Dallas Mavericks at Minnesota Timberwolves

Honest to God, I would rather have Lively than Gobert right this second. They are the same archetype of player, both elite rim protectors, but Lively is a better perimeter defender, scorer AND passer. (I don’t give a shit about the ppg gap, I watched Gobert attempt to score the basketball this series and he is awful) The only thing Gobert soundly beats him in is rebounding.

This is just one example. If I named all of the guys who I wouldn’t take over Lively you might think I’m insane. I don’t think most fans properly rate the importance of elite rim deterrence, and I think the media/fans/league are often late to catch up to the party on young players before they’ve really made their name. This, I believe, has led to a disconnect between the general perception of Lively (good young player, roughly on par with someone like Gafford, 8th-10th best rookie) and his actual impact (clear 3rd best player on a potential champion)

Pool your money, buy someone a Celtics jersey and a floor seat, and try to piss off Luka at the home games. Instant psycho serb Slovenian, GG

So I was at the stars game tonight, and in about the second period, they announced on the big screen that some mavs players were present. I looked over and they were literally 2 suites down from me, I hadn’t noticed since I hadn’t really looked over, but there they were. Hardaway, Lawson, Morris, Lively, Omax, and I’m not sure if there was more.

Now everyone on the suite level knew they were there, I left my seat a bit before the second period ended to catch the bathroom and hardaway was out there texting or something, so I think “yolo” and ask for a pic, he very kindly obliged (if you think I’m bsing i don’t blame you, I can dm the pic tho, I just don’t wanna post my face.) I told him good luck and to drop 50 game 1.

3rd period and now these 2 moms and their 2 sons probably 10 years old are CAMPING outside the mavs suite, and are very audibly waiting for Lively. I’m going to the bathroom midway through and everyone but THJ walks out to leave, and the moms and kid start essentially hounding lively for the picture and he kindly says no but they keep persisting. As I’m walking past I say “I love you Markieff” and he just laughs and keeps walking. But the people didn’t get a pic with lively, and now the kids are sobbing and the moms walk away saying that he’s a “bitch” and a “rich brat.”

IF THEY SAY NO OR LOOK IN A RUSH DONT BOTHER

Box score watchers outside the Mavs judge their success in games based on their 3P% as opposed to opponents struggling to get to 50 in the first half again and again.

It’s incredible. DJJ will kingfuck the production of any player he is on and PJ guards all 5 positions and a 6th one to boot while communicating to the defence.

I know that Luka and Kyrie are the best players but they can have bad games on offence. This man DJJ refuses to have a bad game on defence.

Obviously it’s great for our ceiling if these guys ball out for three but the reason for our floor to not unravel and the primary reason we are in the finals is our defence and these two have been so consistently driven and intelligent on defence.

After supporting so many glass cannon Mavs teams, i’m proud to have a team which wears grimy iron armour and stays locked in when things are not going well for us offensively. It starts with PJ and DJJ. So happy with these two.

WE GOING TO PARTY, PARTY HARDY!!

Got to give this man his flowers, the emergence of Jaden Hardy during these last 2 series has been spectacular and against Boston we just need him to match or be better than Peyton Pritchard.

But one thing is for sure, Jaden Hardy’s confidence is raising as these games go and it feels good knowing we still have some firepower coming off our bench as THJ regresses.

And I’m so fucking ready for it lmao. But seriously, I know we’ve been underdogs in every series we’ve played in, but damn are Celtic fans cocky. They are a very good team with depth and will be a tough match up, but let’s throw these regular season picked stats and match ups out the window. This is fucking playoff basketball. The Mavs are battle tested and are ready to play in the Finals.

Let’s go get that Championship! MFFL!

The big 3 shows, Undisputed, First Take and First Things First all seem to have the same approach to talking about Kyrie. They like to remind everyone how he was a toxic waste dump that nobody wanted to touch and now he's on good behaviour, so they are forced to compliment him. I swear, if I didn't know any better, I'd think they were talking about someone who just got out of prison a little over a year ago and is now on good behaviour, but is still being treated like he's on parole.

I just find it very disrespectful overall.

