What’s the future for the Mavericks’ Dwight Powell and the center position?由Mavs.Ben 发表在Big D https://bbs.hupu.com/688
I don’t want to lie to you, so I won’t: This article isn’t truly about Dwight Powell. Or, perhaps more accurately, this article is about much more than Dwight Powell. It is about Kristaps Porzingis, positional maximization, modern basketball, postseason ramifications, how all those things intersect within the context of this team, and, yes, in the end, how those things will affect the second-most-tenured player on this team’s roster. (J.J. Barea edges him for most tenured by two months.) It is to Powell’s credit this conversation about his future isn’t really about him. It’s nothing he has done. It truly isn’t.
In fact, I would like to laud Powell before anything else. He is a professional. He’s thoughtful, the type of person who could be named president of the National Basketball Player’s Association in the coming years. He served faithfully as Dirk Nowitzki’s wingman during Nowitzki’s retirement season, shielding him from the toughest defensive assignments and rolling inside so the aging German could find space for jumpers. He admitted as much to me, understanding his role that year as one larger than him. He had learned from the Nowitzkian work ethic when he first arrived in Dallas, after all, and emulated it in the years that followed. When Dallas signed him to an extension last summer, it was inevitable – a matter that was not up for debate. He is, in fact, one of the veterans who has now been tasked with carrying that Nowitzki-built culture forwards. It’s why I suspect he will be back for the first game next season, and would have even if the season had started in October. While Achilles ruptures are devastating injuries and predicting how his body will handle this one shouldn’t be trivialized, his rehabilitation won’t lack for even an ounce of effort. I’m certain of that.
What Powell will look like upon return, though, I’m less certain about. We have seen average athletes return from this injury with dampened explosiveness, including twice in Dallas with Wesley Matthews and J.J. Barea. Both retained most of their skills and much of their physicality. A 10 percent reduction in athleticism, though, can reduce any player’s effectiveness by a much greater percentage than that. Powell turns 29 next year; he’s older than you might perceive him to be. I’m confident he will be a productive player next season – but in his same role, as a starter playing nearly 27 minutes per game? I refuse to rule it out, but I can’t guarantee it, either.
For now, that’s an unanswerable question. Let’s assume the best. When Powell returns early next season, we should envision him as a player who retains the pick-and-roll ability that has become his elite skill. He ruthlessly collapses any defense when barreling down the lane, not just with his tangible threat as a lob target but the knowledge that he’s skilled finishing below the rim with a dribble or pump fake if needed. On the short roll, Powell can be trusted to make smart, if safe decisions. He has flashed one- or two-dribble drives as a part of his skillset; he can rebound and scrap for garbage paint points. Defensively, he’s not what you would expect given the athlete he is. But his positioning is largely good, and his effort is constant.
All that led to Powell starting 37 of the Mavericks’ 40 games this season while averaging the fifth-most minutes on the team prior to his season-ending injury. It was always planned that he would largely sit next to Porzingis in the frontcourt, keeping the Latvian closer to the rim defensively and out on the perimeter on the other end. But with Powell’s injury came an unwanted, enlightening period of experimentation. Before, Dallas would play Porzingis next to Maxi Kleber in small stretches most games and Porzingis by himself as the big man only rarely. With Powell out, Porzingis often stepped into the starting lineup with Dorian Finney-Smith as the next-tallest teammate on the floor. When Kleber started next to him, Porzingis still retained more free movement as a screen-setter or space-finder within the offense. This is an objective statement: Porzingis became an overwhelmingly better player after Powell’s injury. But we know correlation doesn’t equal causation, which finally leads us to this coming question.
Will Porzingis ever be his best self playing with Powell?
Such is the life of an NBA role player. The league is star-driven, and teams are often heliocentric (the practice of planets orbiting celestial stars, which also applies to NBA players orbiting their, uh, terrestrial stars), so a role player’s value must be discussed within this context. Powell, a good basketball role player, must play center offensively. He cannot reliably hit 3s or be dynamic with his dribbling or passing. His cutting and offensive rebounding aren’t enough to make up for that. His offensive value is immense when he’s screening for a talented pick-and-roll ball handler. But he must play the five and set the majority of screens when on the floor.
