Are the Luka Dončić-Kyrie Irving Dallas Mavericks Figuring It Out?
The early results are a lot better than last season’s epic flame-out — but the details are still coming together.
One of the more perplexing storylines down the stretch of the 2022-23 NBA season was the Dallas Mavericks’ sudden collapse. Despite having a playoff probability in excess of 90% on the day the team traded for All-Star guard Kyrie Irving, Dallas dropped 18 of its last 25 contests and finished two games out of the final play-in slot in the West. Controversially, the Mavs rested both Irving and Luka Dončić for most of their final two regular-season games, but it’s possible their presence wouldn’t have even mattered: Dallas somehow went just 5-11 in games where both stars appeared, accelerating the team’s demise.
So when the Mavericks re-committed to that failed plan by bringing Irving back via free agency, it was easy to be skeptical. Why should things be different this time around? A team that went to the Western Conference Finals as recently as 2021-22 was not even a sure thing to make the playoffs anymore. (Our model gave them a 41% chance in preseason.) But the early returns in Dallas have been more encouraging: The Mavs are 6-2 — including a 4-2 record with both Dončić and Irving in the lineup — while they rank fifth in offensive rating with the league’s best 3-point percentage and playoff odds that have risen to 63%.
In 144 minutes with both Dončić and Irving on the court together, the Mavericks have teased their potential. They have a 121.1 offensive rating, per PBPstats, with Luka and Kyrie living up to their billing as one of the league’s deadliest offensive tandems. And while it’s a very small sample (11 minutes), that efficiency mark has climbed to a red-hot 130.4 points per 100 during high-leverage moments so far this season. The underlying theory of combining two of the game’s most unstoppable bucket-getters, for those moments when you just need to score, isn’t wrong.
But the success — or failure — of this pairing was always going to hinge just as much on the players around them (at both ends), as well as how each manages the game without the other. And by that standard, the 2023-24 Mavs are still a work in progress.
Given both Dončić and Irving’s respective track records (or lack thereof) at the defensive end, the most important measure of this Dallas experiment is how much it can limit the opponent’s damage while its two stars light up the scoreboard. Some nights, that’s not a problem: witness Monday’s 117-102 comeback win at the Orlando Magic, in which Dallas clamped down in the second half and neutralized Orlando’s biggest scoring threats — Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner went a combined 3-for-15 after halftime — while Irving and Dončić took turns putting up points.
Sometimes the results aren’t as impressive, though. Getting lit up by Denver on the road might be understandable; being cooked by Toronto — the league’s 24th-best offense — at home, like what happened to the Mavs on Wednesday night, is less so. As part of that loss, Dallas was outscored 15-6 on the fast break and 72-40 in the paint, and outrebounded 50-38, exposing many of the flaws in how this team is constructed. Not even a scorching 134.0 offensive rating with both Dončić and Irving playing together was enough to overcome the team’s inability to get stops and its struggles with just one star (but not both) on the court.
Some members of the supporting cast have been more effective playing alongside Irving and Dončić than others so far. Young 3-and-D wing Josh Green has been present for the best net rating alongside the two stars (+21.8) of any third wheel, followed by Tim Hardaway Jr. (+16.2), Dwight Powell (+10.7) and rookie revelation Dereck Lively II (+10.2). It might be disappointing, however, that Grant Williams (+3.6) doesn’t rank higher, given how much Dallas has invested in Williams being a defensive complement to its high-scoring duo. And the team is outright negative while Derrick Jones Jr. (-3.5) shares the court with the stars.
If it’s an ongoing challenge for coach Jason Kidd to find the right mix of players to accentuate Dončić and Irving’s strengths while covering their weaknesses together, the question of how to stagger their time apart — and how best to cover those minutes — is nearly as important a puzzle to solve. Since Irving joined the Mavs in February, he has managed to keep Dallas more than afloat (+7.6 net rating) when he was on the court without Dončić in games where both stars were available. But strangely, the reverse hasn’t been true: Dallas is -11.0 points per 100 when Dončić is in the game and Irving isn’t:
That trend is in just 219 total minutes. But even on Wednesday night, Dallas held even with Toronto (22-22) when Kyrie was in the game without Luka, but lost 34-21 in Luka’s minutes without Kyrie. (The Mavs won 71-61 in minutes where both stars played.) This probably says more about each star’s backup situation than anything else — Irving’s ability as a difference-maker playing both on or off the ball on offense, as necessary, is practically irreplaceable — but it is another, underrated aspect of managing the Dončić-Irving project.
On paper, the Mavs are right on the borderline of having enough star power to truly be a championship contender, depending on whether or not one of their supporting players takes a leap forward this season. But navigating the complexities of this particular star partnership — and all the functions that need to happen around it to make it thrive — will be what truly determines Dallas’ fate. Dončić and Irving have already shown that they can put the failure of this past spring in the rearview mirror and coexist as high-scoring teammates. Now it’s up to the other pieces around them to play defense, knock down 3s and consistently help turn their star teammates’ impressive skills into wins.
Filed under: NBA