The Philadelphia 76ers, who had fewer players than the Dallas Mavericks, defeated the latter team 120-116 at home on Sunday.
With Joel Embiid out of the lineup, the 76ers have been apathetic, hovering around.500 and falling farther behind in the Eastern Conference status. The Mavericks returned home from a taxing four-game road trip with an opportunity to correct course against a lesser foe, yet they laid one of their top eggs of the year.
Dallas dominated Philadelphia in the first few minutes of the game to take a commanding 11-0 lead. It was a decent start. After that, it appeared as though the Mavericks would easily win, but the 76ers responded with an 11-2 run to regain control of the game, and the Mavericks have been in difficulties ever since.
With 19 points in the first half, Tyrese Maxey gave Philadelphia a strong start while the Mavericks offence appeared to be dead. Luka Doncic finished the first quarter with two points on one of six shots. He then needed a strong second quarter to cut the Philadelphia victory by five points at the half, 56-51.
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Given the importance of the game as well as the opposition, Dallas’ third quarter may have been among their worst; the 76ers defeated the Mavericks 34–25 to take a double-digit lead, while they did so without Maxey scoring. Off the dribble, Kelly Oubre and Tobias Harris caused havoc, scoring well apart from the Mavericks’ lesser wing players. Starting the fourth quarter, that pattern persisted, and Philadelphia quickly established an 18-point lead.
Although it appeared that the match was over, it wasn’t officially over because this is the contemporary NBA. Dallas ultimately made the decision to step up its game, taking the 76ers to the full court and launching a fierce offensive campaign. With less than a minute remaining, Dallas reduced the score to five points at 110-105, but a Harris nook three proved to be the game-winning basket. The Mavericks did not receive the ball with an opportunity to tie or make the victory in the last quarter, despite some desperate threes from Kyrie Irving in the closing seconds that gave the game a closer appearance on the scoreboard. Dallas loses a match that they just could not.
This is what we observed.
It was a coaching defeat.
Since Jason Kidd’s job has never appeared to be in doubt and criticizing him as an administrator consistently brings out the most awful things in some fans as well as Mavericks media, myself as well as this site haven’t discussed the coach’s performance too much. It feels like assaulting your head towards a brick wall.
These days, it’s inevitable—Kidd was awful. In spite of the Mavericks’ previous game against the 76ers prior to the All-Star break, in which the Mavericks limited the 76ers to 102 points and Maxey to 15 points on 6-of-16 shooting by blitzing Maxey in the pick and roll, trapping and doubling him to give the ball up and force other Sixers players to beat them, the Mavericks started the game playing drop coverage in the pick-and-roll against 76ers All-Star guard Tyrese Maxey.
With Embiid out of the lineup, the Sixers don’t have many offensive producers, so it made perfect sense to play Maxey against him. Although Buddy Hield and Nicholas Batum’s return make a difference and Harris is a respectable enough scorer, Philadelphia generally lacks players who can wear you out in a double team.
Hence, Maxey took advantage of the Mavericks’ decision to drop their big men to wall off the rim in favor of using it as a free path into the paint, where he scored on a number of pullups, teardrops, floaters, as well as layups. In the first half, Maxey scored 19 points. It wasn’t good.
During the second half, the Mavericks made adjustments, alternating between switches and traps to counter Maxey’s moves. Interestingly enough, Maxey only managed to score five in the second half, and the Mavericks managed to reduce the lead in the final frame. It wasn’t perfect, of course; on weakside kickouts, Harris and Oubre dominated Dallas in isolation, but it was still better than their play in the first half. The Mavericks might have taken advantage of the early 11-0 lead if the Sixers had simply continued to execute their previous strategy, which saw them shoot less than 50% from the field and 29.7% from three overall.
Instead, Kidd as well as the staff of coaches employed a coverage that is ineffective against most elite teams in the NBA as well as against a player like Maxey. In the contemporary NBA, drop coverage has gone a sort of the dinosaur, and backup centre Daniel Gafford’s execution of it looked especially gory. The Mavericks’ coaching staff made an inexplicable decision.
The top-heavy nature of the Mavericks’ offence
Both Luka Doncic as well as Kyrie Irving finished with respectable totals: Doncic scored 38 points on 14 of 27 shots, while Irving finished with a score of 28 on 10 of 20 shots. However, the Mavericks’ offence collapsed once more whenever a player besides those two took the field.
The Mavericks who aren’t identified as Doncic or Irving shot the horrifying 7-of-32 from three (21.9%), including a ridiculous 5-of-5 performance from Derrick Jones Jr. Jones averaged five points each game in February, scored twenty-three points against Philadelphia, and scored twenty-three points in his prior eight games. For the majority of the game, the Mavericks offence was still aimless despite that haphazard explosion. The Mavericks’ situation would have been much worse if Jones hadn’t had such an erratic and unplanned night.
PJ Washington made three of ten shots for 13 points. Tim Hardaway Jr. made one of eight shots for two points. Maxi Kleber made two free throws while missing the other two. Because it makes no sense to provide like restricted players straightforward open threes off twice teams when they have demonstrated that’s usually the sole manner in which they can score, teams are beginning to let Irving as well as Doncic play 1-on-1 frequently while putting up with Mavericks role players facing only one coverage and more reliable closeouts. Teams seem to be willingly putting up with Doncic and Irving’s high scoring outputs rather than worrying that the supporting group can compensate for deficiencies in a predetermined defense.
Normally, players like Hardaway and Washington would step in at this point, but both have struggled greatly, particularly Hardaway. The Mavericks must adjust to the ways that opponents are guarding them because they don’t have many options on the bench save Jaden Hardy. Having coaches who can devise plays would be beneficial in this situation. Which makes this even more puzzling given how well the Mavericks play after a timeout. The Mavericks offence is going to look strange as long as teams don’t create any kind of motion outside of when opponents choose to blitz or double. Teams are just happy to watch Doncic as well as Irving grasp the ball along with attack.
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