The Dallas Mavericks lost to the San Antonio Spurs by 33 points Wednesday night in Dallas. Lack of spacing, shot creation, defensive cohesion – and too much Victor Wembanyama – are just some of the issues the Mavs struggled with in the nightmare start to the season.
During the preseason, the Mavs have been very vocal about wanting to be an elite defense this year. And after a lackluster effort on the defensive end in game one, Jason Kidd was asked what went wrong defensively in his post-game interview:
“Our offense. It starts offensively, so we’ve gotta be better offensively and that will help our defense.”
The Mavs seemed to struggle creating shots for others all game, but Kidd didn’t see it quite that way. The solution is simple, he says:
“We didn’t have trouble, we just didn’t pass the ball. That’s easy to fix. Just make a play for a teammate.”
The number of assists by the starters backs this up. Dereck Lively, who only played ten minutes at center due to foul trouble, led the starters in assists with three. Only six assists all game came from the five starters, and none from Cooper Flagg.
On a side note and personal pet peeve, maybe it’s not a good idea to put a rookie natural four in the position of point guard, no matter his incredible talent, to start his NBA career, as Kidd has been wanting to do. I wrote a whole thing about why, here. Flagg did fine in his debut, however, with a double double of ten points and ten rebounds, he’s a great player and will get his time to shine soon.
Back to the problems with passing the ball. Anthony Davis, 22 points and 13 rebounds, didn’t look the part of a franchise player at all, despite leading all scorers, isolating too much and settling for midrange jumpers. He had one assist. After the game, he made clear that he saw way too much isolation offense – hopefully he was including himself in this statement:
“We were playing a lot of isolation basketball, we’re not gonna win games like that. We got guys that are capable of doing it, but we don’t want to play like that… We gotta be able to move the basketball from side to side and get good looks,” he said after the game.
The diagnosis may be spot on. But is the fix that simple? The problem with calling something an easy fix like Kidd did, is the fact that people will hold you up to that next game, and the games after that.
Was it that easily fixed? Just pass the ball? Or is there an underlying issue here that needs to be addressed?
Maybe the lack of a true point guard who can create on the highest level to match the incredible talent on the team is starting to show? Maybe positionless basketball doesn’t work when most of your roster is limited to one position?
These are just some of the questions we should ask ourselves after a blowout loss to a team, which – granted – has the next European superstar leveling up as we speak. But don’t the Mavs have the next American superstar? And don’t they have one of the best defensive bigs in the league?
There are a lot of questions left unanswered after the season opener. Let’s hope Kidd and the team find a way to solve both the easy and the hard problems facing this group before long. Or maybe just remind them to pass the ball more.
