If you have two all star, two nominations for Best Quintet and a Rookie of the Year award, you’ve already accomplished a lot in the NBA. Let’s not say if you have done all that in your first three seasons in the League, you are still 22 years old. (February 23) and you have already signed a contract extension (historical record of a rookie extension) of 207 million dollars for five years. At the gates of the top 10 of always in triple-doubles (accumulates 38 and the tenth is Fat Lever with 43), Luka Doncic is already one of the great European players of all time. And, in theory, he has many, many years of career ahead of him. One, I insist, already bathed in gold. This season closes its contrato rookie with 10.1 million dollars and the next extension opens with 35.7 million. At the age of 27, in the summer of 2026, he will be able to choose to collect 47.1 million the following course or go on the market.
Doncic is one of the great stars of the NBA, a category to which he rose in form express, just arriving from Madrid and sooner than even the most optimistic expected. His relationship with the American League has so far been a fairy tale., an idyll that is now experiencing its first bump. Nothing particularly worrisome, but a first dent in which they mix bad luck with health and the appearance of critical voices. It goes with his star status, with the huge contract that has been guaranteed and with his status as a Dallas Mavericks franchise player, a team that knows that with Doncic it has the playoffs basically guaranteed but what do you want plus. After two first-round eliminations (both against the same opponent, the Los Angeles Clippers), the Mavs are looking for the next step forward, the one that turns them into hopefuls. Almost always the most difficult.
Doncic is the axis, the fulcrum. Everything that changes or moves will be based on it. This summer, in fact, they came out the big shot from the offices, Donnie Nelson, and coach Rick Carlisle. The first had been in the franchise for 21 years, almost that Doncic was a baby. And the second accumulated thirteen. In the section of both came the only ring that the Mavericks have won, in 2011 and with Dirk Nowitzki, the ideal mold of what Dallas considers a leader: the German was in the team for 21 years and left in 2019. He literally gave the relief to a Doncic with whom he shared the track in the 2018-19 season, the Slovenian’s first in the NBA.
Preparation, bad luck, COVID protocols
Doncic had a summer lengthy. As the earthquake hit his franchise and there was talk of his influence on Carlisle’s departure and his bad relationship with Kristaps Porzingis, he packed his bags right after the playoffs and left for Slovenia. He played the Pre-Olympic, qualified and played the Tokyo Games, where he touched the medal but where he already showed alarming signs of exhaustion in the last two games, defeats against France and Australia. After 66 regular-phase matches and seven playoffs between December 23 and June 6, Doncic played another ten officials with his team (four from Pre-Olympic, six in Tokyo) in an arc that ran from June 29 to June 7. of August. That is to say: on June 22, 6 he was playing a seventh playoff game with the Mavs, on July 4 he was winning the Olympic ticket against no less than Lithuania in Kaunas and on August 8 he was playing for a bronze medal against Australia. And finally, on October 21, the 2021-22 season began with the Mavs.
From the first game, a resounding loss to the Atlanta Hawks, it was clear that Doncic was not physically well. For the second consecutive season there was talk of his overweight and that he had reached the set-up of his team with almost 15 extra kilos, something that had also happened a year before according to the journalist of ESPN Tim MacMahon. Despite his talent, which serves to cover any other deficiencies, and his youth, it is a matter that has returned to the table and that seems evident in Doncic’s game. It is not a question of his constitution, more robust than that of many other stars, but of the visible march less with which he played: less explosiveness, more trouble getting past your defender and penetrating, less fuel in defense, less legs in the final minutes of the games. Doncic, let’s not forget, is one of the players who plays the most and takes the most responsibility in the entire NBA. Almost always as a generator and with the ball in your hands, you need optimal physical form to be able to squeeze your talents in the way your team needs you to.
In addition to this matter related to the scale and its habits, Doncic suffered a nasty ankle injury that touched also the knee. It was low, it came back without being at 100% and it stopped again. Now he has not played since December 11 and when his discharge seemed ready, he entered the COVID protocols of the NBA, an extension that made him miss a Christmas game (Jazz-Mavericks) of which it was the obvious big claim. Yesterday the Mavs beat the Trail Blazers. The twelfth game without Doncic so far this season. Of 33 total, he has only been able to play 21. So far, in his three previous years, he had lost an average of 10, in total 30. He had played, in regular season, 199 of 229 games before the start of this course. As a rookie 72 of 82 and in the next two seasons, touched by the pandemic, he was 61 of 75 and 66 of 71. That is, you have never lost more than 14 in a course, a figure that is about to equal in this when we have not yet reached the New Year.
