It was a rough night for Luka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks. For the Mavs to survive this NBA playoffs series, they need to make those evenings rough for the OKC Thunder as well, writes Emmet Ryan
The Dallas Mavericks fell, in the end, pretty comprehensively to the OKC Thunder in Game 1 of their NBA playoffs series. There was nothing surprising about the issues. The Thunder look fresh while Luka Doncic, the unquestioned star for the Mavs, is playing very hurt and very tired. To stay relevant in this series, let alone advance, Jason Kidd must adapt.
The obvious
The Mavs went into this series exhausted from a visibly gruelling series with the LA Clippers. Luka Doncic, the unquestioned star for the Dallas Mavericks played visibly injured and increasingly tired for them in that series. It therefore wasn’t a shock that the Mavs, including Doncic, looked far from chipper in Game 1 against the OKC Thunder.
There is certainly a degree of luck with the NBA Playoffs, not in terms of who is better but in the situation a team finds itself in. The Thunder are healthy and came off a much lighter series than Dallas. The Mavs are still finding their energy again. Their best man isn’t going to be 100 per cent at any point yet he has to play heavy minutes.
Anyone with even a cursory glance at the postseason up to now knows this. Yet Dallas went out and played like the situation wasn’t such. They merely ploughed ahead, throwing all they could at OKC believing that it would work, or at least that it might.
The inevitable
The recipe made the meal to plan. Luka Doncic was once again invaluable for the Dallas Mavericks yet equally inefficient. His postseason three point shooting this campaign would best be described as not good.
Without Luka able to be full Luka, the rest of the Mavs tried to raise their own tempo. This in turn fed right into what the OKC Thunder wanted. The home side knew that playing at such a pace would inevitably lead to gaps in the Dallas D and ample mistakes on both ends. All the Thunder had to do was not let their energy drop when the inescapable blunders occurred for the Mavs.
Dallas simply weren’t able to play at the level required of the NBA playoffs on these terms. The only real rest that Doncic ended up getting throughout Game 1 was at the end, when the result was effectively beyond doubt. Dallas gave the Thunder exactly what was expected and it was a plug and play win for the top seeds in the Western Conference.
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So change it
Well, at least in the near-term. When your top guy is tired and broken, you have three options. The first is to play him less or not at all. We can all accept that won’t happen with Luka Doncic. The second is for the Dallas Mavericks to keep doing what got them past the Clippers. That doesn’t look wise given what happened. The third option is quite radical for this stage of the NBA playoffs.
The Mavs need to adapt to Doncic being tired and broken and build their game out from there. It’s rarely a wise strategy but against an OKC Thunder team that delights in up tempo shootouts, it jumps out as the logical course of action.
Dallas needs to drag this one into a street fight. It’s not about brawling, it’s about making the game ugly. Make it tight, make fast breaks a nuisance, make the game slower on the whole. The Mavs have got to force a deliberate pace on this series in order to frustrate the healthier OKC roster. The Thunder are young and fun, they want to run. Make them hate it out there in order to induce more mistakes.
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Jason Kidd, paradoxically, has the tools to do it
Looking at the Dallas Mavericks roster, it doesn’t immediately scream of a team that can make such a radical shift. Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving are both known more for their offensive play than anything on the defensive end. Everyone takes their lead from Doncic and Irving too.
Yet look within that. Doncic and Irving are both quite comfortable operating in tight spaces. Luka’s game is rather built for it despite his heavy usage. Both can play a much slower game to drive the offensive side of things.
The rest of the roster have one common thing going for them. They’re already tired. A more deliberate, classic NBA playoffs level approach will preserve them somewhat. It will also negate the clear ability of the OKC Thunder to wear them down and forces such error-strewn phases.
It won’t be pretty to watch. Such an approach almost certainly isn’t sustainable long-term. It might, at least for a game or two, enable the Mavs to get their air back while beating some out of the Thunder. Survive and advance is the name of the game. Right now, the Mavs need to focus on the former to enable any hope of the latter.
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