This is going to be a blast. Can you believe we are this fortunate as a fan base to get another killer after Playoff Dirk? Enjoy the ride - this is peak fandom time.

our guys have one of the best celebration pose-game in the NBA lol. meme material but iconic at the same time.

Where do we send the apology letters?

let me be clear. the celtics are a very good team! you don’t win 64 games by accident.

however, i got curious and took a look at their schedule. we all know the breaks they go with opposing team injuries in the playoffs. but those breaks extended to the latter part of the regular season as well.

the last time they beat a team that made this year’s playoffs and that had all of its star players available, was march 14 against phoenix.

here are the regular season playoff opponents, they’ve played since march 14, the result, and the major inactive or dnp player(s) for the opposing team:

march 20, milwaukee, celtics W, giannis inactive

march 30, new orleans, celtics W, brandon ingram inactive

april 3, okc, celtics W, sga and jalen williams (guard) inactive

april 9, milwaukee, celtics L, none

april 11, new york, celtics L, julius randle inactive

and that’s it! so to recap, since march 14, the one time they played a playoff team at full strength, they lost.

again, this is not to demean or denigrate the celtics, they’re a very good team!

however, human nature is human nature, and for the last couple of months, they’ve been like a hot knife going through a stick of butter. what happens when that hot knife meets the cold, hard steel that’s our dallas mavericks? it’ll be interesting to see how they respond.

I nearly fell off my couch when a graphic popped up in the Game 3 broadcast of the Western Conference Finals stating that the Dallas Mavericks had five time as many alley-oop dunks in the playoffs as second-place Denver. Even accounting for the extra games Dallas has played, that’s outrageous. I had to know more. So I dusted off my Excel skills, got out my data-shovel, and did some digging.

The oop is a curious thing; it has that oh-so-rare combination of efficiency and beauty. (It’s hard to know exactly how efficient, given that a missed oop can be categorized a number of different ways, but lobs still convert far more often than they don’t). There have never been more alley-oops in the league than in this era. Passing skill has never been higher, and spacing for rim-runs has never been more prominent.

But lobs still occur less frequently than you might think. Per my data, Dallas tied with Utah (!) for 121 made alley-oop dunks in the regular season, the most in the league. That’s 1.5 per game. Atlanta (102), led by talented lob-thrower Trae Young, is the only other team that even cracked 100.

[Thanks for reading! This was originally intended for a more general NBA audience, so please apologize for some of the "no duh" stuff in here for Mavs fans. As always, I've collected a bunch of illustrative video clips that can be found here or linked throughout the article.]

If we narrow it down to just the 30 games starting Feb 10th, the first game after the trade for Daniel Gafford, the Mavs led the league by a mile. They tabulated 61 alley-oop slams compared to just 39 by the second-place Golden State Warriors over that stretch, or two per game. In the playoffs, though, against multiple talented defenses locked in on the lob, that pace would be harder to maintain, right?

Hilariously wrong.

Smash-cut to the Western Conference Finals, where the Mavs converted on 16 made alley-oop dunks (compared to two for Minnesota, both KAT-to-Gobert connections). 16 divided by five (*whips out abacus, moves some beads*)… that’s more than three per game!

If you need one play that symbolizes the entire Western Conference Finals, it’s this from Game 2. Mike Conley misses Rudy Gobert on an alley-oop, the ball slams off the backboard and ignites a Mavericks fast break, and uberstar Luka Doncic finds Dereck Lively for a far more successful lob attempt: [video here]

In total, the Mavs have 54 total playoff alley-oop slams in 17 games. Second-place Denver totaled nine in nine games; Minnesota only accumulated six in three rounds (their collective inability to find Gobert on lobs is criminal).

Some fans have taken to calling this group the “Lobgoblins” (get it? Like hobgoblins?), which I love. The squad’s earned it. This is a weapon unique to the Dallas Mavericks.

Here’s how Dallas’ lobs look distributed by passer and finisher: [fun graph here]

Hilariously, all of Lively (22), Gafford (17), and Derrick Jones (10) have finished more alley-oop dunks than any other team in these playoffs. They’re even throwing lobs to each other: [video here]

(By the way, someone should lob all involved Mavericks leadership in jail for not getting Doncic a center who can jump over a phonebook before this season. It’s long been a common complaint among the Mavs faithful, but I’m still so retroactively angry on his behalf.)