High performance … but not superb
In the games he has played, Doncic has delivered. Of course. But It has not shone as much as usual, it has not dazzled. The Mavs are 12-9 with him, a discreet balance although, of course, much better than the one they have without their great star (now 4-8). His averages are 25.6 points, 8 rebounds and 8.5 assists. Enviable, but below last season (27.7 + 8 + 8.6), which in turn was below his second season (28.8, 9.4 and 8.8). Their shooting percentages are also worse: 44.7% in field goals (47.9 last year), 32.6% in triples (35) and a very questionable 69.8% from the staff line (75.8% two years ago). His lack of speed, of explosion, was forcing him to shoot from less comfortable positions, to play less close to the basket and to lean more on his three-point shot. step back. When the season started it was obvious that Doncic needed filming and fine-tuning to catch his tone. Between injuries and protocols, he is missing the minutes and the feeling.
The doubts of the new Mavericks
When Rick Carlisle came out, Jason Kidd arrived, a legend who was a champion in the 2011 Mavs and who rebuilt his reputation as a coach (as a player is unquestionable) in the Lakers, where he won the 2020 ring as an assistant to Frank Vogel. His work, both on a technical and human level, had been deficient in his experiences as a head coach in Nets and Bucks, and his choice seemed very risky for a few Mavs in need of finding a way to a new project, the idea with which to get where they thought they were no longer going with Carlisle. Kidd promised to change everything: more defense, attack with more variations and more weight in the game for Kristaps Porzingis, who stitched up his relationship with Doncic and took a breath after seriously evaluating the possibility of tightening the screws to get out of Dallas.
Kidd asked for time and said The team he wanted wouldn’t be seen until Christmas. And the point is that, between injuries and protocols, it cannot be said that we have been able to have a clear idea of what are these mavericks. Or how different from Carlisle’s they will end up being when push comes to shove. And of, a key issue, if they have the right pieces to play the way Kidd wants or if the previous coach had found, for better or for worse, the perfect fit of the shoe of this template: Doncic as sun king, blocking plays with the pivot and three open shooters waiting for the Slovenian’s passes when the defense collapsed on him. So, at least and with a low-key defense at best, the Mavs were a playoff team with an attack in historically good numbers.
The Mavs take fewer shots, partly because their shooters are worse but, beyond the conjunctural, because they throw in worse situations. And they are 1-11 in games against the top ten in the NBA in points difference: They beat the worst of them, they lose with the best. They are not a bad team, they are not an elite team. Kidd wants a more aggressive defense than the previous two seasons. I want more pressure, many times with two against one, actions of blitz on the player with the ball; wants the centers further from the basket in defense of the pick and roll… wants a number of things that require surgical precision and a defender profile that the Mavs don’t have. No, of course, if you want to have your best attacking team on the track, one in which there are hardly any good ones (simply) defenders. And that includes a rebounding and intimidating Porzingis reaching the space in assists but suffers a lot when changes leave him with the rival outside, near or far from the rim. If they are measured alone games against the top 10 teams in the NBA, the Mavs would have one of the three worst defenses in the league. It is obvious that any team is worse against the best, but also that the Mavs are often left without answers when they cannot prevail for talent.
In attack, Kidd wanted fewer 3-pointers, more plays in the temperate zone and more minutes not only with Porzingis from four and another pivot on the court, also with more movement and plays in the area for the Latvian, who with Carlisle was limited to being an open shooter when Doncic played the blocks with another pivot. One of the best attacks has fallen below average, with few spaces and even fewer shots near the rim than in previous years (which were already few). Doncic himself has dropped from 23 to 17% in the frequency of plays that ends in the basket. Play many more minutes with two interiors (especially in the first games of the season) in a team in which Porzingis has gone from 18% of minutes as power forward to 43%.
And the worst thing is that we do not know if Kidd was going to evolve, change, insist or return to principles closer to those of Rick Carlisle because, when he began to see an unflattering panorama (if you think about a great qualitative leap, the objective), Doncic fell and the pandemic worsened. So the Mavs are not sure where they are as a season progresses that, for now, is the most discreet, even bitter, also individually for Luka Doncic. That does not mean that it is bad or that the omens are dire for the coming months. Only that it has been below expectations, that it has received the first truly consistent reviews and, in short, that it has not been at the superlative level that it has imposed on itself as a measure. Nothing more right now.
