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With a team featuring Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving, it's Dallas' defense (yes, really!) that has the franchise on the brink of its second conference finals in three years.
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The only players who appeared for the Dallas Mavericks in the conference finals two seasons ago playing in this second-round series against the Oklahoma City Thunder are Luka Doncic and Josh Green; Green logged a grand total of 121 postseason minutes in 2022.
In about 20 months, the Mavericks remade almost their entire team around Doncic and have somehow -- at great cost to their stash of draft picks -- arrived within one game of returning to the conference finals for the second time in three seasons. The most important commonality between those teams: elite defense around Doncic.
Maxi Kleber was a keystone of that 2022 run; he's currently injured, robbing the Mavs of their only viable stretch center and one of their most versatile defenders. It hasn't mattered. The Mavs have strangled the league's No. 3 offense behind a defense that is huge, switchable, ultraconnected, and capable of more schematic complexity than perhaps it appeared when the Mavericks paid a high price to acquire both P.J. Washington Jr. and Daniel Gafford at the trade deadline.
The Thunder facilitated the Mavs' acquisition of Gafford; in exchange for the right to swap first-round picks with Dallas in 2028, Oklahoma City supplied the Washington Wizards -- Gafford's former team -- with a 2024 first-round pick. (Washington, meanwhile, was one of my favorite theoretical trade targets for Oklahoma City.)
The Mavs have allowed 109.7 points per 100 possessions in the playoffs against the league's No. 3 and No. 4 offenses -- a mark that would have ranked second in the regular season. This is the continuation of a late-season trend; the Mavs were a top-10 defense after the trade deadline, and No. 1 in their final 15 games.
There is nothing much fluky under the hood. The Mavs' postseason opponents have hit 35% on 3s -- about league average. The Thunder check in at just 33%, but the Mavs have snuffed most of the highest-quality looks. Dallas has been decent on the glass and very good at avoiding fouls. The Mavs don't force many turnovers, but that's partly by design and doesn't really hurt them because of how rarely they turn the ball over on offense.
They had a tidy opponent shot selection -- few 3s and shots at the rim, lots of midrange looks -- all season, and even more so after acquiring Washington and Gafford. That has accelerated in the playoffs; only 28.6% of the Thunder's shot attempts against Dallas have come in the restricted area -- a mark that would have ranked 29th among offenses in the regular season, per Cleaning The Glass.
The Thunder and LA Clippers -- the Mavs' first-round opponents -- are both high-volume midrange teams; their shot selection has skewed even further that way against Dallas.
And beware those who arrive at the rim. The Mavs have allowed only 55% shooting at the basket in the postseason, a mark that would have ranked as the league's stingiest by in the first 82. That was the biggest change in their defense after the trade deadline: Dallas became an elite rim-defense team. That has sustained.
We have enough evidence now to say this is a very good defensive team. The Thunder in the half court have scored only 95.5 points per 100 possessions against Dallas -- 10 points below their regular-season mark. Oklahoma City was No. 2 in the regular season, a scoring machine built around knifing drives and elite spot-up shooting. Its half-court efficiency against Dallas would have ranked 25th. This is a total cratering.
Dallas has shut off the Thunder's transition attack too. Oklahoma City badly needs those chaos points. The Thunder have won the turnover battle -- a must for them -- but the Mavs have neutered Oklahoma City's fast break.
Speed is one of the new-look Mavs' defining features. This team outside of Doncic can fly. Kyrie Irving is the only undersized player in the Mavs' starting five, and he's a blur sprinting back in transition and closing out on shooters. Everyone else is huge.
Derrick Jones Jr.'s arms are everywhere. He has embraced the Shai Gilgeous-Alexander assignment and can make the Thunder MVP candidate's life difficult at the point of attack. When the Mavs switch Gilgeous-Alexander pick-and-rolls, that often means Jones drops back in the paint tracking a roller -- leaving him in perfect help position.
