Luka's FTA per game

2018 - 6.7
2019 - 9.2
2020 - 7.1
2021 - 7.5
2022 - 11.7

Looks like he's starting to get the Harden/Giannis treatment from the officials.

GigEmMortis said:

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Looks like he's starting to get the Harden/Giannis treatment from the officials.

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Lol I actually think it's the opposite. His FTAs are up but the dude is driving so much more and has such higher usage. For comparison, in Harden's MVP season (2017-2018), he attempted 17 drives per game with a 35% usage. Luka so far this season is averaging 21 drives on 37% usage.

I could make the argument he's actually not getting enough star treatment. Although he definitely brings it upon himself when he yells non stop at the refs.

The streak is over. Luka with 24 in today's loss.

LONG LIVE THE STREAK.

we lost to the Wizards without their #1 and #2 last night? and Orlando the night before?

Gross. Basically, if Luka doesn't go off, we lose, even to bad teams. Not great.

BUT, we started that way last year too. Hopefully Kidd figures it out.

Yea its been a ****ty couple games. Luka wasn't even average tho, he was downright bad. In both losses he was just chucking and missing FTs. We should be able to beat some of these lower tier teams without luka going god mode, but we have no chance if he's actively bad.

Anyone looking for courtside seats to Friday's game against Denver check my post on ticket exchange forum.

The Mavericks 22-23 Motto must be "make the easy things hard".

But a win is a win.

No Luka, no bueno.

As has been the case for the last few years, outside of Luka, this roster is HORRIBLE. There are some guys that would be serviceable if they were 3-4 spots lower in the rotation, but have no business being top options on a team that is worth a damn.

In 3-4 years, we are going to be like the Rockets…rebuilding and wishing that we found a win with our superstar.

We literally have one guy ( Luka) who can dribble and create. Whatever player said that from Washington was correct. That's why losing Brunson was such a dagge. People got caught up in the contract numbers but he's much more important to us than another team.

mavsfan4ever said:

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We literally have one guy ( Luka) who can dribble and create. Whatever player said that from Washington was correct. That's why losing Brunson was such a dagge. People got caught up in the contract numbers but he's much more important to us than another team.

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Yep, absolutely terrible ownership decision to not offer Brunson the most money. His value to the Mavs far outstripped his market value and Cuban was too cheap to pay it. Now we're literally stuck with this awful roster that will be lucky to avoid the play-in.

I said it on this thread immediately after reports came out that the Mavs were not going to beat the Knicks offer, that letting Brunson walk is going to push Luka closer to leaving. Cuban, Nico and Kidd are a triangle of ineptitude that have only accomplished what Dirk and Luka have provided.

M.C. Swag said:

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mavsfan4ever said:

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We literally have one guy ( Luka) who can dribble and create. Whatever player said that from Washington was correct. That's why losing Brunson was such a dagge. People got caught up in the contract numbers but he's much more important to us than another team.

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Yep, absolutely terrible ownership decision to not offer Brunson the most money. His value to the Mavs far outstripped his market value and Cuban was too cheap to pay it. Now we're literally stuck with this awful roster that will be lucky to avoid the play-in.

I said it on this thread immediately after reports came out that the Mavs were not going to beat the Knicks offer, that letting Brunson walk is going to push Luka closer to leaving. Cuban, Nico and Kidd are a triangle of ineptitude that have only accomplished what Dirk and Luka have provided.

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Luka is so good that he will carry this team to a higher seed than play-in range, but with the load we are asking him to carry, we won't go very far.

Zachary Klement said:

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M.C. Swag said:

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mavsfan4ever said:

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We literally have one guy ( Luka) who can dribble and create. Whatever player said that from Washington was correct. That's why losing Brunson was such a dagge. People got caught up in the contract numbers but he's much more important to us than another team.

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Yep, absolutely terrible ownership decision to not offer Brunson the most money. His value to the Mavs far outstripped his market value and Cuban was too cheap to pay it. Now we're literally stuck with this awful roster that will be lucky to avoid the play-in.

I said it on this thread immediately after reports came out that the Mavs were not going to beat the Knicks offer, that letting Brunson walk is going to push Luka closer to leaving. Cuban, Nico and Kidd are a triangle of ineptitude that have only accomplished what Dirk and Luka have provided.

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Luka is so good that he will carry this team to a higher seed than play-in range, but with the load we are asking him to carry, we won't go very far.

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That's the thing, Luka is playing like prime Michael Jordan and the Mavs are barely winning. EVERY single game outside of the Memphis win, has been a clutch game (score within 5pts with 5min or less). How is that possible when Luka is averaging 35pts on like 64% TS?! If Luka is anything less than a god, the Mavs are basically guaranteed an L. And that's a huge problem.

