Relying On The D.E.N.N.I.S. System

For the first time under the stewardship of Mark Cuban, the Dallas Mavericks are rebuilding. He said as much while sitting in on a Summer League broadcast in July of 2017. "We're rebuilding. Right? Given where we are, given where the Warriors are and what's happening in the Western Conference, it kind of sealed what we have to do."

Cuban was at that Summer League game to watch the player taken higher than any Mavericks draft pick since Robert Traylor was picked sixth in 1998 (Traylor, of course, was traded on draft day for Dirk Nowitzki. Devin Harris was drafted fifth in 2004 by the Wizards and subsequently acquired by Dallas). Dennis Smith Jr. was selected ninth overall, and several mocks before his one season of college hoops projected him as a top three pick.

Despite smokescreens that seemed to indicate Dallas preferred Belgian guard Frank Ntilikina, the Mavericks apparently wanted Smith Jr. all along. Rick Carlisle was as effusive with his praise and excitement regarding a young player as he’d ever been. “There was an uproarious applause in there, it was thunderous,” Carlisle said of the war room. When asked about where Smith Jr. ranked in relation to the three point guards taken ahead of him, Carlisle said: “I thought he was as good as any of them.” Frankly, it was shocking for anyone who follows Carlisle’s statements closely, particularly about unproven players.

The bar had been set very high, but the brain trust wouldn’t have engaged in that sort of hype if they didn’t think the then-19-year-old Smith Jr. could handle it. They wanted him to understand something very clearly: we’re counting on you to be elite.

The Mavericks were in desperate need of dynamic young talent, of a glimmer of post-Dirk hope. That thirst might result in some fans and media over-inflating Smith’s early accomplishments and projecting an unattainable ceiling. Or, he might really be the star Dallas expected him to be, which would expedite the Mavericks’ rebuilding process tremendously.

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To have a prayer at contending in the NBA, a team needs two stars. Most of the time, wrangling two stars takes several draft misses, or stashing away enough picks to trade them for a star from another team (which then turns those picks into their own draft misses). After years of horrible luck in free agency, have the Mavericks already found one potential star in Smith Jr.? Let’s take a group of star point guards’ rookie seasons and see how he stacks up.

Player	Season	Age	MP
Kyrie Irving	2011-12	19	30.5
Damian Lillard	2012-13	22	38.6
Dennis Smith	2017-18	20	29.7
Kemba Walker	2011-12	21	27.2
John Wall	2010-11	20	37.8
Russell Westbrook	2008-09	20	32.5

This group is comprised of super-athletic point guards that make their living attacking. It's probably unreasonable to expect DSJ to ever shoot the long ball like Harden or Curry , so they're not in our comps pool. It quickly jumps out that Smith Jr. is playing the fewest minutes outside of Walker's rookie year. However, when DSJ is removed from the sample, the average MPG is 33.3, so he's not too far off of the pace. He's clocking the 8th-most MPG of all rookies this season, so even though Carlisle has at time been judicious with crunch time exposure and made the kid earn it a bit, he's getting his time.

Since there is a playing time discrepancy, we'll use Per 36 Minutes numbers to compare production statistics.

Player	Age	FGA	EFG%	3PA	3P%	FTA	FT%	REB	AST	STL	TOV	USG	PTS
K. Irving	19	17.3	51.7	4.2	0.399	4.5	0.872	4.4	6.4	1.2	3.7	28.70	21.8
D. Lillard	22	14.6	50.1	5.7	0.368	3.6	0.844	2.9	6	0.8	2.8	24.20	17.8
D. Smith	20	17.9	44.1	5.9	0.305	3.5	0.699	4.6	5.9	1.3	3.4	28.80	18.2
K. Walker	21	15.4	41.1	4.5	0.305	4.3	0.789	4.7	5.8	1.2	2.4	25.20	16.1
J. Wall	20	13.4	42.7	1.6	0.296	5.4	0.766	4.4	7.9	1.7	3.6	23.80	15.6
R. Westbrook	20	14.8	41.4	1.7	0.271	5.8	0.815	5.4	5.9	1.5	3.7	25.80	16.9

Based on rookie season comps, it's not at all crazy to group Smith Jr. in with these players. Taken in aggregate, he's roughly middle of the pack here. Each of these players have their issues, but if DSJ ends up progressing to the point that this is the caliber of player he's mentioned among, he will be an absolute win for the Mavs front office, and the club's rebuild will be expedited. So, the question becomes, where does he need to improve to ensure that this happens? What do we see in his skillet that makes this progression seem likely, and what gives us pause?

