Why doesn’t Luka’s impact match his production?

Luka Doncic is leading the league in scoring and is 2nd in assists, but for there’s a long term trend related to the scoreboard that doesn’t match that production. This detailed film breakdown & scouting report explores whether Luka’s defense or off-ball game is actually limiting his impact, or if something else is going on with mysterious numbers.

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Turn on any Mavs game lately and you’re probably going to see Luca donic put on a show he systematically targets vulnerable defenders in pick and roll then slowly moves to a sweet spot before shooting over a smaller Defender then he comes down and hits the brakes fake step

Back double heesy power to get in the paint and finish next time he brings it up the center in pick and roll gets the switch and feathers in the perfect pass the mismatch what about a little isolation clear out wait for the double team skip it to the open shooter for a

Three ball or come down in transition chisel through a smaller Defender for a little up fake and step through maybe get the center on a switch start dancing with that dribble to drop a step back on his head or take that Center into the post to set up the Michael Jordan Up and

Under footwork and that’s just in the first 6 minutes of the game the man is averaging 34 points and 10 assists per night that’s only been done once and the Mavs offense is in the 85th percentile when he’s on the floor so he’s the walking embodiment of a oneman offense

But there’s a very weird Phenomenon with Luca that’s more mysterious than the three body problem if he’s such a great player why do his teams barely change when he goes to the bench in a single season some great players will have negative on offs meaning their

Team will be worse when they are on the court compared to when they are off the court but in the long run great players have a large positive impact in the play-by-play era 29 players have finished in the top five in MVP more than once every single one of those

Players has a big plus minus footprint over a 5e sample Allen Iverson’s teams outscored opponents by four points every 48 minutes because he improved them by 7 points per 48 during his best 5-year period Kawhi Leonard improved his teams by nearly eight points per 48 but they

Were a whopping plus 11 with him on the floor so he was making a really good team great in that sense the very best players are in the upper right of this graph they improve good teams buy a lot 19 of them have an onoff of at least

Plus 10 across their best 5year stretch and this is the Luca mystery because Don’s teams aren’t that good with him on the floor yet he barely improves them when he plays this is really confusing because a mega scorer who carves up teams with his passing should be hard to

Replace and yet that hasn’t been the case during his career so what is going on here maybe it’s his defense if all that Brilliance is on the offensive end maybe the defense is giving back a ton of his impact he definitely struggles to contain quicker players in space his

Lateral movement has been an issue since his rookie year so he can get a little off balance out there although against weaker offensive players some of his hopping and sliding will sufficiently slow them down so he’s not a complete push over there this might be his best defensive possession out on the

Perimeter that I’ve seen from him this season and that’s a slightly different skill than defending the pick and roll where he can get out of position dealing with Shifty guards coming downhill at him he’s too small to really drop back and up at the screen he’s vulnerable to

Changes of Direction like this so teams will Target him at times in the and roll game and challenge that lack of agility on the outside he can also struggle to get around picks because of this both on the ball and when he’s chasing around Shooters he sort of loses contact with

The deadly Michael Porter Jr here and then doesn’t have the agility to recover sometimes there’s a lapse in Focus out there it’s not chronic but it’s enough that you’ll find games with multiple plays like these two against Miami in the first quarter and there’s kind of a laziness to his

Defense at times he switches here but doesn’t really engage with the cutter and it’s a dunk and there are also occasions where he hangs around after an empty trip and doesn’t really hustle back in transition and that can lead to open shots or worse just complete and

Total breakdowns where no one ever stops the ball one thing he does do pretty well is communicate he tells his teammate to help so he can slide down although he’s a little slow getting around that screen to the shooter and this one’s a very Luca possession where

Kyrie Irving forgets to rotate so Luca tells him to get out there and in theory Luca should be moving in unison with Kyrie but he’s generally a pretty low motor Defender although on the offensive rebound he is tall enough to get his hands on the ball from behind and

Dislodge jokic Don’s size is really interesting because he’s a good 67 but he plays smaller around the basket so his height doesn’t always help when he rotates onto big men or even protect the rim because he lacks that vertical pop to challenge other players up near the

Basket but he’s usually in the right position and he’s at least big enough to deter someone like Al Horford when he’s early like that so in this sense there’s some value to his height because he’s at least an extra big body sitting in the paint here’s a good example where Dallas

Wants to trap sheay gilas Alexander Luca doesn’t instantly recover but he floats to a good spot and then saves a layup with his size this time he’s on the weak side off ball so he needs to worry about his own man and the shooter at the top

Ends up playing the passing Lane but he’s just not quick enough to completely get there and force the turnover but in general there is decent value in communicating with teammates knowing where to be and understanding his team scheme while generally reading what offenses are trying to do out there at a

Fairly high level so I do think his defense is chipping away at some of his overall impact but it doesn’t look like it’s such a big problem that it would explain his mysteriously underwhelming plus minus numbers what about his off ball game where he can be Idol when he

Doesn’t have the basketball just standing around behind the three-point line while Kyrie Irving takes the offensive Reigns now Luca is usually quarterbacking the offense so this is a smaller part of the story but there are two subtle things happening here first he’s giving back some value compared to

A more dangerous off-ball player who strains defenses with movement this is one of the few possessions all year he back cuts his Defender into the lane to score and we know from players like Steph Curry or Lowry marinin how Dynamic movement really strains defenses for example you’ll rarely see Luca work off

A simple screen here for a layup or to tie Defenders into knots instead he passively walks through them a lot and I’d love to see him cut more he gives it up here but a cut down the middle of the floor really stresses Dylan Brooks because he can’t easily rotate out to