We know that Porzingis thrived once he started playing the five. It wasn’t instantaneous, though. In the first game without Powell, Porzingis was excellent on limited shot attempts. In the following three, he shot only 13-of-37. It wasn’t until the next matchup that Porzingis started streaking, scoring 35 points against Houston and averaging nearly 28 points on efficient shooting in the next 13 games. If Powell was holding him back, then the effect of Powell’s absence took several games to fully kick in.
In fact, we can roundly disprove that Powell was a negative factor on Porzingis this season. I often leave big-picture questions like this open-ended; I won’t here. For one, during the 498 minutes that Porzingis and Powell spent on the court together, Dallas scored more than 117 points per 100 possessions. That’s better than the team’s average, 115.8 points per 100 possessions, which itself is on pace to set an all-time league record. So it’s clear the Dallas offense did not suffer from that duo. Furthermore, Porzingis averaged 52.5 percent True Shooting while playing with Powell prior to his injury – three percentage points better than he did in lineups without Powell – while scoring at approximately the same rate. When paired with Kleber during that same timeframe, both Porzingis’ efficiency and the team’s overall offense suffered greatly.
Porzingis has averaged more than 22 points with greatly improved efficiency since Powell’s injury. In fact, Dallas offense has averaged 119.0 points per 100 possessions with Porzingis on the court during this 20-game sample size. The Porzingis-Kleber pairing improved from its middling metrics prior to Powell’s injury, but Porzingis actually thrived most playing without any big man at all. In the 20 games and 400 minutes played without any other big man, Porzingis-led lineups average 120.8 points per 100 possession. It would be interesting to see Porzingis, now playing at this level, adapts to Powell’s presence. It does also provides some evidence toward Porzingis’ value as the only big man on the floor.
Well, about that. It’s clear two-big-man lineups can work in the regular season. Powell was an important part of the team’s success, albeit not a necessary one, as his absence has shown. It was always planned for Powell to start next to Porzingis, providing another big body to provide support. And any reasonable observer would call it a success up until Powell’s injury. Powell covered for Porzingis, complementing his strengths and weaknesses while allowing Porzingis to ease into his new role within the Mavericks offense. Dallas clearly did not want to start the season running endless pick-and-rolls through Porzingis; he has been the roll man on less than 16 percent of his ended possessions, per Synergy Sports. But there’s another big question we must ask.
Would Powell have a future during postseason basketball?
Three weeks before his season ended, Dwight Powell started against the Brooklyn Nets. After making the first shot of the game, Dallas slipped and slopped to seven straight failed offensive possessions that included two where Powell launched and missed 3-point attempts. He had to shoot them; DeAndre Jordan was playing him like this.
I believe this was Brooklyn’s planned defensive strategy, albeit one that played well into Jordan’s preference to not move his feet. No matter what Powell did, Jordan parked himself in the lane. On the second possession of the game, he was even pinged for a defensive three seconds violation for doing this. It didn’t matter. With Jordan deep in the paint on every pick-and-roll, Doncic was stymied and Powell presented little threat. There was 7:45 remaining in the first quarter when Rick Carlisle yanked Powell from the game, instead replacing him with Kleber. Dallas had only scored three points.
It worked. Dallas won the rest of the quarter decisively and eventually beat Brooklyn by 12 points with Kleber starting the second half and playing 31 minutes. He hit his 3s, three of them on four attempts, while Powell finished 0-for-4 from deep. Kleber was plus-17 while Powell was minus-six. While Brooklyn and Jordan felt comfortable ignoring Powell’s moonlighting attempts as a shooter, they couldn’t justify leaving Kleber that open. He hurt them with jumpers when they did.
