This is not how Act Two of the Mavericks’ new era was supposed to start.
Jason Kidd’s team aced the first part. They finished the season strong, clinching home-court advantage in the playoffs for the first time since 2011. But as Kidd was telling us all season long, the regular season was just the prelude—the rehearsal for the playoffs. No one signed up for uncertainty over whether the lead actor will even be onstage when the lights are the brightest.
There is not much I can add to four days of “calf-tastrophe.” At this point, everybody not on the Mavericks staff is just guessing if Doncic will play in Game One against the Jazz on Saturday afternoon. (The latest update, from ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, is he could miss each of the first two games before returning in Game 3. The Athletic’s Shams Charania, meanwhile, says Doncic is probably out for Game 1). So I’ll take Jason Kidd’s advice and prepare for the start of the series with Doncic, but even more so assuming the Mavericks will be without him for at least a little while. Because, either way, this series can turn based on how Dallas survives the minutes when Doncic isn’t on the floor. And if he does miss a game or two, what must the Mavericks do to steal a win without their leader?
The first nut to crack will be putting Jalen Brunson and Spencer Dinwiddie in positions to get the Jazz defense out of its comfort zone. Brunson will have to step up and prove that what he did in the regular season—be an incredibly effective scorer and playmaker—translates to the big stage after an underwhelming series against the Clippers last year. Utah’s small backcourt is definitely a better matchup, and both he and Dinwiddie had success exposing their lack of size in the past.
Their real challenge will be solving Rudy Gobert, the NBA’s best interior defender. Protecting the paint with Gobert—and, to a lesser degree, Hassan Whiteside—in drop coverage is the backbone of Jazz defense: Utah was third in the NBA in drop-defense frequency and first in efficiency. (Here’s a handy breakdown explaining drop coverage.) Per Second Spectrum data, Gobert is the best help defender on drives in the NBA, while Gobert and Whiteside are in the top five in help frequency. In other words, they clog the paint whenever possible. It seemed Dallas had found a solution to it in the regular season, as Doncic and Dwight Powell were the most effective pick-and-roll duo against Utah’s drop defense in the NBA. This forced Gobert out of his comfort zone by switching on Doncic on the perimeter, with limited success. Any time Gobert is out of the paint, it is a win for the Mavericks, because the Jazz don’t have much size and defensive talent behind him. So that’s a useful strategy whenever Doncic returns to the court. But while Brunson’s deadly midrange game makes him one of the best scorers against drop coverage, neither he nor Spencer Dinwiddie can pick the defense apart and utilize Powell in the same way. If they can’t make Powell a lob threat at the rim and get Jazz rotating on defense, count this as a first tactical win for the Jazz.
If Powell is not effective, Kidd can counter by going small, but this brings us to my next question: who will replace him as the fifth guy when it matters? I’m pretty confident that Brunson, Dinwiddie, Dorian Finney-Smith, and Reggie Bullock are the four players who will be on the floor in the key moments of this series. Maxi Kleber should be the obvious choice for the last piece of the puzzle. His ability to stay in front of Utah’s guards allows the Mavericks to play a switching style of defense that has been the Jazz’s kryptonite for a while now (the Clippers proved as much in last year’s conference semifinals). The problem is Kleber’s recent shooting struggles make him a big question mark. If he can’t make his shots—or, even worse, if he’s hesitant to take them—it will make life very difficult for the Mavericks on the other end of the floor.
Things get dicey for Kidd if Kleber goes AWOL, but he has two other wild cards in Josh Green and Davis Bertans. Green fits perfectly in the switching defense concept: he can put pressure on the ball and is an overall menace with his activity. But his offense isn’t much more dependable than Kleber’s, so as soon as he checks in the game, the Jazz will have Gobert defend him—or, rather, not defend him at all—and play as a free safety. It’s on Green to make them pay, much like the Clippers’ Terance Mann did when he got the same treatment in the aforementioned playoff series last season. Green is shooting 41 percent from three since the All-Star break, but he’ll have to do it on a much higher volume to really make a difference in this series. He will also have to shoulder some of the ball-handling load unless Kidd wants to try his luck with Trey Burke (and he almost certainly doesn’t).
Bertans’ three-point shooting is also trending upward; he’s shooting 36 percent from beyond the arc as a Maverick and 50 percent in his last 11 games. Unlike Green, the Latvian sniper lets it fly without hesitation. If his shooting swings one game in this series, he’s done his job.
Either player enables Kidd to play faster, especially without the option to slow the game down and let Doncic methodically pick apart defenses. Bertans and Green are among the Mavericks’ best transition players this season, and the Jazz are vulnerable when they have to run (Utah ranks sixth league-wide in half-court defense but only 23rd when defending in transition). Gobert and Whiteside like to crash the offensive glass, so Bertans as a small-ball five who runs the floor like a gazelle and fills the corners is an opportunity to attack that. Playing small and fast has its downsides, of course. The Jazz are one of the NBA’s best rebounding teams, and it will be particularly hard to keep Gobert off the offensive glass if the Mavericks are switching on defense and the smaller player has to box out Gobert. Dallas was the fourth-best defensive rebounding team earlier in the season, but the team has fallen off the cliff since going smaller after the Kristaps Porzingis trade. It’s an imperfect option, but so is everything without Luka.
Whatever the adjustments or style, presuming Doncic sits out both home games, the goal should be to stay within striking distance until the fourth quarter. If there is one positive thing in Doncic’s absence, it is that it puts even more pressure on a Jazz team widely rumored to be on the brink of an overhaul between new ownership, ex-Celtics general manager Danny Ainge in charge of the trade machine, and ever-present rumors of tension between Gobert and Donovan Mitchell. One more playoff collapse could topple the whole thing—and, when it comes to the fourth quarter, the Jazz have done a lot of collapsing this season. In the last month alone, they blew a 25-point lead to the Clippers in late March, lost a game against the Warriors when up by 16 with just under eight minutes left, and squandered a 17-point fourth-quarter lead against the Suns in April. Losing Joe Ingles at the trade deadline hurt the Jazz more than they envisioned. He was a culture guy who moved the ball and a secondary playmaker who knew how to get Gobert involved in the offense. There has been a lot of hero ball by Mitchell down the stretch since, and it’s safe to say it’s not working since he’s shooting only 33 percent from the floor in the clutch this season.
So keep it close and try to take advantage when things get tight with the rowdy AAC crowd behind them. That’s easier said than done, as the Jazz are still a very solid team and the margin for error without Doncic will be very thin. A lot of things will have to go well. Brunson and Dinwiddie will need to be solid and one of the Kleber-Green-Bertans trio will need to step up and make a difference. Shotmaking will be especially important in this series, as both teams love to let it fly from long range (Utah is first in three-point frequency while Dallas is fifth). We saw the Mavericks surprise the Clippers last playoffs with hot shooting in the first two games of the series. Injury luck clearly isn’t on the Mavs’ side, but maybe shooting luck can be once again.
The playoffs won’t begin the way the Mavericks envisioned, but if they can stay afloat, momentum will be on their side once their superstar returns. Doncic’s supporting cast proved they can get the job done when he missed most of the month with a positive COVID diagnosis and an ankle injury. They came through when the season was on the line, but that was only a dress rehearsal. Now it’s showtime, and it’s on them to come through once again on the big stage.
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