Hard to fault the Mavs with Brunson. He made clear from the start that he had no desire to stay in Dallas. Plenty to fault to go around after by not getting someone else that could make their own play. Dragic was practically begging for Dallas to pick him up, and the front office turned their nose up at him.

ramblin_ag02 said:

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Hard to fault the Mavs with Brunson. He made clear from the start that he had no desire to stay in Dallas. Plenty to fault to go around after by not getting someone else that could make their own play. Dragic was practically begging for Dallas to pick him up, and the front office turned their nose up at him.

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I actually disagree and here's why. After the Mavs lost to the Warriors in the WCF, Cuban was specifically asked about Brunson. The reporter (Marc Stein) asks; "Why are you so confident about the Brunson situation?" and Cuban replies...."We can pay him the most money. And I think he wants to be here."

Cuban SAID that. And then proceeded to offer Brunson LESS money than the Knicks. So did Cuban cheap out? Was he misinformed? or did he simply lie?

Either way, I don't care because all 3 reasons are bad. If Brunson REALLY wanted to go to NY, fine, but at least make him say no to a better offer. Give him $27m/yr for 5 years ($5m more annually than the Knicks offer) offer sheet and MAKE HIM SAY NO to that. But he didn't do that.

Cuban simply allowed the 2nd best player on the roster, N HIS PRIME, to walk FOR NOTHING. That's gross incompetence.

Edit: Here's the interview (skip to 2:17).

.@mcuban reflecting on the 2021-22 Dallas Mavericks season with Marc Stein. @dallasmavs | 📺 BSSW | #dALLasIN | #NBAPlayoffs | @TheSteinLine pic.twitter.com/YZROfVsnq0

— Bally Sports Southwest (@BallySportsSW) May 27, 2022

Completely agree. I kinda think Brunson would have said no becuase he really wanted to go to NY and be able to run a team without having Luka have the ball 90% of the time. But I still wish we would have made him say no to a better offer. Because it was obvious how important Brunson was to our team. Plus, not signing him only saved Cuban money. Those savings did not give us any extra money to spend in free agency. It was literally sign Brunson or sign no one with that money.

Not trying to argue the whole Brunson leaving saga. Plenty of smoke to me to show that he decided to go to the Knicks even before the playoffs were done, much less before free agency started. But you are 100% correct. Offer him more money and make him walk away from it.

The Christian Wood trade was great, but the Mavs turned down several easy opportunities for ball handler depth and mocked the people who though it was a team weakness.

Zachary Klement said:

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M.C. Swag said:

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mavsfan4ever said:

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We literally have one guy ( Luka) who can dribble and create. Whatever player said that from Washington was correct. That's why losing Brunson was such a dagge. People got caught up in the contract numbers but he's much more important to us than another team.

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Yep, absolutely terrible ownership decision to not offer Brunson the most money. His value to the Mavs far outstripped his market value and Cuban was too cheap to pay it. Now we're literally stuck with this awful roster that will be lucky to avoid the play-in.

I said it on this thread immediately after reports came out that the Mavs were not going to beat the Knicks offer, that letting Brunson walk is going to push Luka closer to leaving. Cuban, Nico and Kidd are a triangle of ineptitude that have only accomplished what Dirk and Luka have provided.

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Luka is so good that he will carry this team to a higher seed than play-in range, but with the load we are asking him to carry, we won't go very far.

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Remember, the play in game is seeds 7-10 now. If the over/under for our final seed is 6.5, I'd take the over. It's still early in the year, but we are in the 7th seed right now. And that's with Luka playing great and not missing any games due to injury. I believe Luka has also only taken off one game (last night) for load management. So even with Luka playing great and not missing any games, we are currently in the play-in. You have to imagine that Luka will miss some time at some point, and will have more load management games, as the season goes on. And when that happens, we will be hard pressed to beat any teams.

Plus, we have had 9 home games and only 5 road games so far.

it's early, but I wouldn't be confident betting that we will do better than a 7 seed unless we manage to make a trade for another creator. But we really don't have any great assets to give up for anyone good, so I'm not sure how that would happen.

They definitely need another perimeter playmaker, but some of the roster criticism is a bit overblown due to the way rotations change in the playoffs. The Mavs will play Luka ball for 40 minutes in the playoffs. When you add in Dinwididie for 30-35 minutes then you don't necessarily need another ball handler. An extra creator like Brunson becomes more of a necessity if Luka sustains a minor injury (i.e. those 3 Utah games last season). The Mavs won't be able to survive a similar situation this season. I think the extra ball handler issue matters more for the regular season, so I kind of get why they didn't want to commit big money to Brunson. Having said that, they did absolutely nothing to address the 3rd creator issue except bring in Campazzo who sucks. If they had made the obvious move and brought in Dragic then I don't think we are discussing Brunson right now.

I think the biggest current problem is that the 3 and D players who get big minutes (Maxi/DFS/Bullock) aren't scoring at all. Bullock in particular. There is just no consistency outside of Luka and Wood. If you had another SG/SF who was a more consistent catch-and-shoot player or could dribble into their own shot it would help tremendously.

