I am a known Kyrie Irving hater at this point (and for good reason) but his star power has led many people to believe that the Mavericks are a legit contender. The sample size of Mavericks games has been pretty small with the Irving-Luka duo, but it is clear that the team simply does not have enough depth, size or defense to make any real noise in the playoffs.
According to Statmuse, the Mavericks have a defensive rating of 122.6 points per game in games Kyrie has played in. For context, the Spurs have the worst defensive rating this season at 120 ppg. Oh wait did I say this season? I meant that the Spurs this season have the worst defensive rating of ALL TIME. Meaning the Mavs defense with Kyrie is two and a half points worse than the WORST defense of ALL TIME.
Now a Mavericks fan might point out that the Mavs have played five top-10 offenses in the nine games Kyrie has played in (Kingsx2, Nuggets, 76ers and Durant-Suns). Additionally, the Mavericks were the 6th best defense last season, meaning they have the potential to be great on that side. The first point is well taken, the sample size is small and skewed. I highly doubt that the Kyrie-Mavs will be by far the worst defense of all time but it seems fair to assume that they will be bottom 10 in the league.
There is a shocking lack of continuity between the Mavericks team that was the 6th best defense and the team this year. Last year, the Mavericks core revolved around Dinwiddie, Brunson and Dorian Finney-Smith who are all gone. In the playoffs, the Mavericks will now have to ask Josh Green, Tim Hardaway Jr. and Bullock to guard the other team’s best wings. The Mavericks fundamental problem is that their three best players (Wood, Luka and Kyrie) are all minuses on the defensive end.
“Defense wins championships” is the only true basketball cliché
Since 2014, 66% of the teams that made the conference finals were top 10 in defense. ‘Yeah, but that Mavs have two of the best offensive players maybe ever, surely we are in that exception 33%’. Well, 5 of the 12 conference finalists with pedestrian defenses were Bron/Steph teams that had already won the finals. Leaving the following 7 teams: the 2021 Hawks (thanks, Ben Simmons), bubble Nugs and Heat, 2019 Blazers (got swept), 2017 Celtics (lost 4-1, it was not the boom Bron year), 2016 Raps (LeBronto) and 2016 Thunder.
In other words, if you don’t have a top 10 defense you are either a Bron/Steph team, fundamentally unserious fluke run team or the 2016 Thunder.
Jason Kidd: What Have You Done for Me Lately?
It feels like after one good season last year everyone in the NBA community has completely forgotten about Jason Kidd’s abysmal coaching resume. Before arriving in Dallas, Kidd managed to only last one season with the Nets, hold back a budding Bucks core and nod his head on the Lakers bench.
Albeit with a young core, Kidd was never able to take the Giannis-Middelton-Brodgon core above 42 wins. In his three full years as the head coach of the Bucks, they finished with 41, 33 and 42 wins. In fact, the year Kidd got fired the team finished with a better overall record under interim coach Joe Prunty (21-16) than they did with Kidd (23-22).
The next season, the Bucks hired Coach Bud and immediately became a 60 win team. If your team goes from essentially a perennially .500 team to a 60 win team because of a coaching change that means not only that your new coach is good but also that your old coach really sucked. During Kidd’s time as the coach of the Bucks he was known for a super aggressive trapping style of defense that simply did not work. Everyone in the league thinks of Mark Jackson as a total clown who held back the Warriors, I’m not really sure why Kidd doesn’t get the same treatment.
If you haven’t read Mirin Fader’s book on Giannis, close your laptop and go buy it right now. One of the craziest things in the book was all of the anecdotes about Jason Kidd as a coach. Kidd pretty much single handedly ended the budding career of Larry Sanders.
The Bucks were coming off a disappointing loss a few days before Christmas and Kidd decided that everyone had to cancel their Christmas-eve plans so they could come into the gym at 9am to have a hard practice. During the intense and physical practice, Kidd called Jeff Sanders “pathetic”, “a piece of shit”, and a “terrible player”. Sanders asked to be excused to use the bathroom and then immediately left the facility to check into a hospital where he then spent the next 3 days. That was pretty much the last we ever heard of Larry Sanders who was once one of the league’s best rim protectors averaging almost 3 a game.
There were many other stories like this, although not quite as extreme, throughout the book. You have to also wonder how many of these stories got left on the cutting room floor. Maybe I am soft and mentally weak but I would never sign up to have someone like Kidd be my boss. What an absolutely toxic environment he created. I just don’t understand how someone who would ever think that is appropriate could become a good leader.
The logical counter argument is that Kidd was still pretty new to coaching when all of this happened and that his tenure in Milwaukee was a learning experience for him. Kidd was, afterall, an assistant coach with the Lakers for two years and helped them to win a championship. Additionally, the Mavericks were really good last year and he showed improvement as a coach, turning away from his crazy schemes from the Bucks days.
My answer to this is two fold. First, I think there was a bit of addition by subtraction letting Carlise go. Not in the sense that Carlise is a bad coach (I think he is a good one) but that the team needed a bit of a reset and the Luka relationship was damaged with Carlise. Kidd offered a new voice in the locker room that could hold players accountable, especially on the defensive end, in a way that Carlise was not capable of.
Second, I think Kidd is a clear candidate for the Tom Thibbedou effect. The new hardass coach enters the locker room and absolutely puts his players through the ringer. At first it works, the team is putting up a great defensive effort, winning games and the players buy in. As time goes on, however, the players begin to feel exhausted by the constant badgering and physical toll the hardass coach puts on the team. The seeds of discontent are sowed and the team faces an existential crisis.
Go Slow to Go Fast
The sad reality is that I love Luka and I want to see him surrounded by a championship caliber roster but the Mavericks front office has massively blundered at every major team-building turn. The failures extend way beyond just the KP deal. In fact, I would say that was the best deal both at the time and in hindsight. Dennis Smith Jr. and two firsts for Tim Hardaway Jr. and a player that had the potential to be All-NBA doesn’t seem so bad. It makes the Vooch trade look like a stroke of genius.
There is a realistic alternate universe where the Mavericks agreed to a 4-year 80 million dollar extension with Brunson (the Mavs said no), kept Finney-Smith and Dinwiddie and didn’t flush their mid-level exception down the toilet for a washed Javale McGee. That team has three competent ball handlers, plus defenders, cap space and a boat load of assets to play with.
My brother is the odd breed of person that could easily become a LinkedIn influencer and recently he has been stuck on one LinkedIn-cliché: “go slow to go fast”. Since the moment Luka arrived, the Mavericks have been in hyperdrive to find another superstar to put next to Luka. But all of the short cuts have stripped the Mavericks of the assets that are actually needed to put a competent co-star next to Luka. Dear Dallas, stop trying to go fast to go fast because the only place you are going right now is Cancún.
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The Reedbound 