The three-point shooter and this play ends up in an out of bounds turnover I think Luca not back cutting his Defenders a lot also has to do with a lack of vertical finishing he’s crafty around the basket but someone like LeBron James can cut into traffic because he’s such an aerial threat in

The same vein Lucas sets idle screens he’s not looking to roll or Sprint into a shot from them he’s really looking to catch it and go to work against a switch in isolation even with Kyrie Irving he’s not interested in screening and rolling into space because that’s not really his

Game where methodically taking apart a mismatch in isolation is very much his game even on his off ball actions he’s often playing to catch it in a sweet spot he has a step on his Defender here but waits for him to catch up so he can instead play out of isolation in the

Middle of the floor more this is subtle but the lack of movement makes it hard to interact with other star teammates when they initiate it makes the offense more of a your turn my turn kind of thing than something interactive and multiplicative and of course that

Offense is very good because Luca is an incredible passer and scorer off his pet actions this year fly by out yeah baby yeah baby is Right According to second Spectrum tracking he’s in the top five in isolation efficiency and pick and roll efficiency in the NBA and that’s

Why Dallas has a 122 offensive rating with him on the floor but Kyrie Irving is in the top 40 in both categories so when he’s out there without Luca the Mavs also have a 122 offensive rating when Luca goes to the bench they can run similar sets through Irving with similar

Results and the Mavs have actually run really successful offense without Luca during his prime because they usually have another good offensive initiator in Jaylen brunson’s last two seasons the Mavs offense was just two points worse when Luca went to the bench with the budding Brunson running the ship so a

Big part of Luca’s onoff numbers are probably because his Sidekicks are also ball dominant guards themselves at the same time those guards are optimized when Luca doesn’t have the ball and when he’s idling away from the ball he might not even be as useful as a more active

Role player so yes you can surround donic with role players and he is a oneman offense where doing everything possession after possession gives him unrivaled stats and is jaw-droppingly impressive to watch but those offenses don’t seem to get much better when you add another star guard because there’s

Redundancy another thought is that this all changes in the playoffs against better competition and sure enough Lucas’s teams are dead even when he’s played in the postseason which is nearly nine points better than when he was on the bench for 445 minutes we also excluded James Harden from this graphic

Earlier because he used to have the smallest onoff of the MVPs until Luca that’s noteworthy because Harden played an incredibly similar Style he was a big guard struggled defensively idled away from the ball and absolutely destroyed teams in pick and roll in isolation leading to Mega Box Score production

Harden has played a ton in the playoffs and despite his underwhelming regular season plus minus he has one of the biggest improvements we’ve seen in playoff on off only that Improvement comes from his OKC years where he was less bald dominant if we look look at his playoff performance from his best

Regular seasons in Houston Harden’s teams were eight points better with him on the floor in the postseason which is strong but not much different from his regular season impact Luca’s box score stats in the playoffs are slightly better than hardens and it’s clear his style of mismatch hunting is hard to

Stop in the second season so maybe he’s just inherently more valuable in the playoffs finally I think the last Factor to consider here is noise or the volatility of plus minus yes it’s a 5year sample but Lucas improved as a player in that sample his jump and three-point shooting this season has

Added another mini level to his offense his defense has improved recently and even his conditioning has ebbed and flowed over the years sure enough his plus minus stats look more respectable in the last two seasons and we see a slightly different story when we look at

The full games that he’s missed back in the Brunson porzingis years donic missed 42 games where Tim Hardway Jr played and in those games the Mavs were actually better without him but if we look at a slightly different set of games where say Dorian finny Smith played the Mavs

Went from a 45 win Team without Luca to a 52 win team with him and in the last two seasons he’s missed 21 games were hard away played and the Mavs were a 35 win Team without him but with him they’ve played at a 50 win pace which is

More in line with the impact we expect from an MVP level player and remember the whole reason why his plus minus stats are such a mystery in the first place is because he looks super human at times he might be the best primary read pick and roll passer in NBA history

Hitting his roll man from the top hitting his roll man on lobs coming down the lane or hitting his roll man with pocket passes through the middle and then when you start sending extra Defenders to stop that he slings it all over the floor like he’s throwing a

Frisbee around with his friends so traditional coverages are at the mercy of his teammates attacking Closeouts or shooting threes we noted earlier that he wasn’t an explosive finisher but when he has the ball he just slowly moves wherever wants because he is the master of tempo keeping a defender on his hip

And grinding his way deep into the paint this is Luca’s superpower a tight dribble broad frame and enough strength to ride oblique angles to the rim at his own pace Aaron nemith crowds him coming around to pick on this play and Luca just keeps the dribble alive right in

Front of him crosses over to create an angle and then he takes him into the paint before using his size to score and this superpowers is only activated with the ball which might be why he doesn’t fit incredibly well next to other ball dominant stars but it does look like

That fit is a sizable explanation for his lackluster plus minus stats and relative to his insane offensive numbers his defense is probably a factor too then again maybe Luca’s playoff numbers are more reflective of his actual impact and we’ll get a better taste of that in the future so even if we haven’t

Completely solved this mystery yet I’ve seen enough to call him one of the 20 or even 15 best offensive players in the history of the league so maybe the real mystery isn’t about his plus minus it’s how many better offensive players will have ever played when Luca’s career is

All said and done to support this channel check out patreon.com thinking basketball it’s the best way to directly support us let me know down below what other big questions you think exist that we can tackle on this channel otherwise thanks as always for watching and I hope you are having a great day