I agree with a lot of your post, but I just can't get very hopeful about this team in the regular season or playoffs when we don't have anyone who can dribble/create.

DFS/Bullock/Kleiber are definitely not scoring well. But I think part of why DFS/Bullock/Kleiber aren't scoring is because of Brunson's absence and the lack of any creator's on offense.

Without Brunson, it's much harder for us to take advantage of a defense who is in bad shape. For example, if Luka drives and gets the defense out of position and then kicks it out, we don't have anyone who can take advantage of the defense being on its heels. For instance, there are many times where we have great ball movement after a Luka drive, but then the defense is eventually able to catch back up because we have no one who can put the ball on the floor and attack (other than Dinwiddie at times).

Plus, the defense had to fear Brunson's drives and post-ups and would have to sag/help off of the perimeter defenders. When Luka is basically the only player we have who can attack off the dribble, the defense does not have to help off of DFS/Bullock/Kleiber nearly as often as they did when we had Brunson.

Luka will play more minutes in the playoffs, but not having Brunson will still be a huge blow even then. Because Dinwiddie is not nearly as good or efficient as Brunson (Brunson was huge in the playoffs even when Luka came back), and there will be times in the playoffs where we have 1 or 0 playmakers on the floor (depending on how they stagger Luka and Dinwiddie).

Agreed that they absolutely are missing another ball handler. Dinwiddie fits best as an additional scorer, not a creator IMO. They have to add someone somehow

I wish j hardy could become serviceable for 10-15 mins a game by season's end

This team is good, but they got some major flaws to figure out if they want to do something special.
I think Luka also has to figure out how to stay engaged against bad teams, or when we are crushing a team.
And maybe something at the end of the game that isnt at 35 footer

They really need to get more consistent scoring from the DFS/RB combo. It seems there are too many nights when they score a combined < 10 pts.

The Suns are very unlikable

thank goodness for the ags tonight….wtf is up with the mavs?

Welcome Kimba Walker.

Ol Jock 99 said:

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Welcome Kimba Walker.

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I guess it's worth a shot....curious to see what we're paying

also, kemba...

I would also think that Walker is better than Facu. Mainly because Facu is terrible. But this is only a marginal upgrade. I would rank the Mavs problems like this:

1. Playing big minutes to 3&D players who can't shoot. Bullock is at 28% from 3 on 28 minutes per game. THJ is at 29% on 23 minutes per game. Kleber is 30% on 24 minutes per game. DFS is 33% on 33 minutes per game. That is over 40% of the total minutes going to dudes giving you absolutely zero on offense. These guys are getting good looks as well. There is no external way to fix this, the only hope is regression.

2. Weird rotations by Kidd. By eye test and numbers Wood should be starting and playing for 30+ minutes. His on-court minutes should also be timed with Luka. Instead, he is 5th in the team on minutes at only 25. It just makes no sense. Another one is Josh Green turning into a legit NBA player at only 19 minutes per game. Green is a bit more of a surprise, but considering that Bullock and THJ are unplayable at the moment I would push Green to 30 and chip away at those THJ/Bullock minutes.

3. Third ball handler issue. Cuban should have just "overpaid" Brunson. That alone would have papered over the first 2 deficiencies. At the least, they should have taken Dragic who has been solid. Looks like Walker is in but I don't see that moving the needle (still better than Facu).

4. Luka 3 point shooting. Luka is at a career-low 30% on 7.5 attempts per game. I expect regression here but considering the load he has to carry, this is the least of the Mavs problems.

jeffdjohnson said:

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2. Weird rotations by Kidd. By eye test and numbers Wood should be starting and playing for 30+ minutes. His on-court minutes should also be timed with Luka. Instead, he is 5th in the team on minutes at only 25. It just makes no sense. Another one is Josh Green turning into a legit NBA player at only 19 minutes per game. Green is a bit more of a surprise, but considering that Bullock and THJ are unplayable at the moment I would push Green to 30 and chip away at those THJ/Bullock minutes.

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It's pretty obvious that Kidd thinks Wood hurts on defense more than he helps on offense, but I don't think that's the facts. And speaking of Green, look at these cumulative +/- numbers

https://www.statmuse.com/nba/ask/dallas-mavericks-players-plus-minus-this-year

Green +81 (19 mins)
Luka +41 (37 mins)
Powell +40 (17 mins)
Wood +39 (25 mins)
THJ +26 (24 mins)
Kleber +17 (25 mins)
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DFS -16 (33 mins)
McGee -30 (9 mins)
Bullock -33 (29 mins)
Dinwiddie -65 (32 mins)

Great post. Hard to argue against any of that, especially your first point. These guys just have to start hitting their shots and there's no miracle fix for that to happen.