Jones changed the face of this team. The Mavs likely did not envision him as a heavy-minutes starter when they signed him to a one-year minimum contract. Green seemed a better fit for that spot. Jones won the job. He hit just enough open 3s in the regular season and has made plays in all the little crannies available to him -- scoring and passing in the short roll, soaring for offensive rebounds when the defense rotates away from him, punishing the Thunder on cuts.
The Mavs appear to be everywhere at once on defense. They have the Thunder uncertain -- second-guessing themselves, wondering which pathways are real and which are illusions. By the time they've decided, the Mavs have closed off whatever opening the Thunder thought they had identified.
Where to go? Jalen Williams takes a screen from Luguentz Dort, hoping to draw Doncic on a switch. The Mavs refuse; Irving chases Williams over the pick, and Doncic sticks on Dort instead of helping. An alleyway opens. Williams takes it. One dribble in, and poof -- it's gone. And yet Dallas cutting off that driving lane doesn't seem to have exposed an opening anywhere else.
Washington offers the first layer of help by stunting away from Chet Holmgren in the left corner for just long enough to make Williams slow down. At that point, Washington has done his job. As Williams registers that Holmgren might be open, Washington is on his way back there -- knowing someone else is coming to replace him in help position.
That someone is Dereck Lively II, who has been sensational. He slides away from Josh Giddey -- we'll get to him -- to barricade the paint. Lively knows the next Maverick behind him -- Dante Exum -- will rotate over and be ready to pounce on Giddey.
This is happening over and over. The Thunder prod and search, and find every avenue cluttered. The Mavericks move as one entity, sliding in sync with the Thunder's offense, shifting from one side to the other as passes are airborne.
There is so much subtle brilliance packed into those few seconds. Gilgeous-Alexander draws Washington on a switch. That's an exploitable matchup, but Washington has held his own; he's long and nimble.
Just in case, there's Green parked at the foul line -- straying from Jaylin Williams, confident he can scamper back in time to contest a Williams triple. Gilgeous-Alexander drives the other way. Gafford lurks, crouched in a stance and arms spread, offering enough help away from Aaron Wiggins in the right corner to make Gilgeous-Alexander pull up.
Green cuts off Williams, Gafford runs Wiggins off the line, and another Oklahoma City possession dies. Every Mav is on his toes, moving in little half-slides. No one overcommits. Everyone is ready with the next rotation in the chain.
The Thunder have not helped themselves with their spacing -- too many players standing near each other, undersized guards clogging up the dunker spot:
The Thunder in Game 5 seemed more diligent about reserving the dunker for their big men, who at least have a shot to finish over length. (The Thunder have looked good with both Holmgren and Jaylin Williams. If your offense struggles regardless, you might as well shift up in size in snippets to help on defense and on the glass.)
The Mavs have been creative and adaptable too. Zoom in on Lively, and you might end up confused about whom he is guarding. The confusion is the point. Lively is sometimes playing his own one-man zone within the Mavs man-to-man defense, hanging along the baseline, nominally defending whatever player happens to pop up nearby -- and exchanging assignments as Thunder players come and go.
Lively can switch onto guards too. The Mavs as a whole can toggle between switching all over the place and more traditional schemes. Every time the Thunder develop some rhythm, the Mavs change the rules.
The predictable first mega-adjustment came midway through Game 1, when the Mavs shifted their centers onto Giddey -- with the directive of ignoring him. This has been coming for 18 months. The Thunder are minus-25 in Giddey's 65 minutes.
Dallas then slotted Washington onto Holmgren, which allowed them to switch any Holmgren two-man actions -- a method of vaporizing his pick-and-pop 3s.
Those plays eviscerated the New Orleans Pelicans in the first round. They stand as one of Oklahoma City's only methods of cracking open huge chunks of space and getting the Mavericks' defense scrambling.
