Post-Olympics Thoughts

FRANCIS TIOPIANCO

 

Late post!

1. One gif to sum up the US men’s basketball team:

 

Yes, questions about whether they will win gold were fair. But they still had, pound-for-pound, the most talented roster in the tournament, including…

 

2. The Best Player On The Planet

 

After Giannis dominated the Finals, it seemed safe to assume that the unofficial BPOTP championship belt was his. Then Luka started the Olympics on fire and carried Slovenia to an undefeated record until the semis, so people started wondering if it was Luka.

The correct answer? Neither. KD still holds the BPOTP belt.

After the Finals, many analysts were saying that Giannis made a leap. While I agree that he made a leap in an historical sense, legacy-wise, I disagree with the notion that his game made a dramatic leap in the Finals. Make no mistake, he was already an elite superstar prior to the Finals—hey, he’s a 2-time MVP—but I don't buy that he suddenly unlocked another gear. He just kept doing what he does best against a Suns team that, having lost Saric in Game 1, just didn’t have enough big bodies to throw at him.

But let's not forget how big of a gap there was between him and KD in the East semis. Giannis himself acknowledged as much:

To make another Giannis-Shaq comparison, let’s throwback to 2002. Shaq was still great, but Duncan was the undisputed BPOTP. When the Spurs and Lakers met in the West semis, Duncan was clearly the best player on the court (29.0 points/17.2 rebounds/4.6 assists/3.2 blocks). But the Lakers had the better team. In KD’s case, the Bucks had the healthier team.

Luka dropped 48 points in 31 minutes in the opener and played with less talented teammates. But he had trouble scoring in the medal rounds, whereas KD turned it up a notch. The talent difference between their national teams is unarguable but KD had to do it on a team that never really found its chemistry and won in large part because of the sheer will and talent of its best player. It’s a shame that the two never went head-to-head in the Olympics, but given KD’s consistency and the results, it's tough to argue that he lost the belt.

Speaking of…

3.       Luka

 

Cuban should have taken notes of how the Slovenian team was assembled, because it seems to be the best way to bring out the best version of Luka. The second-best player needs to be a lob guy, not a stretch big. Mike Tobey is not good enough to be an NBA starter, but the way he played with Luka reminded me of Ayton’s star turn in the playoffs. Lob guys used to be a dime a dozen, particularly in the early 2000s when guys like Kenyon Martin, Stromile Swift, Marcus Fizer, Kwame, and Tyson Chandler were all drafted in the top 5. Today, they're the unicorns. Ayton is obviously not available, so I’m not sure where Mavs can look for one. (Five years ago, I would have said Nerlens Noel and that wouldn't have aged well.)

The Mavs have already surrounded Doncic with shooters, but none of them are anywhere near what the Suns (Bridges, Cam Johnson), Utah (Bojan, Ingles), and Atlanta (Bogdan, Huerter) have, the other contenders with a ball-dominant scoring-playmaker.

They also need a secondary playmaker to play the Prepelic/Zoran role, and while they have THJ, I’m not convinced. I guess THJ can play the Reggie Jackson role for the Mavs, but his below-average field goal percentage (41.6% in the recent playoffs) means that the Mavs are gambling with Trick-or-Treat Tim in big games. Perhaps the other Dragic, Goran, could be the answer.

The importance of having another playmaker for the Mavs is necessitated by…

 

4.       Luka’s weakness

 

If the Olympics highlighted one negative for Luka, it’s his tendency to wear down late in the tournament. I’m not sure if it’s a function of stamina or the other teams’ simply shifting their defensive schemes (probably a combination of both), but this is something that has become more noticeable in Luka’s young career. He started 2019-20 as an MVP candidate but faded in the last two-thirds of the season as the games started to accumulate. In this year’s series versus the Clippers, he was visibly gassed at the end of the last three games, despite filling up the stat sheet. 

Maybe this is something that resolves itself as he grows as a player. He’s still only 21 so it’s too early to be drawing any definitive conclusions. But this is something to watch out for if the trend continues (remember, his trainer said that he was not in shape last year) and the Mavs keep falling short in the playoffs—which is a very real possibility considering the Jason Kidd hire.

Just to round out everything with a Japanese reference, you know who Luka and his apparent stamina problem reminds me of? The Junior High MVP, Hisashi Mitsui.