The Dallas Mavericks have been one of the pleasant surprises in the NBA this season. They are currently 40-26, which is likely better than most people thought they would be after they made some big changes to their brain trust.
Donnie Nelson and Rick Carlisle both departed last offseason and were replaced by Nico Harrison and Jason Kidd. Early in the season, a lot of the team’s success looked like a facade, as a deeper dive into the statistics showed a team that was lucky to be winning as much as they were.
However, some of the statistics have regressed to the mean, and Dallas has continued winning games.
The early season mirage has proven to be sustainable as they are in fifth place in the Western Conference, 2.5 games ahead of the Minnesota Timberwolves, who hold the top spot in the NBA Play-In Tournament.
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One NBA scout attributes a lot of the team’s success to Kidd’s scheme defensively. He has experimented with different lineups and has landed on one with Dorian Finney-Smith playing small-ball center that has found some success.
“He has that team competing on defense in ways they weren’t doing under Carlisle. I like the small ball lineups with Finney-Smith, too. Things were clunky on offense early but he’s opened the floor up a lot with the spacing for Luka and the other guards. It seems their players are truly bought into his coaching.”
Finney-Smith’s chance to play more minutes in the middle arose from the team trading Kristaps Porzingis to the Washington Wizards in exchange for Spencer Dinwiddie and Davis Bertans. While he doesn’t have the rim-protecting impact that Porzingis brings, Finney-Smith is a much stronger overall defender.
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Finney-Smith can switch 1-5, giving the Mavericks much-needed versatility on that end of the court against teams who play positionless basketball. But, as the scout pointed out, to Jason Kidd’s credit he tried running things through Porzingis and they were not as successful as the team was hoping. So, a change was made.
“To his credit, he empowered Porzingis to play his game down low early in the season. There was enough sample size for them to see that brand of basketball just wasn’t worthwhile.”
The Dallas Mavericks had high hopes for the Porzingis and Luka Doncic pairing, but things never truly got going. But, the sooner the better it was for the team to move on since things weren’t working out as well as they had hoped.
