The first couple of months of the season weren’t all that inspiring for the Mavericks.
Dallas, which kept its roster largely the same as last season, came into the new year with a sub-.500 mark at 17–18. At that point in the campaign, the Mavs ranked just 17th in offensive efficiency—a wildly disappointing metric given that the club broke an NBA record for the most efficient offense ever in 2020. Some of the dropoff could be attributed to Kristaps Porziņģis missing a quarter of the season’s games at that point in the schedule. But just as much, if not more, could be laid at the feet of franchise player Luka Dončić, who eventually acknowledged not coming into the season in the greatest shape conditioning-wise following a few weeks of relaxation after competing in the Olympics for Slovenia.
With all that in mind, it must be a good feeling for the Mavericks and coach Jason Kidd to be tied for fourth in the West while still having a chance to catch the Steph Curry-less Warriors, who have a three-game advantage for third with three weeks left in the regular season.
Porziņģis is gone, having been dealt to the Wizards. The offense still isn’t what it’s been in the past, but the club’s defense sits just outside the league’s top five in efficiency, a massive climb from last season when it was tied for 20th. And Dončić, initially struggling a bit to finish games—particularly at the free throw line—has since improved his conditioning and made a late push as a back-end MVP candidate.
Perhaps most impactful as of late, though, is Spencer Dinwiddie, the suddenly revitalized guard who came on board in exchange for Porziņģis. There’s a case to be made that the 6'6" ball-handler singlehandedly offers the team its best opportunity to advance beyond the first round for the first time since Dončić joined the organization in 2018.
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Since the trade, Dinwiddie has shot over 50% overall and over 40% from three, while averaging almost 22 points per contest in the seven games he’s been utilized as a starter. Interestingly enough, it’s transformed the Mavericks into one of the only NBA teams—perhaps the only NBA team—that counts its three-point guards as its best scorers.
But for all the points Dinwiddie has piled up—he is fifth in the NBA in fourth-quarter scoring since the break and hit back-to-back game-winners for the Mavs earlier this month—he goes about his scoring in a fundamentally different way than Dončić and Jalen Brunson.
Where Dončić is methodical, rocking defenders to sleep at the top of the arc to get around them, Dinwiddie is more of a downhill guard, utilizing bursts of speed to drive to the cup more than a dozen times per game. And while Brunson is one of the best undersized guards in recent memory at finishing near the rim, Dinwiddie is five inches taller and forces more aggressive rotations because of the tenacity with which he attacks the basket. As a result, Dinwiddie gets to the line far more often (per shot he takes) than Dončić or Brunson.
That skill—arguably his best that he’s honed since coming into the league as someone who didn’t get the benefit of every call during his first few seasons—could prove to be incredibly valuable for the Mavericks specifically.
The team has struggled mightily the last couple of postseasons to hold its own when Dončić has had to take breathers. Just last season, the Clippers outscored the Mavs by 43 in Dončić’s 55 minutes on the bench in their first-round playoff series, even though Dončić and his Dallas teammates were a +7 in the minutes the superstar point guard was on the court. So having a playmaker who can not only set teammates up—he has 63 assists and 18 turnovers as a Mav, for a 3.5-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio—but also collect freebies by getting to the line on a consistent basis could take on added importance in those moments where Dončić has to sit. (Golden State, Denver and Minnesota—a trio of teams the Mavs could end up drawing in a first-round showdown—all rank among the league’s bottom six in defending isolations without fouling shooters and sending them to the line, according to data from Synergy Sports.)
Yet this isn’t merely about helping keep things afloat when Dončić is resting. Dončić, whose 37.1% usage rate is leading the NBA for a second straight year, can use more breathers when he’s on the court, too, and Dinwiddie helps accomplish that—both with his playmaking and his shotmaking from the perimeter to this point.
Both of the game-sealing shots he drilled, against the Celtics and against his former Nets club at the buzzer one contest later, stemmed from passes Dončić threw his way after being double-teamed. It’s a key part of why Dallas has pieced together the NBA’s best mark in the clutch (8–1) since the acquisition of Dinwiddie. (The Mavs were 12–15 in clutch scenarios prior to that.) And it’s the sort of confidence and jump-shooting audacity the team has often missed since losing wing Tim Hardaway Jr. to a fracture in his left foot back in late January.
Dallas has been solid when Dinwiddie shares the court with Dončić, beating opponents by 4.4 points per 100 possessions in 279 minutes of work. (That net rating is better than when Dončić and Brunson have shared the court.) But the numbers have been even more impressive in the time Dinwiddie’s played without Dončić to this point—with the Mavs dominating by 15.5 points per 100 possessions in 191 minutes. On Wednesday, when Dončić sat out, Dinwiddie had 26 points and Brunson finished with 28 as Dallas took down the Rockets.
If there’s an irony in all this, it’s that the Wizards, who hoped Dinwiddie would do these things in the nation’s capital, unloaded him to Dallas after he struggled to fit alongside Bradley Beal. The other day, in fact, Beal—who’s out for the season—said during a Wizards telecast that he felt his club needed to add “bigger guards” and “more guys who can get in the paint for us”; something that would seem to describe a healthy, fully utilized Dinwiddie to a tee.
But a report from The Ringer suggested that Dinwiddie’s teammates in Washington were ready to see him go, and Dinwiddie said reading those criticisms was challenging for him to come to grips with. He feels more embraced in Dallas so far and is playing that way.
“He’s been very receptive to coaching and to his teammates, and they trust him,” Kidd said recently. “That’s one of the hardest things is, how fast will the trust take place? I think you can see the trust is at a high level when he’s on the floor.”
His time in Washington actually began fairly similar to what he’s doing now for Dallas. He averaged 17 and six assists per night as the Wizards got out to a surprising 10–3 start. Dinwiddie was even standing out for his contributions to Washington in clutch situations, similar to the way he’s done so far for the Mavs. But that was before he cooled down considerably and struggled to maintain consistency in his first season back from a partially torn ACL. Among the things that fell off most with Washington after those first few weeks was Dinwiddie’s shot from three-point range. Through those first 13 contests, he shot 37.7% from deep. Over his final 32 contests as a Wizard, though, he hit just 28% of those tries.
How long he’s able to keep up the 40.5% shooting from three for Dallas remains to be seen. Given that he’s a career 32.1% shooter from three, it may not last. But for a Dallas club that’s desperately needed secondary scoring from someone other than Brunson, the Mavs are hoping Dinwiddie’s flame can burn long enough to finally carry them beyond the first round.
