Will the Mavericks waste Luka's excellence being stubborn?

Jason Kidd, governing a .500 team with one of the best players in the world, won't budge on certain rotational decisions. Maybe he's right. What if he's not?

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

Pope Clement VII and Emperor Charles V on Horseback Under a Canopy; Jacopo Ligozzi; 1580

It should be acknowledged that the Mavericks are now .500 after beating the Warriors in a Luka Doncic classic on Tuesday night (see game reactions below), and that Dallas has a positive net rating on the season. The Mavericks were projected to be “pretty good” coming into the season, and the Mavericks are in fact grading out to “pretty good” at the quarter mark.

That said, there’s just a lot to chew on with the Mavericks.

• They lost Jalen Brunson free and clear in the offseason, apparently by bungling the whole ordeal going back to early last season.

• They blew one of their few contractual options this summer on JaVale McGee, who is now out of the rotation.

• Their other big offseason acquisition, Christian Wood, was surprised to learn he’d be coming off of the bench in training camp and has apparently not particularly impressed Jason Kidd.

Aggravation at Kidd seems to be metastasizing, despite Luka reassuring the world that he’s happy in Dallas and looks forward to competing for championships there. Fear of Luka’s discontent is perhaps not the driving factor at aggravation toward Kidd and the franchise; fear of wasting crucial time with one of the best players in the world performing at an extremely high level is more on target. Despite the Mavericks’ history over the past two decades, you don’t always have superstars this amazing, and blowing seasons of individual greatness due to ineptitude, a lack of savvy and odd coaching philosophies should indeed draw ire.

Kidd appears to be really resistant to changing the rotation beyond dropping McGee out of it. To wit:

Isaac Harris @IsaacLHarris

“You guys can stop asking about the starting lineup…it’s just a waste of time” -Kidd

Lacking capable ballhandlers outside of Doncic and Spencer Dinwiddie has been an obvious problem this season. Luka was on the bench when Dinwiddie was ejected Tuesday (again, see below for game reactions) and for 70 seconds Kidd left Josh Green on the floor as the de facto point guard. Josh Green is becoming quite a good player … but he is not a point guard. The Warriors went on an immediate run forcing turnovers until Kidd put Doncic back in.

Lacking capable ballhandlers outside of Doncic and Dinwiddie has been an obvious problem since Brunson walked and the Mavericks whiffed on signing Goran Dragic. Now the Mavericks have brought in Kemba Walker, who has not inspired confidence on NBA courts in recent years. Unless the past year has been spent at the Fountain of Youth, he seems more like a “break in case of emergency” point guard off the bench than a real rotational option.

Which brings us back to the starting lineup, which Kidd doesn’t want to talk about.

Kidd has forgotten more about basketball this week than I’ll ever know. But it’s a bit flummoxing that he won’t explore swapping Dinwiddie for Wood in the rotation and perhaps promote Green over Reggie Bullock (who is struggling in a major way but starting until Tuesday’s game) or Tim Hardaway Jr. To account for the defensive limitations of a Doncic-Wood attack, start Maxi Kleber over Dwight Powell — Powell’s able rim-running would be less necessary with a strong scorer in Wood in the line-up.

If you go Doncic—Green—Dorian Finney-Smith—Wood—Kleber in the starting five, then you can bring in Dinwiddie, THJ and Bullock into bench lineups with a couple of the starters, with Powell and Davis Bertans as needed. The upshot is more playing time for Wood overall (he’s at 25 minutes per game right now, way too low given this roster) and with Luka, which should relieve some pressure from Doncic. The other upshot is giving Dinwiddie additional space to breath and stretching the Mavericks’ limited ballhandling out further by reducing the amount of time your two capable ballhandlers overlap. About 65% of Dinwiddie’s minutes this season have come alongside Doncic. The Mavericks just aren’t deep enough to do that.

This, of course, isn’t likely to be a complete salve: the Mavericks roster needs more help, whether that’s from new talent coming in or development from players (like Green and rookie Jaden Hardy) on the roster. The bench is likely to continue to struggle. Until that help arrives, it sure seems like there’s some room to optimize what the Mavericks do have. Yes, being .500 with a positive net rating is nice. But nothing about what Dallas has done this season should have Kidd feeling like his planned rotation is untouchable. The regular season is long, the Western Conference appears rather forgiving this year, and it’s the perfect time to really experiment and try different configurations. Resistance to that seems unproductive.