If I had to pick one area from this chart that causes the most concern, it would be Smith Jr.’s inability to get to the line and convert. The simplest way for players with this athleticism to earn free throws is through attacking the rim. Guards with elite burst and bounce have been the best athletes on the floor for their entire lives, and suddenly the defender meeting them at the rim knows how to neutralize that explosiveness without fouling. To open up the rest of their offensive attack, this group of point guards must be able to drive and draw calls. Let's compare Smith Jr.'s rookie season to his hopeful company's 2017-18 seasons.

2017-18	DRIVES/GM		FTA/DRIVE/GM	PTS/DRIVE/GM	FTA/DRIVE
R. Westbrook	19		2.3	8.4	0.121
J. Wall	15.5		2.5	7.5	0.161
D. Smith	12.6		1.0	5.0	0.079
D. Lillard	12.3		2.4	7.4	0.195
K. Walker	11.8		1.8	6.4	0.152
K. Irving	11.6		1.4	7.9	0.120

Really, there is no comparison. Smith Jr. is driving more than Lillard or Walker, but getting half as many FTs per drive and subsequently, half as many points out of his drives. Since it's unlikely DSJ ever develops into a deadly threat from deep, it's imperative that he is able to draw contact at the rim and pile up production that way. Per cleaningtheglass.com, he is being fouled on just 8.1% of his shot attempts, putting him in the 52nd percentile of that category (relative to players CTG classifies as "combo guards. "). For a player who lives at the rim, that won't cut it.

2017-18	SFLD %	SFLD PERCENTILE
Russell Westbrook	13.8	92
John Wall	14.6	96
Dennis Smith Jr.	8.0	49
Damian Lillard	12.3	80
Kemba Walker	10/8	73
Kyrie Irving	8.9	47

Too often, it appears that when Smith Jr. heads to the rim, he doesn't have much of a plan. When the paint defender meets him, he has to be able to draw contact, score with a secondary move, or deliver a lob. The lobs are a work in progress:

Other times, he is able to use his quickness to get a step on a defender, but then allows them to recover because he veers away from the rim and avoids contact:

To be fair, he's getting the line more as the season has progressed, averaging 2.2 FTA per game in his first 30 contests and 3.6 per in the second 30. And sure, some of it is a rookie having to earn the ability to get a whistle (as absurd and arcane as that notion may be). But if you look at our table of comps for DSJ, it's clear that the ability to turn burst into freebies is the area he has to improve upon the most.

There is one more area of development I'd like to focus on to highlight why I'm confident this kid is going to be a star. The Mavericks are not near as pick-and-roll (or pop) heavy of a team as they have been in years past. This is largely because Harrison Barnes and Wesley Matthews rely so much on isolation than players like Monta Ellis or Jason Terry, coupled with the fact Dirk is playing less. But the fact remains, for an NBA offense to be truly successful, it needs guards that can kill in the pick-and-roll. Ideally, you want two of these players, so that when help defense shuts down the first action, the ball can be swung weak side for another screen that recovery can't cover. Smith Jr. was a very patient, effective PNR player at NC State. But as we've already seen, he has some adjusting to do to the length and size of NBA defenders. How is he faring on pick and roll plays thus far?

Per Synergy Sports, in PNR situation where the defense commits to Smith Jr. and he has to pass out (usually to the rolling big or a kick out to the corner), the Mavs are .98 PPP, ranking in the 74th percentile. Here are his comps this season:

PnR BH - PASS OUT	PPP
Dennis Smith Jr.	0.98
Russell Westbrook	0.97
John Wall	0.94
Damian Lillard	0.93
Kemba Walker	1.1
Kyrie Irving	0.92

Again, this is his rookie season compared to the first season from established vets. I believe it's reasonable to expect Smith Jr. to be one of the best pick and roll point guards in the NBA within the not-too-distant future. Much of this has to do with the types of players Dallas puts around him, but their animating principle on that front should be, "who can help Dennis Smith Jr. obliterate defenses in the pick-and-roll?"

Here's an instance where his hesitation and guile freeze Hassan Whiteside, and DSJ is able to get Maxi Kleber and easy dunk:

Here's another DSJ-Kleber PNR from the same game that again shows that Smith Jr. has much more than straight line quickness:

For all of the highlight dunks and the coast-to-coast buckets, this is one of my favorite plays from the rookie this season. The little stutter he gives to the line just outside the elbow has a defender lurching to the key, then recover too hard toward Smith Jr. But Whiteside still has ridiculous length, so DSJ has to find a way, going left, to get the ball back to the diving Kleber.

