The Mavericks haven’t been afraid to gamble in the Luka Dončić era.
Dallas’s phenom guard emerged as a force to be reckoned with across the league within his first few months in the Metroplex, accelerating the Mavericks’ rebuild in short order. Kristaps Porziņģis was acquired in a blockbuster trade just 49 games into Dončić’s career. Coach Rick Carlisle left the organization in June 2021 before Dallas hired Jason Kidd, a move at least partly attributed to Carlisle’s clashing with Dončić. As Dončić approached his fourth NBA season, Dallas’s directive was clear: Do everything possible to build a winner around the team’s generational talent.
Dončić scoring and assist totals suggested he was cruising to another All-NBA selection for the first portion of 2021–22. He averaged 25.6 points, 8.9 rebounds and 8.9 assists per game before the calendar turned to February, flirting with a season-long triple double in what has become an annual occurrence. But a deeper look suggests Dončić wasn’t truly playing like someone who belonged anywhere near the MVP race.
Dončić shot just 44.4% from the field and 30.9% from three before Feb. 1. He went to the foul line just 6.6 times per game—a worse mark than his rookie season—and Dallas outscored teams by a measly 1.4 points per 100 possessions with Dončić on the floor. The middling play was evident outside the numbers. Dončić looked a step slower than he did in previous seasons on drives to the rim, and he was more plodding than purposed as he dribbled up the floor and assessed the defense. This isn't speculation. Take it from Dončić himself. He and the Mavericks weren’t any sort of contender in the Western Conference for much of 2021–22.
“I had a long summer. I had the Olympics, took three weeks off and I relaxed a little bit, maybe too much,” Dončić told the media in December. “I've just got to get back on track."
Such struggles feel like a lifetime ago in Dallas as we approach the final month of the regular season. The Mavericks enter Wednesday night on a 50-win pace, sporting an 11–2 record in their last 13 contests. Dončić is averaging 34.4 points, 10.6 rebounds and 8.6 assists in that span. His shooting percentages have seen a steady increase, and he’s attempted 9.5 free throws per game since Feb. 1. Part of Dončić’s rise in recent weeks can simply be attributed to his increased fitness, as well as a now-healthy ankle that hobbled him for much of the season’s first half. But the real spark came from Dallas’s most recent gamble.
The Mavericks broke up its All-Star duo on Feb. 10, as they sent Porziņģis to Washington in perhaps the biggest surprise of deadline day. The move was praised initially for its salary cap implications—shedding $33.8 million next season and $36 million in 2023–24—with the on-court contributions of incoming guard Spencer Dinwiddie and forward Dāvis Bertāns treated as something of an afterthought.
Dinwiddie struggled from the field in his short stint with Washington as he worked his way back from his ACL surgery. Struggled would be a charitable description of Bertāns’s performance, in which the former sharpshooter’s scoring plummeted to 5.7 points per game on 35.1% from the field. Perhaps Dallas’s deadline move was a prudent play for the future health of the franchise. Though to most, dealing Porziņģis signaled that the Mavericks were willing to take a brief step back.
Dinwiddie has played a major role in defying the dampened expectations. He’s hit 17 of 38 threes in his first eight games with Dallas, drilling open looks as opponents shift their defense toward and outright double-team Dončić. There’s likely some regression coming from beyond the arc, (Dinwiddie has shot 32.7% from three since 2016–17), though the triples are just part of Dinwiddie’s impact. He’s an exceptional secondary ballhandler who gets to the foul line at a healthy clip, with a shifty pick-and-roll game that can serve as the engine of an offense when Dončić sits. Dinwiddie never found his footing in Washington. He’s now thriving as he plays alongside a transcendent offensive player.
“[Dinwiddie] is a bigger guard, that’s something that’s helped us,” Kidd says. “And he’s not afraid. He makes big plays, he reads what the defense is giving him. He can do a lot for us.”
Kidd deserves a share of credit for Dinwiddie’s smooth transition. Dallas’s new guard credits his coach for providing a reduced template of plays and sets, noting, “Nothing we do is all that complicated.” The Hall of Fame point guard isn’t looking to dictate every action. He’s placed a deep level of trust in his ballhandlers, leading a culture of empowerment that expands across the roster.
“[Kidd] keeps it simple,” Dinwiddie says. “I have to be ready to shoot, be ready to restart the blender and collapse the defense. ... He trusts us to make plays for each other, to keep the ball moving.”
Dallas is rarely without two of its three main ballhandlers on the floor, with Jalen Brunson spending many of his minutes paired with either Dončić or Dinwiddie. The Villanova product is somewhat of a connective tissue for Dallas’s backcourt. Dončić and Dinwiddie enjoy probing defenses in the pick-and-roll, bobbing horizontally as they shift the gravity of the floor. Brunson eschews such careful maneuvering. He sports a smooth stroke as a catch-and-shoot option (hitting 38.9%) of threes this season, and more importantly, he’s a hellacious driver for someone standing 6'1".
Brunson and Dončić are the league’s lone teammates to rank in the top 15 in points per game via drives. Brunson is shooting 55% at the rim, a better mark than Ja Morant, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Donovan Mitchell and his teammate Dončić. And while Brunson isn’t exactly a feared isolation threat, he’s quite efficient when tasked with running the show. Brunson is one of three players this season to tally 300 assists with fewer than 125 turnovers. He’s logged one or fewer turnover in more than half his games, and he’s sported a positive plus-minus in 12 of his last 13 contests. Brunson is far more than a secondary scorer. He’s a careful steward of the offense when Dončić sits.
Jerome Miron/USA TODAY Sports
Dallas still ranks last in the league in pace since trading Porziņģis, likely a byproduct of Dončić’s proclivity to hunt favorable matchups for long stretches of the shot clock. Yet while the numbers may reflect as such, there does seem to be an uptick in the general flow of Dallas’s offense.
Both Dinwiddie and Brunson are aggressive drivers and playmakers off the catch, while floor spacers in Bertāns, Dorian Finney-Smith—who is also a fringe All-Defense candidate—Reggie Bullock and Maxi Kleber let threes fly with a quick trigger. Dallas’s pre-deadline offense still seemed like a polite tug-of-war, as the flow of the game was often interrupted by dump-offs to Porziņģis on the block. Kidd was more willing to embrace that than his predecessor, though, ultimately, Porziņģis was nowhere close to the efficiency necessary (0.89 points per possession) to make the possessions worthwhile. Porziņģis remains, when healthy, a tantalizing talent. Though as Dallas discovered, his skills may not be well-tailored to the modern game.
Dallas’s hopes of an extended playoff run this year once again lie on Dončić’s shoulders. He is, as Kings coach Alvin Gentry put it, “the head of the snake,” a player who can make a competitor out of even the most rag-tag roster. The Mavericks exited in the first round in 2020 and 2021 despite a healthy share of Dončić heroics, with middling rosters keeping a firm ceiling on the team’s playoff hopes. Perhaps this new supporting cast will be the catalyst behind Dallas’s first series win in over a decade.
