Why Luka Doncic is having the “best season of his career” with Mavericks | Hoops Tonight

Why Luka Doncic is having the “best season of his career” with Mavericks | Hoops Tonight

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So you guys don’t miss any of our content over the course of this season all right let’s talk some basketball this to me feels like a real MVP type of campaign from Luca donic now whether or not he wins it is is dependent on so many other things mainly because the

League is so damn stacked with talent that it’s just really difficult to separate yourselves self these days but Luca looks like an MVP and we’re going to talk about all these specific basketball things but most importantly the biggest element of the case in my opinion is he has instilled his

Teammates with a sense of belief and confidence that what they’re doing will lead to victories in basketball games and this is a team by the way that was limited in Talent when they were when they were fully healthy but Kyrie’s Miss significant time Josh Green missed significant time Maxi kba dislocated his

Toe been out forever that’s three of their most important rotation players and their secondary Creator arguably easily their second most important player and he’s kept them afloat they’re 18 and 12 they’re right in the mix of things and a huge part of it is just every single guy on that team has a

Belief that what they’re doing is going to work and and as a result they’re incredibly bought in they’re incredibly focused it’s in interesting to see the ju toos of the kinds of extra efforts that you’re seeing guys on the Mavericks make and then you’re seeing Devin Booker

Yelling at his teammates for not getting back after turning the basketball over which by the way Devon’s correct to be upset about but the point is is you’re seeing similar types of supporting casts these are all Castaways the sun’s got all these veteran minimum guys and the Mavericks got all these veteran minimum

Guys really Grant Williams is the one guy we can point to as is like okay they got him through a sign and trade and got him at a decent salary number but the difference is they’re the the guys on the maps they’re locked into their roles

And the guys on the Suns it just it’s just not coming together the same way and that that to me is the is the strongest part of of Luca’s MVP case um that said well by the way before we get to the Luca stuff they’re 13th in

Defense over the last 15 games and like Luca has been making solid defensive rotations he’s closing out with a with an intensity that you’re not accustomed to seeing from Luca he’s been found found himself in a lot of low man situations and weak side situations where he’s like guarding two guys and

Having to kind of like split the difference and try to bait a guy into making a pass and then closing out and he’s doing a really nice job of it it’s it’s from the top down it’s trickling down it’s outstanding leadership in my opinion very very different from the

Luca that we saw that was so disengaged towards the tail end of last year and I think it’s a direct uh uh you know it’s a direct driving force between a lot of the success or for a lot of the success they’ve had this season uh on the the the Luca donic

Front everything starts with pull-up shooting he has made 44 more pull-up jumper or taken excuse me he’s taking 44 more pull-up jumpers than anyone else in the league he’s the only player in the NBA who’s taken over 300 pull-up jump shots and he’s getting 1.09 points per shot on them couple of

Things he’s taking these uh pullup jump shots has threes instead of twos which is driving up the efficiency right and that step back three one one of the things I like he’s quickened his release a little bit too he’s making it more of like an athletic move as as opposed to

Kind of like a uses size and lean back move his release looks a little bit quicker but he’s just dialed in and he’s locked in with that pull-up jump shot and again we talk about making the shot at a at a at a a phase that’s untenable

If you’re taking a lot of long Twos for instance like Kevin Durant does and even if you’re shooting a higher percentage than Luka they’re worth fewer points it can be something where the defense is like ah we can live with that shot right but when it’s 1.09 points per shot it

Can get to the point especially on a night like last night where he’s so locked in it can get to a point where it’s like it’s untenable we have to Zone up on this guy in isos Blitz him in pick and rolls just find a way to get the

Ball out of his hands that’s the primary driving force of with him from the perimeter and then he handles pressure extremely well so the smaller at like quick Defenders that are handsy they don’t bother him a lot of that is just he’s really good at protecting the

Basketball and he’s big as hell and then he can beat anyone off the dribble right now we talked about this when they beat the Lakers a while back but like like uh doesn’t matter if he’s starting from a triple threat from the elbow or off the

Dribble from 30 feet if he uses ball screen isolation it just doesn’t matter because of his size and his command of the basketball he’s going to get an angle and he’s going to shoot that Gap and he’s going to get dribble penetration and then from there he’s got

Every shot in the book I was pulling up the Synergy sheet today and Synergy has this page called shot types and when you pull it up is where I get a lot of there’s different there’s play types and there’s shot types those are the two primary screens that I use on Synergy

And you know play types are going to sorted through to like spot up possessions pick and roll ball handler uh transition cutting offensive rebound putbacks ISO post up all these different play types right and then even then you can sort them out to different uh uh uh sides of the floor different driving

Angles that all these different things Synergy is great Tool uh but on the shot types element like there’s they have jump shot and then it’s split down and it’s like there’s catch and shoots and there’s unguarded catch and shoots there’s guarded catch and shoots there’s off the- dribble jump shots there’s what

They call early jumpers which is basically like when you uh isolate and you shoot it quick in The Possession there’s uh floaters there’s hook shots there’s uh layups there’s dunks it’s sorted all out there and what was crazy is every single shot of type shot type on that list

Including contested un contested uh catch and shoot off the dribble floater hook everything he’s up over a point per possession every single shot type Luca’s shooting 59% on floaters this year 78% at the rim and so it’s just an incredibly efficient set of shot making that makes it untenable to leave him in

Any sort of basic traditional coverage or single coverage as a result career high in points per game career high in true shooting percentage this is just the best we’ve ever seen from Luca and like I said when you combine that with the leadership and the way it’s held

This team together through some pretty tough circumstances I I mean we’ll see we got to do our MVP rankings uh uh uh later on this week or next week and and he’s going to be higher than what where he was and we’ll see again a lot of things

Have to break right for him with in terms of competition uh like other people that are up for the the award but this looks like an MVP type of season from Luka donic to this point he

Jason Timpf breaks down the MVP-like season that Luka Doncic is having with the Dallas Mavericks. Luka has the Mavs right in the middle of the western conference race where he is averaging a career high in both points and assists. With Kyrie Irving having missed half the season so far, Luka has had to carry the team in his most impressive season to date.

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