There is little doubt that Doncic is one of the best players in the world, and if you had him listed at the top overall spot, I wouldn’t argue with you. He often puts on dazzling displays that convince me as much, and his highlight against Phoenix’s Cam Johnson on Wednesday night showed exactly that.
However, the reigning Western Conference champions showed exactly what his limitations looked like in Game 2. As a defender, Doncic leaves a lot to be desired. The Suns found a way to target Doncic, and it worked.
Doncic has played good defense before, but he was exposed on Wednesday. You can watch exactly how bad it looked in this video, embedded below:
The Suns are RELENTLESSLY hunting Luka pic.twitter.com/WS9ZQQXYG3
— Half Court Hoops (@HalfCourtHoops) May 5, 2022
In a since-deleted tweet, former Mavs executive Haralabos Voulgaris noted that the Suns went after Doncic fifty times as the screen defender in the pick and roll. Phoenix scored 1.72 points per possession on these opportunities, per Voulgaris.
To put that in perspective, that’s almost as if the Suns were able to just walk to the basket against Doncic. Worse, most of these opportunities were in the second half.
This wasn’t just a coincidence, either. The idea was simple: Attack against Doncic once he is tired from his offensive workload, which will happen, as the Dallas superstar consistently finishes with one of the highest usage rates in the NBA (via Arizona Sports):
“In relation to the Suns’ All-Star backcourt of Chris Paul and Devin Booker, head coach Monty Williams has said in the past that the Suns have data that shows how much players wear down when they reach a certain amount of dribbles per game.”
This wasn’t just a problem for one evening against Phoenix, either.
He struggled considerably during possessions in which Doncic defended the big during ball screen actions. Among the 105 players who recorded as many defensive opportunities on this play type, per Synergy, only four allowed more points per possession.
Opponents made more than two-thirds of their attempts when Doncic was the nearest defender at the rim. That ranked sixth-worst in the league among all players who defended as many attempts in that zone, via PBPStats.
Luka Doncic: “I’ve just got to play better defense. That’s it.”
— Tim MacMahon (@espn_macmahon) May 5, 2022
Dallas head coach Jason Kidd suggested that the team will have to make some schematic changes for the third game of the series, but it might be too late.
Doncic isn’t a player that lacks confidence, so I don’t predict he will get overly rattled by the performance. But this one may feel a little bit like putting the toothpaste back into the tube. There is no hiding him now.
Now that Phoenix has figured out how to maximize their offensive output when Doncic was on the floor, this series could get ugly. The Suns scored 152.2 points per 100 possessions when Doncic was on the floor, per PBP Stats, but just 100.0 points per 100 during minutes he was not.
Obviously, the Mavericks aren’t going to limit the playing time for Doncic. So instead, we may just see some gaudy scoring figures for the Suns over the next few games.
Take a look at how NBA fans reacted to Doncic getting burned a bunch: