes thru heavy contact.
When other guys like Bron or Harden get into the paint they've got a step on their man so there's also room for the help to slide in front. Of course this is all vs switching defenses and iso which is what crunch time ends up being, in every other normal PnR variant Luka is a dimer. But as far as crunch time goes and his overall balance of scoring and passing I think there's a bit of tweaking left to be done. To me the guy I've seen that had the most perfect mental balance of when to score and when to playmaker was prime John Wall around 2017, and I feel like Luka's got a looooong way to go before he gets to that point. LeBron is there rn as far as balance goes too but Bron had the opposite problem of Luka where he was more passive and floaty