Luka Doncic’s Mavs as Play-In Team: Is John Hollinger Wrong (Again)?

As the Dallas Mavericks get ready to open preseason play against the Oklahoma City Thunder tonight, many questions about the roster still loom, given the up-and-down offseason the team had.

Despite the loss of Jalen Brunson, who was arguably Dallas’ second-best player last season, the Mavs upgraded their frontcourt with the trade for Christian Wood and the signing of JaVale McGee. Another reason for optimism is that superstar Luka Doncic appears to be in the best shape of his career. After two straight years of slow starts, the Mavs are hoping to hit the ground running in what will be a tougher, healthier Western Conference.

Despite Doncic’s greatness and Wood’s potential, John Hollinger, who is a former NBA executive and current writer for The Athletic, thinks the Mavs are no more than a Play-In Tournament team this season.

“The good news is that the Mavs have Doncic, the type of elite heliocentric offensive star who instantly bestows puncher’s-chance playoff equity upon any roster he joins,” writes Hollinger.

“The pick-and-roll maestro carved up Phoenix more or less by himself in the second round last season (58.3 percent true shooting on insane 41.8 percent usage); even the conference finals defeat against Golden State’s top-ranked defense was mostly a result of the Mavs’ near-total inability to check the Warriors’ guards.”

Hollinger has the Mavs pegged as the eighth-ranked team in the Western Conference, which would make them a Play-In team. He predicts a record of 46-36.

“The bad news is that in addition to Doncic, the Mavs have … Spencer Dinwiddie? Dorian Finney-Smith? Look, Dallas has some good, valuable role players, and most of them are on pretty decent contracts. But it’s hard to get excited about Dallas marching through the postseason without a second star-caliber player on the roster,” Hollinger continued.

”We’ve seen Doncic visibly run out of gas in playoff games each of the past two seasons even with Brunson at his side. The uncompensated loss of the Mavs’ next-best shot creator leaves a huge dent, with Dinwiddie the only halfway-decent option on the roster to fill it. He was great for Dallas at the end of 2021-22, but his shooting numbers (for the Mavs) also far outpaced those from the rest of his career.”

On the surface, what Hollinger is saying isn’t necessarily wrong, but it doesn’t take into consideration a couple of things:

1) Dorian Finney-Smith might not average 20 points per game, but he does a little bit of everything for the Mavs. One could argue that, overall, he was more important to the team than Brunson was, although it was close. Being given the toughest defensive assignment on a nightly basis shouldn’t be understated. Finney-Smith is one of the best 3-and-D players in the league and deserves to have more respect put on his name.

2) Yes, Spencer Dinwiddie’s shooting numbers with the Mavs outpace what he’s done so far in his career … but he’d also never played with Doncic either. Remember when Tim Hardaway Jr. had never shot better than 36 percent from deep in his career until he was traded to Dallas and proceeded to post back-to-back near-40 percent 3-point shooting seasons? There’s a common denominator here, and you’d think more people would acknowledge that rather than lean on previous career averages.

3) Although the Mavs didn’t aggressively address their need for a secondary ball-handler off the bench, that doesn’t mean their doomed … not in the regular season at least. With a collection of players like Frank Ntilikina, Jaden Hardy, Tyler Dorsey and Josh Green (who the Mavs expect to have a breakout season), there’s a chance the Mavs can scrape up enough bench guard production to rack up regular-season wins.

The Mavs got off to a poor start last season for a number of reasons, including COVID-19 protocols, nagging injuries, and Doncic not being in tip-top shape. The latter doesn’t seem like it’s going to be an issue this time around, and health permitting, it’s hard for us to see the Mavs winning any less than 50 games.

That’s just how good Doncic is. He has three All-NBA First Team selections in his first four seasons for a reason. He can carry a team to greatness, even if that team has some holes.

Respectfully, we’re going to deem Hollinger’s Mavs preview as being more “pessimistic” than “realistic.” He’s been wrong on the Mavs before, and it wouldn’t shock us if that’s the case this time around as well.

Dallas’ first chance at silencing its biggest critics will be on Oct. 19 when it tips off the regular season on the road against the Phoenix Suns.

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