“Our braintrust did a great job of signing guys that fit into what we planned to do with Luka Dončić, with Kristaps Porziņģis,” Carlisle said on the podcast. ” … A lot of this, in the NBA, the success of the team, comes down to who your best players are. With Dončić and Porziņģis, we’ve set ourselves up well from the offensive side of the ball. Coming out of the hiatus, the majority of our emphasis is going to be to continue to improve defensively. We started out the season somewhere in the 20s rank-wise. We’re now up in sort of the middle ranks of all the teams in the league (17th in Defensive Rating, at 111.5, per basketball-reference.com), and we want to continue moving up. And our goal is to get in the top 10.”