Luka Doncic is a superstar and a wizard on the offensive side of the ball. There’s no pass that he can’t make, and he is obviously an elite scorer. However, that doesn’t mean that his game has no weaknesses.
There are two sides of the floor in basketball, and Luka Doncic’s defense has been exploited thus far in the Suns-Mavericks series. Chris Paul and other Suns players have targeted him as a defender in the two games that have been played in the series thus far, and it is clear that Luka Doncic needs to be a little better on that side of the ball. Some believe that Luka Doncic is so great offensively that he doesn’t need to be good at defense, but it’s clear that his defense can be an issue for his team.
Recently, Jason Kidd has challenged Luka Doncic to “participate” on the defensive end, pointing out that Dirk Nowitzki has had to deal with the same issues until he decided to take pride and “stuck up” for himself on that end of the floor.
Mavericks Jason Kidd when I asked him how team can do a better job on Chris Paul when he’s hunting matchups on Luka Doncic challenged Doncic to “participate” on defense saying in part:
“It’s not just protecting Luka. He’s gotta participate, he’s got to play defense…”#MFFL pic.twitter.com/VoCuAPUxpQ
— Kevin Gray Jr. (@KevinGraySports) May 6, 2022
It’s not just protecting Luka. He’s got to participate, he’s got to play defense. There’s no secret, they’re going to put him in every pick-and-roll. They did the same thing with Dirk till Dirk participated and stuck up for himself. You can always ask for help, but you got to participate. Luka has done for that for us in this journey. He’s gonna have to do that tonight, he’s gonna have to defend. If they score, they score, but we don’t want it to be on their terms… The other thing is teammates have to do a better job of helping.
There’s no doubt that Luka Doncic has an immense offensive load for the Dallas Mavericks, and some slippage on the defensive end can happen with superstars who carry that level of offensive responsibility. However, as Jason Kidd says, he has to “participate” and try to help his teammates out on that end of the floor as well.
It remains to be seen how well Luka Doncic does defensively in the upcoming games of the series. There’s no doubt that he has improved this year on the defensive end, but he has to provide that defense consistently this series if the Dallas Mavericks are to beat the Phoenix Suns.