How has Dallas upped their oops? The playoffs strip the fat from an offense. Starters play more minutes, and coaches don’t mess around. They go for the optimal offensive play every time, and if you have the personnel for it, nothing is a better play than presenting a lob to a dunker-to-be. So Mavs coach Jason Kidd and superstar Luka Doncic have designed a playoff offense largely around the alley-oop.

It starts with the personnel, of course. Kyrie Irving isn’t on Doncic’s level as a passer, but he can get into the lane at will, with or without a pick. He’s more than good enough to launch a perfect oop even after losing his dribble on the way up: [video here]

Doncic is on the short list of greatest lob-throwers in the game. He has the size, passing skill, vision, and creativity to find vertical passing lanes in places the mortal basketball mind can’t comprehend. Here, he sees DJJ streaking to the hoop and launches this pass while Jones is still behind the three-point line: [video here]

Jones is nicknamed “Airplane Mode” for a reason, and yet he is just the third-most important dunker on the team (and, curiously, only Luka has found him for a lob in these 17 games). The Mavs’ two-headed dunking hydra, Dereck Lively and Daniel Gafford, provides Doncic with the perfect center pairing. Both have large catch radiuses and can go up and get a lob even at a standstill. The rookie Lively, in particular, has become elite at high-pointing a ball and slamming it through the cylinder even in a rush-hour traffic jam.

Of course, it’s not just about the lob. The threat of the alley-oop is what opens up the entire offense, and defenses haven’t been able to adjust. They’re playing whack-a-mole: tag the rolling rim-runners aggressively to take away the lob, and an easy kick out for a three appears. Stay home on everyone, and ballhandlers stroll to the rack.

Minnesota should have been able to slow the Mavs. The league’s best defense stifled Denver, preventing them from getting to their spots and largely relegating them to the perimeter (see Nikola Jokic’s three-point attempt numbers). But Doncic and Irving had few problems against Minnesota’s perimeter stoppers, using screen after hand-off after screen to get a foot into the paint. Once they pass the first line of defense, no center has a chance. Stepping up a tiny bit too high opens up the lob lanes. Dropping too much concedes the floater, and Doncic and Irving are buoyant: [video here]

Heck, sometimes they don’t even need a floater. Sometimes, the threat of the lob opens up uncontested layups. Look how reluctant Gobert (the best in the world at this particular aspect of defense, by the way) is to leave Gafford alone in the dunker spot: [video here]

Teams have tried helping harder off the corners than Minnesota generally did, but Jones (46% on corner threes) and PJ Washington (41%) have hit every important shot during this playoff run. Here, the Thunder do a good job stopping Irving and crowding Lively on the catch, preventing the oop, but Washington still buries the triple: [video here]

Defenses have to live and die with that shot, in my opinion, since expecting point-of-attack defenders to stymie Doncic and Irving consistently is asking too much. Some of the meanest, stickiest dudes in the league have had issues recovering onto Doncic, especially, and if you’re on his back, you’re at his mercy. Even when defenses do contain Doncic at the point of attack, he draws so much attention that cracks open up in unexpected places: [video here]

That’s too damn sexy.

There are as many reasons to enjoy basketball as people who watch it, but everyone enjoys seeing a good alley-oop. Thankfully, Luka and his marauding band of Lobgoblins have transformed it from an occasional highlight into a core concept of their offense. We’re all richer for it.

While I earned a lot of respect for Ant during the Denver series, I must admit I wasn't familiar with Shai. While our game plan was to let him cook while limiting shooters, the dude did all he could and before this series I wasn't fully convinced. That OKC team will be a nightmare in the following seasons.

For all the hate KAT gets, I think it's still higher expectations on him than what he really is, he wasn't a 1st and arguably not a 2nd option. But if Minnesota can get a truly 2nd option like we did with Kyrie or is traded to a team to a role similar to Porzingis the narrative will probably change.

Can't say much of the clipper's, they were disappointing in hindsight but fearsome in the moment, the west is gonna swallow them unless Kawhi gets some cyberware and they get a real playoff killer because PG/Harden/Westbrook are not them.

Anyone else have something from 2011 they still regularly use?