You will see playoff teams play this deep drop pick-and-roll coverage against Powell and the Mavericks. You may even see more teams start doing this in the regular season. Brooklyn was a good defensive team this season, to be certain. But if you can neutralize an opponent’s top weapon (the Doncic pick-and-roll), you can be great for a game. Or, in this case, for four minutes of a quarter before Dallas properly adjusted. Because Kleber shoots more efficiently and freely than Powell, it just makes more sense that he would nullify this defensive scheme just as it had nullified Powell.
Kleber and Dorian Finney-Smith are also challenged to shoot by certain defenses; Utah immediately comes to mind as a team that did this. But Powell has much more hesitation when shooting than either of them, not to mention how ineffective he is at hitting them. Even if he hit 45 percent, though, his willingness to take every open 3-point attempt would be the determining factor. Passing up open shots is how offenses break down. Powell isn’t there yet, and he might never be.
Powell’s rim running, his elite skill, is unquestionably useful in the regular season. But we know that postseason basketball causes teams to play smaller and smaller lineups. We know that weaknesses are brutally game-planned for and exposed. Powell might not fit into those series as anything more than a bench player. Or at all. Porzingis might spend entire games as the team’s lone center.
That’s just where basketball is headed.
So what is Powell’s future with the team?
Powell can still help Dallas win regular-season games, and many of them, assuming he returns freely from his injury. His culture carrying makes him beloved by teammates and staffers alike. We need to begin understanding that Powell might not be as useful or necessary in the postseason, though. If Dallas ever needed to, it seems like Powell’s $11 million could fit well into the framework of a deal for a star on a larger contract. But we’re a long way away from that. I’m certainly not trying to trade Powell. Right now, I think we’re all just rooting for his full recovery.
The two postseason issues –Powell’s main strength can be nullified by the right team’s game plan and one of his star teammates might be better off without him on the floor – aren’t going anywhere. But many teams have regular-season players that aren’t called upon as frequently when the postseason arrives. You never know when Powell might be needed in a tight postseason series. Is he the perfect modern player? No, we know he isn’t. But he’s good enough at what he does that Dallas should keep him around as long as possible, no matter what role he ultimately plays.
https://theathletic.com/1902619/2020/07/01/whats-the-future-for-the-mavericks-dwight-powell-and-the-center-position/
I don’t want to lie to you, so I won’t: This article isn’t truly about Dwight Powell. Or, perhaps more accurately, this article is about much more than Dwight Powell. It is about Kristaps Porzingis, positional maximization, modern basketball, postseason ramifications, how all those things intersect within the context of this team, and, yes, in the end, how those things will affect the second-most-tenured player on this team’s roster. (J.J. Barea edges him for most tenured by two months.) It is to Powell’s credit this conversation about his future isn’t really about him. It’s nothing he has done. It truly isn’t.
In fact, I would like to laud Powell before anything else. He is a professional. He’s thoughtful, the type of person who could be named president of the National Basketball Player’s Association in the coming years. He served faithfully as Dirk Nowitzki’s wingman during Nowitzki’s retirement season, shielding him from the toughest defensive assignments and rolling inside so the aging German could find space for jumpers. He admitted as much to me, understanding his role that year as one larger than him. He had learned from the Nowitzkian work ethic when he first arrived in Dallas, after all, and emulated it in the years that followed. When Dallas signed him to an extension last summer, it was inevitable – a matter that was not up for debate. He is, in fact, one of the veterans who has now been tasked with carrying that Nowitzki-built culture forwards. It’s why I suspect he will be back for the first game next season, and would have even if the season had started in October. While Achilles ruptures are devastating injuries and predicting how his body will handle this one shouldn’t be trivialized, his rehabilitation won’t lack for even an ounce of effort. I’m certain of that.
What Powell will look like upon return, though, I’m less certain about. We have seen average athletes return from this injury with dampened explosiveness, including twice in Dallas with Wesley Matthews and J.J. Barea. Both retained most of their skills and much of their physicality. A 10 percent reduction in athleticism, though, can reduce any player’s effectiveness by a much greater percentage than that. Powell turns 29 next year; he’s older than you might perceive him to be. I’m confident he will be a productive player next season – but in his same role, as a starter playing nearly 27 minutes per game? I refuse to rule it out, but I can’t guarantee it, either.
