Defense may win championships, but, as the Dallas Mavericks are finding early this season, it’s pretty hard to win regular-season games without offense.
Dallas was held to a pathetic offensive rating of 91.1 in its season-opening loss against the San Antonio Spurs — the worst offensive rating of any team this season in its season-opener by more than 15 points per 100 possessions — and while their scoring total improved to 107 in their second outing Friday, you have to consider the competition. How much better is 107 in a loss to the lowly Washington Wizards than 92 in a loss to Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs? The number those games have in common is zero, which is how many wins the Mavericks have this season.
The entire theory of their team is based on Harrison’s “defense wins championships” philosophy. Their starting lineup is enormous, with its smallest player being the 6-5 Klay Thompson, its wings manned by Cooper Flagg and PJ Washington, who would be power forwards on most normal teams, and it’s rounded out by Dereck Lively II, a true center, and Anthony Davis, a center pretending to be a power forward. They’ve handed point guard duties to the rookie Flagg. It has by and large gone poorly. Flagg is shooting 37% from the field and has more turnovers (eight) than assists (six).
Cooper Flagg’s NBA debut isn’t concerning, but Mavericks may be asking too much of their star rookie
Jasmyn Wimbish
Flagg is going to get better, and the primary benefit of playing him at point guard was never going to be in the short term anyway. As Jason Kidd proved in Milwaukee with Giannis Antetokounmpo, allowing a bigger scorer some early point guard reps can pay enormous dividends down the line, when that player is thriving at a more practical position. But let’s be clear here: The Mavericks haven’t been making long-term decisions over the last year. “The future to me is 3-4 years from now,” Harrison said after trading a then-25-year-old Luka Dončić for Anthony Davis, who is six years his senior.
Hey, speaking of Dončić, offense hasn’t really been a problem for him so far this season. He has 92 points through two games — the same number Dallas scored as a team in its season-opening loss to San Antonio — and he’s done it against last season’s No. 6 (Minnesota) and No. 7 (Golden State) defenses, without LeBron James by his side to draw defensive attention. Throw in 23 total rebounds, 17 assists and 62% shooting from the field, and you could argue that this is the best basketball Dončić has ever played.
He can thank his much ballyhooed weight loss for that. While Dončić remained dominant in Dallas until the day he was traded, he had subtly gotten a bit slower, and it showed in his paint points. He averaged 13.4 of them during the 2022-23 season, but slipped to 11.1 a year later, 9.9 in his last half-season as a Maverick, and a meager 8.1 in his first half-season as a Laker. You can see a similar degradation in his free-throw attempts: 10.5 to 8.7 to 7.9 over the past three seasons. He still had his power and skill, but with less burst on his first step, he just had fewer ways to beat defenses.
Well, he had 26 paint points in the season-opener alone. He’s up to 29 free-throw attempts in two games. Suddenly Dončić has the speed he brought into the NBA, but with the years of experience and strength he’s since added. Skinny Luka is the most complete version of him we’ve yet seen.
He’s even defending, at least to a point. He’s never going to be a man-to-man stopper, and the Lakers will almost always try to hide him on easier matchups to preserve his body. But he’s at least been active, leading the Lakers in deflections in the opener and holding up reasonably well when switched onto the ball. He won’t ever helm a great defense, but we know for a fact that he can be part of one, seeing as how the 2023-24 Mavericks made the Finals by pairing Dončić’s marvelous offense with a stellar all-around defensive roster.
The current Mavericks aren’t even reaching the heights that team did defensively, and that’s after going all-in on that end of the floor. For all of the size they’ve accumulated, they don’t have a point-of-attack defender anywhere near Derrick Jones Jr., a key cog in their Finals run who now plays for the Clippers. The offense-centric players they do still rely on, like Thompson and D’Angelo Russell, have little to offer defensively. Russell has always been a defensive liability. Thompson wasn’t before his injuries, but now he can only guard slower forwards. The Mavericks have plenty of players to do that already.
And even if Dallas does manage to put together an elite defense, the offensive sacrifices it would take are going to leave them so far behind on that end of the floor that returning to the Finals will probably be impossible. In Dončić’s second year in the league during the 2019-20 season, he led the most efficient offense in NBA history to that point — without an All-Star teammate. Having him is part of what allowed the Mavericks to use as many defenders as they did in 2024. He, by himself, is an elite offense, so a roster with him can devote the bulk of its remaining resources to defense. The Mavericks no longer have that luxury. They have a defense-centric roster that has thus far been underwhelming defensively and a disaster offensively.
Dallas will get better. Dončić will probably get slightly worse. But if the first week of the season is any indication, Dončić is winning this breakup handily. Defense may win championships, but the Mavericks haven’t had defense or offense to start the season, and with Dončić, they had both.
