Mavs' Poor Free-Throw Shooting Shouldn't Overshadow Other Flaws
The Dallas Mavericks hold a 13-13 record through 26 games despite receiving MVP-level play from Luka Doncic. Among the reasons for shortcomings have been inconsistent and outright inefficient results on free throws.
Plenty of key issues have impacted the Mavs to this point. Free-throw shooting is undoubtedly high on the list. Entering Monday's matchup against the Oklahoma City Thunder, Dallas is shooting 72.3 percent from the line, which ranks 29th in the NBA.
In two of the Mavs' recent losses, they show worse than 50 percent from the line and are the only team to do so multiple times while taking 20 or more. One loss was an overtime game against the Detroit Pistons while the other was a one-point regulation loss to the Milwaukee Bucks. They missed double-figure free-throw attempts in their season opener loss to the Phoenix Suns in a two-point game.
“Literally, we’d probably have five more wins if we could shoot free throws,” Mark Cuban told The Dallas Morning News. “Easily. It’s just the way it goes. We went through the same things early last year and for whatever reason it’s been an Achilles heel.”
There are quite a few issues that stem from the conversation about free-throw shooting as the Mavs' biggest issue. The Memphis Grizzlies rank last in the NBA in free throw percentage (69.8 percent), yet they have a 17-9 record and rank second in the Western Conference standings despite missing key players for a good chunk of games.
The reality for the Mavs is they lack the necessary pieces to be a top-level defense. They have built a team reliant on 3-point shooting, but they lack elite shooting talent in addition to having limited means of self-generating offense. In fact, there are limits to how some of the more complementary players can even attack closeouts. Being a bad free-throw shooting team has only made all of that more complicated.
Had the Mavs shot better from the free-throw line in those five games Cuban mentioned, then they could have won. There's no doubting that. However, shouldn't generally poor free-throw shooting have been the expectation based on roster construction? The top volume free-throw shooting options Dallas has have always been inefficient options.
In the recent loss against the Bucks, Tim Hardaway Jr. came up empty on three free throws in clutch-time followed by Dorian Finney-Smith missing a pair of attempts. Those type of micro-level results are inexplicable and do undoubtedly impact the outcome. But, again, the underlying issue for this Mavs team is they are supposed to be a low percentage free throw team based on roster makeup.
“The good news is we pretty much whipped their ass if we’d have made our free throws,” Cuban said of the Bucks game. “And we’ve beaten the top teams in the league in the last 10 days. So as bad as it is, and as bad as I felt for our guys missing them, there’s a lot of positive takeaways.
"You can’t get down on it.”
It's more comfortable to point to free throws in the loss to the Bucks as the main issue, and again, that's fair. It's accurate to say a team missing 14 free throws in a one-point loss is a major problem. However, it shouldn't allow the poor execution on both the final possession on offense and defense to be overshadowed.
For as great of a player as Doncic is, he has been consistently inconsistent at the free-throw line during his NBA career. He's shooting a career-low 71.1 percent on a career-high 10.4 free-throw attempts per game. Although the Mavs have other issues to address – perhaps via trade – fixing their free-throw problem likely starts with the head of the snake.
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