For now, that’s an unanswerable question. Let’s assume the best. When Powell returns early next season, we should envision him as a player who retains the pick-and-roll ability that has become his elite skill. He ruthlessly collapses any defense when barreling down the lane, not just with his tangible threat as a lob target but the knowledge that he’s skilled finishing below the rim with a dribble or pump fake if needed. On the short roll, Powell can be trusted to make smart, if safe decisions. He has flashed one- or two-dribble drives as a part of his skillset; he can rebound and scrap for garbage paint points. Defensively, he’s not what you would expect given the athlete he is. But his positioning is largely good, and his effort is constant.
All that led to Powell starting 37 of the Mavericks’ 40 games this season while averaging the fifth-most minutes on the team prior to his season-ending injury. It was always planned that he would largely sit next to Porzingis in the frontcourt, keeping the Latvian closer to the rim defensively and out on the perimeter on the other end. But with Powell’s injury came an unwanted, enlightening period of experimentation. Before, Dallas would play Porzingis next to Maxi Kleber in small stretches most games and Porzingis by himself as the big man only rarely. With Powell out, Porzingis often stepped into the starting lineup with Dorian Finney-Smith as the next-tallest teammate on the floor. When Kleber started next to him, Porzingis still retained more free movement as a screen-setter or space-finder within the offense. This is an objective statement: Porzingis became an overwhelmingly better player after Powell’s injury. But we know correlation doesn’t equal causation, which finally leads us to this coming question.
Will Porzingis ever be his best self playing with Powell?
Such is the life of an NBA role player. The league is star-driven, and teams are often heliocentric (the practice of planets orbiting celestial stars, which also applies to NBA players orbiting their, uh, terrestrial stars), so a role player’s value must be discussed within this context. Powell, a good basketball role player, must play center offensively. He cannot reliably hit 3s or be dynamic with his dribbling or passing. His cutting and offensive rebounding aren’t enough to make up for that. His offensive value is immense when he’s screening for a talented pick-and-roll ball handler. But he must play the five and set the majority of screens when on the floor.
We know that Porzingis thrived once he started playing the five. It wasn’t instantaneous, though. In the first game without Powell, Porzingis was excellent on limited shot attempts. In the following three, he shot only 13-of-37. It wasn’t until the next matchup that Porzingis started streaking, scoring 35 points against Houston and averaging nearly 28 points on efficient shooting in the next 13 games. If Powell was holding him back, then the effect of Powell’s absence took several games to fully kick in.
In fact, we can roundly disprove that Powell was a negative factor on Porzingis this season. I often leave big-picture questions like this open-ended; I won’t here. For one, during the 498 minutes that Porzingis and Powell spent on the court together, Dallas scored more than 117 points per 100 possessions. That’s better than the team’s average, 115.8 points per 100 possessions, which itself is on pace to set an all-time league record. So it’s clear the Dallas offense did not suffer from that duo. Furthermore, Porzingis averaged 52.5 percent True Shooting while playing with Powell prior to his injury – three percentage points better than he did in lineups without Powell – while scoring at approximately the same rate. When paired with Kleber during that same timeframe, both Porzingis’ efficiency and the team’s overall offense suffered greatly.
Porzingis has averaged more than 22 points with greatly improved efficiency since Powell’s injury. In fact, Dallas offense has averaged 119.0 points per 100 possessions with Porzingis on the court during this 20-game sample size. The Porzingis-Kleber pairing improved from its middling metrics prior to Powell’s injury, but Porzingis actually thrived most playing without any big man at all. In the 20 games and 400 minutes played without any other big man, Porzingis-led lineups average 120.8 points per 100 possession. It would be interesting to see Porzingis, now playing at this level, adapts to Powell’s presence. It does also provides some evidence toward Porzingis’ value as the only big man on the floor.
