Luka and his Lobgoblins have weaponized the alley-oop like no one else

I nearly fell off my couch when a graphic popped up in the Game 3 broadcast of the Western Conference Finals stating that the Dallas Mavericks had five time as many alley-oop dunks in the playoffs as second-place Denver. Even accounting for the extra games Dallas has played, that’s outrageous. I had to know more. So I dusted off my Excel skills, got out my data-shovel, and did some digging.

The oop is a curious thing; it has that oh-so-rare combination of efficiency and beauty. (It’s hard to know exactly how efficient, given that a missed oop can be categorized a number of different ways, but lobs still convert far more often than they don’t). There have never been more alley-oops in the league than in this era. Passing skill has never been higher, and spacing for rim-runs has never been more prominent.

But lobs still occur less frequently than you might think. Per my data, Dallas tied with Utah (!) for 121 made alley-oop dunks in the regular season, the most in the league. That’s 1.5 per game. Atlanta (102), led by talented lob-thrower Trae Young, is the only other team that even cracked 100.

[Thanks for reading! This was originally intended for a more general NBA audience, so please apologize for some of the "no duh" stuff in here for Mavs fans. As always, I've collected a bunch of illustrative video clips that can be found here or linked throughout the article.]

If we narrow it down to just the 30 games starting Feb 10th, the first game after the trade for Daniel Gafford, the Mavs led the league by a mile. They tabulated 61 alley-oop slams compared to just 39 by the second-place Golden State Warriors over that stretch, or two per game. In the playoffs, though, against multiple talented defenses locked in on the lob, that pace would be harder to maintain, right?

Hilariously wrong.

Smash-cut to the Western Conference Finals, where the Mavs converted on 16 made alley-oop dunks (compared to two for Minnesota, both KAT-to-Gobert connections). 16 divided by five (*whips out abacus, moves some beads*)… that’s more than three per game!

If you need one play that symbolizes the entire Western Conference Finals, it’s this from Game 2. Mike Conley misses Rudy Gobert on an alley-oop, the ball slams off the backboard and ignites a Mavericks fast break, and uberstar Luka Doncic finds Dereck Lively for a far more successful lob attempt: [video here]

In total, the Mavs have 54 total playoff alley-oop slams in 17 games. Second-place Denver totaled nine in nine games; Minnesota only accumulated six in three rounds (their collective inability to find Gobert on lobs is criminal).

Some fans have taken to calling this group the “Lobgoblins” (get it? Like hobgoblins?), which I love. The squad’s earned it. This is a weapon unique to the Dallas Mavericks.

Here’s how Dallas’ lobs look distributed by passer and finisher: [fun graph here]

Hilariously, all of Lively (22), Gafford (17), and Derrick Jones (10) have finished more alley-oop dunks than any other team in these playoffs. They’re even throwing lobs to each other: [video here]

(By the way, someone should lob all involved Mavericks leadership in jail for not getting Doncic a center who can jump over a phonebook before this season. It’s long been a common complaint among the Mavs faithful, but I’m still so retroactively angry on his behalf.)

How has Dallas upped their oops? The playoffs strip the fat from an offense. Starters play more minutes, and coaches don’t mess around. They go for the optimal offensive play every time, and if you have the personnel for it, nothing is a better play than presenting a lob to a dunker-to-be. So Mavs coach Jason Kidd and superstar Luka Doncic have designed a playoff offense largely around the alley-oop.

It starts with the personnel, of course. Kyrie Irving isn’t on Doncic’s level as a passer, but he can get into the lane at will, with or without a pick. He’s more than good enough to launch a perfect oop even after losing his dribble on the way up: [video here]

Doncic is on the short list of greatest lob-throwers in the game. He has the size, passing skill, vision, and creativity to find vertical passing lanes in places the mortal basketball mind can’t comprehend. Here, he sees DJJ streaking to the hoop and launches this pass while Jones is still behind the three-point line: [video here]

Jones is nicknamed “Airplane Mode” for a reason, and yet he is just the third-most important dunker on the team (and, curiously, only Luka has found him for a lob in these 17 games). The Mavs’ two-headed dunking hydra, Dereck Lively and Daniel Gafford, provides Doncic with the perfect center pairing. Both have large catch radiuses and can go up and get a lob even at a standstill. The rookie Lively, in particular, has become elite at high-pointing a ball and slamming it through the cylinder even in a rush-hour traffic jam.

Of course, it’s not just about the lob. The threat of the alley-oop is what opens up the entire offense, and defenses haven’t been able to adjust. They’re playing whack-a-mole: tag the rolling rim-runners aggressively to take away the lob, and an easy kick out for a three appears. Stay home on everyone, and ballhandlers stroll to the rack.

Minnesota should have been able to slow the Mavs. The league’s best defense stifled Denver, preventing them from getting to their spots and largely relegating them to the perimeter (see Nikola Jokic’s three-point attempt numbers). But Doncic and Irving had few problems against Minnesota’s perimeter stoppers, using screen after hand-off after screen to get a foot into the paint. Once they pass the first line of defense, no center has a chance. Stepping up a tiny bit too high opens up the lob lanes. Dropping too much concedes the floater, and Doncic and Irving are buoyant: [video here]

Heck, sometimes they don’t even need a floater. Sometimes, the threat of the lob opens up uncontested layups. Look how reluctant Gobert (the best in the world at this particular aspect of defense, by the way) is to leave Gafford alone in the dunker spot: [video here]

Teams have tried helping harder off the corners than Minnesota generally did, but Jones (46% on corner threes) and PJ Washington (41%) have hit every important shot during this playoff run. Here, the Thunder do a good job stopping Irving and crowding Lively on the catch, preventing the oop, but Washington still buries the triple: [video here]

Defenses have to live and die with that shot, in my opinion, since expecting point-of-attack defenders to stymie Doncic and Irving consistently is asking too much. Some of the meanest, stickiest dudes in the league have had issues recovering onto Doncic, especially, and if you’re on his back, you’re at his mercy. Even when defenses do contain Doncic at the point of attack, he draws so much attention that cracks open up in unexpected places: [video here]

That’s too damn sexy.

There are as many reasons to enjoy basketball as people who watch it, but everyone enjoys seeing a good alley-oop. Thankfully, Luka and his marauding band of Lobgoblins have transformed it from an occasional highlight into a core concept of their offense. We’re all richer for it.