This team has taken the phrase ‘let the superstar fix it’ to a whole new level. The Dallas Mavericks are currently in the midst of a 4-game losing streak as their overreliance on Luka Doncic has really exposed them to the league’s best teams.
There’s no easy way to say this: the Dallas Mavericks are a bad team…without Luka Doncic.
With Jalen Brunson leaving for New York this past offseason, the Dallas Maverick have been completely bereft of perimeter scoring whenever Luka Doncic is either out with injury/illness or has an off night. Actually, to be honest, the Mavericks don’t really have interior scoring either as they have the 4th worst offensive rebounding percentage in the league (24.1%) and the 2nd worst total rebounding percentage (47.6%).
That’s not a winning formula to get to the NBA Finals, even in this age of point guards and perimeter shooting.
A team needs to be able to rebound the basketball and control the rim, while also being able to get shots from outside the arc to win meaningful games (i.e.: the Larry O’Brien Trophy). The Mavericks are able to get the perimeter shots with Luka Doncic and he’s able to get to the rim whenever he wants on his own, but the Mavericks team lacks that same ability. And that’s why they are currently on a 4-game losing streak that has plummeted their record to 9-10.
Sure, the Mavericks have been able to beat the lesser teams in the NBA with the brilliance of Luka as most franchise superstars have been able to do throughout all the eras of the NBA. If you put up this version of the Detroit Pistons against Michael Jordan and four bags of flour (sorry Detroit), I’d still take Jordan. It’s a testament to how overpowered a franchise superstar is in the NBA.
But, if you give Michael Jordan this Mavericks team and put him up against the ‘Bad Boys’ Detroit Pistons, the Pistons will win every time. Just like how a superstar can dominate a lesser team, a great team can dominate a superstar.
The Denver Nuggets, the Boston Celtics, the Milwaukee Bucks, and the Toronto Raptors (well, they’re iffy) are great teams in the NBA and have more than enough firepower to outshine Luka Doncic. That’s not meant to be disrespectful to Doncic, but rather an acceptance of reality. Just like Michael Jordan in the 1980’s with the Bulls, Doncic cannot win an NBA championship with 6-8 role players around him.
To be honest, I’ve been baffled all season long with the Mavericks reluctance to give Luka some support to win a title. This was one of the best chances Doncic will ever have to win a title in Dallas as not only has the West been weakened with the misfiring from the GSW, the fall of the Lakers, the Suns and Chris Paul choking as always, and the Nuggets still vulnerable enough to beat in a 7-game series, but also that the East isn’t anything to brag about after the Bucks and Celtics.
The NBA is vulnerable, but Mark Cuban and the rest of the Mavericks management hierarchy saw otherwise and literally took away pieces from Doncic by not resigning his wingman Brunson.
We’ll see if the Mavericks can get their season back on track against the struggling Warriors tonight, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. The Mavericks aren’t making it past the 2nd round this season…if they even make the playoffs at all.
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