Well, about that. It’s clear two-big-man lineups can work in the regular season. Powell was an important part of the team’s success, albeit not a necessary one, as his absence has shown. It was always planned for Powell to start next to Porzingis, providing another big body to provide support. And any reasonable observer would call it a success up until Powell’s injury. Powell covered for Porzingis, complementing his strengths and weaknesses while allowing Porzingis to ease into his new role within the Mavericks offense. Dallas clearly did not want to start the season running endless pick-and-rolls through Porzingis; he has been the roll man on less than 16 percent of his ended possessions, per Synergy Sports. But there’s another big question we must ask.
Would Powell have a future during postseason basketball?
Three weeks before his season ended, Dwight Powell started against the Brooklyn Nets. After making the first shot of the game, Dallas slipped and slopped to seven straight failed offensive possessions that included two where Powell launched and missed 3-point attempts. He had to shoot them; DeAndre Jordan was playing him like this.
I believe this was Brooklyn’s planned defensive strategy, albeit one that played well into Jordan’s preference to not move his feet. No matter what Powell did, Jordan parked himself in the lane. On the second possession of the game, he was even pinged for a defensive three seconds violation for doing this. It didn’t matter. With Jordan deep in the paint on every pick-and-roll, Doncic was stymied and Powell presented little threat. There was 7:45 remaining in the first quarter when Rick Carlisle yanked Powell from the game, instead replacing him with Kleber. Dallas had only scored three points.
It worked. Dallas won the rest of the quarter decisively and eventually beat Brooklyn by 12 points with Kleber starting the second half and playing 31 minutes. He hit his 3s, three of them on four attempts, while Powell finished 0-for-4 from deep. Kleber was plus-17 while Powell was minus-six. While Brooklyn and Jordan felt comfortable ignoring Powell’s moonlighting attempts as a shooter, they couldn’t justify leaving Kleber that open. He hurt them with jumpers when they did.
You will see playoff teams play this deep drop pick-and-roll coverage against Powell and the Mavericks. You may even see more teams start doing this in the regular season. Brooklyn was a good defensive team this season, to be certain. But if you can neutralize an opponent’s top weapon (the Doncic pick-and-roll), you can be great for a game. Or, in this case, for four minutes of a quarter before Dallas properly adjusted. Because Kleber shoots more efficiently and freely than Powell, it just makes more sense that he would nullify this defensive scheme just as it had nullified Powell.
Kleber and Dorian Finney-Smith are also challenged to shoot by certain defenses; Utah immediately comes to mind as a team that did this. But Powell has much more hesitation when shooting than either of them, not to mention how ineffective he is at hitting them. Even if he hit 45 percent, though, his willingness to take every open 3-point attempt would be the determining factor. Passing up open shots is how offenses break down. Powell isn’t there yet, and he might never be.
Powell’s rim running, his elite skill, is unquestionably useful in the regular season. But we know that postseason basketball causes teams to play smaller and smaller lineups. We know that weaknesses are brutally game-planned for and exposed. Powell might not fit into those series as anything more than a bench player. Or at all. Porzingis might spend entire games as the team’s lone center.
That’s just where basketball is headed.
So what is Powell’s future with the team?
Powell can still help Dallas win regular-season games, and many of them, assuming he returns freely from his injury. His culture carrying makes him beloved by teammates and staffers alike. We need to begin understanding that Powell might not be as useful or necessary in the postseason, though. If Dallas ever needed to, it seems like Powell’s $11 million could fit well into the framework of a deal for a star on a larger contract. But we’re a long way away from that. I’m certainly not trying to trade Powell. Right now, I think we’re all just rooting for his full recovery.
The two postseason issues –Powell’s main strength can be nullified by the right team’s game plan and one of his star teammates might be better off without him on the floor – aren’t going anywhere. But many teams have regular-season players that aren’t called upon as frequently when the postseason arrives. You never know when Powell might be needed in a tight postseason series. Is he the perfect modern player? No, we know he isn’t. But he’s good enough at what he does that Dallas should keep him around as long as possible, no matter what role he ultimately plays.
https://theathletic.com/1902619/2020/07/01/whats-the-future-for-the-mavericks-dwight-powell-and-the-center-position/
推荐
评论 (2)
收藏
分享
举报
只看楼主
