Luka Doncic feasts on the defensive mismatches the Mavericks serve up

For the Dallas Mavericks, the plan of attack is usually pretty simple: give Luka Doncic the ball and get the hell out of the way.

No player shoulders the offensive burden that Luka does on a nightly basis. The Mavs roster is made up almost entirely of role players who complement Doncic’s play, mostly with 3-point shooters and bigs with an interior rebounding presence.

The challenge, then, is in getting creative on offense when there aren’t many other creators around. Walking up the court every possession, giving the ball to Luka, and letting him loose in isolation makes the Mavs too predictable and much easier to guard. There needs to be some sort of movement, some initial action to force the defense to react to them instead of having it the other way around.

While not a magnum opus of ball movement, Jason Kidd and company have found a lot of traction in a simple guard-to-guard high ball screen that leads to a pick-and-pop. With so many wings and shooters on the court, Kidd will strategically pick one to go set the screen for Luka based on matchups.

If a guy is hot from deep, he’ll set the screen, hoping that will get him another open look or a concerned defense will pay more attention to the shooter than the MVP candidate. Against the Brooklyn Nets earlier this season, when the Mavs ran this play nonstop, Luka would draw two defenders, leaving his shooter in Josh Green wide open atop the key.

You can see the goal here was not to switch for the Nets, to keep Kevin Durant on Doncic and prevent second-year guard Cam Thomas from drawing the assignment.

Some Mavs are really good at attacking out of that situation and getting to the rim when they get sprung free. Tim Hardaway Jr., in particular, will re-penetrate and attack the basket when Doncic throws the ball back to him on an early pick-and-pop.

What happens most frequently, though, should be no surprise. Doncic feasts on these matchups that are created for his benefit. Most of the time, the Mavericks are surgical about selecting who they want to screen for Doncic, forcing a switch that takes a talented individual defender off their superstar and replacing him with a smaller body.

Against the Los Angeles Clippers, a team with many big wings, the switches got Doncic guarded by John Wall and Reggie Jackson instead of Paul George or Marcus Morris.

There are countless examples of the Mavericks leveraging this with those guard-to-guard screens near the top or from the corners. It’s mismatch-hunting at its finest.

Who would you rather be guarded by, Durant or Cam Thomas? Jerami Grant or Damian Lillard? Josh Hart or Anfernee Simons? Jarred Vanderbilt or Mike Conley? There’s an easy answer to all of these, so if the Mavericks are going to play through Doncic isolations, they might as well make his life simpler in the process.

Since Kidd took over, the Mavs have committed to playing more wings and being much bigger across the board. According to his basketball-reference page, Doncic hasn’t spent a minute at small forward or larger over the last two seasons. By playing him at a guard spot, it means there’s nowhere for smaller guys that Luka can bully are able to hide.

Sometimes the defense is predictable and switches by design. The Boston Celtics, for example, are well-known for their frequent swaps on the defensive end and dare teams to beat them in isolation. That’s usually a winning bet for the C’s, except for when Doncic comes to town.

Finding the mismatch becomes simple when you know the defense will switch. Whoever Al Horford was guarding would set the screen, and Doncic feasted on the pre-Thanksgiving night pickings. He torched Horford on four possessions after those switches:

Doncic has the ability to call off those switches when defenses start to get tricky. You could see later in that game the Celtics try to pre-switch an action that would keep Horford away from being involved in the pick-and-pop. Doncic notices what the Celtics do and calls for Hardaway to clear out instead of setting the screen, allowing Luka to take his chances playing one-on-one with Grant Williams as opposed to reigning Defensive Player of the Year Marcus Smart.

On other occasions, the Dallas wings are the ones recognizing the defensive trickery and helping Doncic out by getting out of the way quickly. Take this possession against the Washington Wizards, for example. The Wizards wisely maneuver themselves off-ball to try and protect big man Daniel Gafford from a switch onto Luka. But the Mavs role players are smart enough to know how to counter it. Watch Maxi Kleber wisely clear out and let someone else come up to set the screen.

Smart defense, smarter offense.

Where things start to get really complex is in the Mavs use of double high ball screens. They’ll add a big man to the mix, like Dwight Powell or Christian Wood, and send him to the rim as a roller off one of the two screens. All the extra body does is complicate the switch for the defense. Will they triple-switch across the matchups? Can they correctly communicate through which ones to switch and which not to in such a brief window? Dallas is betting that they cannot.

Most of the time, the Mavs are correct. Here you’ll see two versions of the double screen against the Denver Nuggets. On the first one, Luka glides into the lane, taking advantage of the botched communication to get all the way to the hoop for a layup. On the second, where the guard-to-guard screen comes after a big man sets it, the Nuggets cannot communicate fast enough to avoid a switch, exposing Bones Hyland to the best one-on-one scorer in the world:

Dallas has many variations of double high ball screens. When teams focus too much on Luka, they dial up different versions to get other guys open. Against the Portland Trail Blazers, who were aggressively showing on Luka as he came off the second screen, the Mavs cleared out the entire back side with a simple baseline exit screen. Christian Wood would set the second, then dive to the rim as his man stunted at Doncic.

The result was open dunks for Wood on consecutive possessions.

Perhaps my favorite wrinkle the Mavs have thrown in there is having both screeners in the double pick action be shooting wings. You can see the Clippers confusion as Ivica Zubac pre-switches to stay inside guarding the action, then realizing seconds later that his man, Dwight Powell, is standing in the corner. Both Reggie Bullock and Hardaway pop to the perimeter, and Zubac’s unwillingness to leave the lane creates a wide open pick-and-pop. Brilliantly simple disguising by the Mavs.

The Mavs’ offensive strategy, especially late in games or quarters, has become a bet with the other team: you can’t hide anyone from Luka Doncic. If a poor defender is on the floor, the Mavs will find a way to get him onto their superstar and then feast.

While some don’t enjoy the constant isolation-driven attack that Doncic’s team deploys, there is a method to the madness. His teammates and coaches work to get Luka the easiest matchup possible. It’s still team basketball, just a different brand of it.

Most importantly, it’s working. Doncic is averaging 33.4 points on 50% shooting and 8.2 assists per game. The Mavs have the 12th-rated offense in the league, even when fueled predominantly by one player. They’re keeping it simple for their star and finding success in doing so.