Even before pulling Giddey from the starting five, you could see the Thunder problem-solving around that gambit -- trying to drag the Mavs' centers back onto Holmgren and unlock their best pick-and-roll combinations:
The Thunder start with an inverted Holmgren-Giddey pick-and-roll designed to get the switch of Lively onto Holmgren. It works, and the Thunder flow right into their Williams-Holmgren pick-and-roll. Lively drops back, Holmgren pops free, and it looks for a fleeting second as if Oklahoma City has cracked the code. Doncic is flying at Holmgren to help, but that opens up the Thunder's passing game.
Alas: Irving deflects the pass, and the Mavs are off and running.
The Mavs have not treated Holmgren's 3-pointer as some great threat. He was up and down all season, finishing at 37% on medium volume. He's 5-of-20 in this series. His release isn't super fast. The Mavs have decided getting a decent contest is enough.
They're taking the same approach with Dort, who also takes his time to launch. Dort made 39% on 3s this season but had hit 33% of his career triples before that. Wiggins shot very well but attempted only 3.7 3s per 36 minutes. The Mavs are even sagging from Gilgeous-Alexander:
The Mavs know he prefers to catch, hold, and plan his attack.
The Thunder hit a league-best 38.9% on 3s in the regular-season. The Mavs are wagering that a lot of those were wide-open, and that if they make them a little less wide-open, the Thunder will miss more. Dallas has been able to do that while still flooding the paint. Speed and size kill.
The Thunder finally yanked Giddey from their starting lineup in Game 5, forcing Gafford and then Lively to open the proceedings on Holmgren. There were flickers of hope for better offense out of Holmgren pick-and-rolls early, but they died out. The Mavs swarmed and switched. Holmgren missed.
The cascade of shifting assignments ended with Irving on Isaiah Joe -- Giddey's replacement. The Gilgeous-Alexander-Joe two-man game has flummoxed opponents for two seasons now, with Joe blasting out of those screens and flying into open 3s. Maybe that is a place to peck at in Game 6. Irving, though, is turbo-fast and totally bought-in on defense.
At the beginning of the season, Sam Presti, Oklahoma City's executive vice president and general manager, emphasized patience during his annual preseason media session. The implication was that the playoffs, assuming the Thunder qualified, would be a crucial grounds for discovery. How would this roster look in that environment? What limitations might be unearthed?
One emerging from this series is that the Thunder probably need some power element to play more inside-out basketball -- a way of inverting the floor, another method of puncturing the paint beyond their relentless driving attack and having their screeners roll to the rim.
Jalen Williams has the strength and feel to build something of a post game. Giddey probably needs one for when teams stash smaller defenders on him -- at least to open up his passing game. Holmgren's frame is what it is, but he has to at least reach the point where it's not safe to hide Tim Hardaway Jr. on him.
(The Thunder could also use one thirsty pull-up 3-point shooter.)
As is, the Thunder have no real means of punishing Irving (or Hardaway) with size and power. They can't punish either with speed. Doncic's one-on-one defense is the only weak spot left, and the Mavs have covered for him. Doncic has risen to the challenge more times than not.
It's not as if the Thunder are without hope, though they are on the brink down 3-2 and going to Dallas. They have outscored the Mavericks 520-519 for the series, and have mostly held the Mavs' high-powered offense in check. (Doncic is banged up.) They have some levers to pull on offense.
The Thunder have been at their best attacking early in the shot clock, before all five Mavs can set up near the paint. When Gilgeous-Alexander draws Doncic, the Mavs load up to wall off the paint -- coaxing Gilgeous-Alexander into giving the ball up. The defense then resets. The Thunder can snap the ball back to Gilgeous-Alexander and let him attack again -- before the defense can trigger the same rotations:
Gilgeous-Alexander has also had some success hunting the Mavericks' few smaller defenders and setting up shop at the nail -- shooting over them instead of bothering with the paint. The Thunder have tried to spruce those sets up with off-ball actions designed to distract help defenders. The Mavs took the bait on this play in Game 5 but have mostly been ignored the decoy action:
One Thunder win, and everything feels so different: Game 7 at home.
To get there, the Thunder will have to find a way around the Mavs' suddenly impeccable defense.
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