The Mavericks fanbase is probably as thirsty to crown a young player a potential star as any other group of supporters in the NBA. As a result, there is a level of backlash against over-projecting Smith Jr.; a sense of "not wanting to fall in love and get hurt." This is understandable. But as his first season in Dallas comes to a close, I think we've seen DSJ progress incredibly well from month to month. He's getting to the line more, and continuing to improve in the pick-and-roll game. Those two qualities are a direct result of being a coachable player, which gives me more confidence for Smith Jr.'s future than his ability to leap through the roof.

There is a ton of uncertainty surrounding the Dallas Mavericks right now. The seven worst teams in the NBA are currently separated by just three games, and those are franchise-altering ping pong balls. A number of things could go wrong, just as they did when Dallas spent four year wandering in the wilderness of free agency. Rebuilding expeditiously in the NBA requires a ton of luck to go along with a coherent team-building strategy. But one thing seems clear as the Mavericks look to return to prominence post-Nowitzki: they have their point guard of the future. He is built for the modern game, and his stats and skillset fit in nicely with other elite players at his position.

This might sound dramatic, but the decisions this team makes this offseason will in large part determine what sort of career Dennis Smith Jr. has. The lottery pick they pair with him will likely impact his future as much as anything he can control himself. The Mavericks got the first one right. Let's see if they can elevate him by finding another.

The Culture Club

All good things must come to an end, and often times the better the “good” was, the more distressing the end will be. Nowhere is this truer than in the world of sports, where our heroes inevitably age, their teams deteriorate, and their coaches and GMs get fired or decide that the idea of “rebuilding” is not exactly what they signed up for. This life cycle is an axiom in sports, which is why what the Dallas Mavericks are currently attempting to pull off is so unique - on the borderline of unprecedented.

When Rick Carlisle led the Mavericks to a title in the summer of 2011, he did so with the second-oldest championship roster in modern NBA history. The personnel decisions that followed were solely focused on landing a “big fish” free agent to pair with an aging Dirk Nowitzki, a path that proved to be fruitless. The resulting rosters resembled what my colleague Bob Sturm termed “a pack of basketball cards strewn about the floor with all of the star players removed," save for Dirk. Indeed, from 2012-13 through the training camp of 2016, the Mavericks were among the league leaders in roster turnover.

Season	% MIN BY RET PLYRS	LG RANK
2012-13	39%	28
2013-14	48%	25
2014-15	38%	29
2015-16	55%	24

For reference, here's the how the rest of the league stacked up during that time, per Basketball Reference.

The shade designated to the Mavericks on this chart evokes the same sentiment that their offseasons did in this period: barren and dry, no sustainable life or growth.

Yet from 2012-13 to 2015-16, Carlisle coached Dirk and the Cards You Threw Away to the 12^th highest regular season winning percentage and three postseason berths in four years. They culminated in first round exits, sure. But it was clear that the organization had decided that they would fight like hell every season to continue to make the playoffs while Dirk was in town, and at the same time take big swings in the offseason. This produced overachieving for mediocrity, and at the same time created a grim reality for Dallas: they were nowhere near contending, and nowhere near developing a new young core.

It should be stressed that this was a decision made not only by Carlisle, but Mark Cuban, Donnie Nelson, Jr., and yes, Nowitzki. He made it known he was not interested in playing with “a bunch of rookies.” So the Mavs drafted very low, and played the players they did acquire so little they couldn’t really find their sea legs.

Dallas has a reputation as a team that can’t draft, or can’t develop, or both. To a certain extent, we accept results are what they are. However, I would argue that some of this has been circumstantial, and a result in this decision to remain competitive.

From 1997-2016, Dallas had the second-lowest average draft position, at 38.5. Last season, the Mavericks' 15-man roster had an average draft position of 43.93, the lowest in the league. It’s easy to point to the Spurs and decry the Mavs' failures in this area. The reality, though, is a franchise judging itself only against one of the greatest runs in sports history is going to be steadily disappointed. San Antonio has done a singular job of taking players late in the draft and nurturing them along, all the while still having a roster loaded with stars that can make deep playoff runs.

The outcome of this strategy in the post-title era has been Monta Ellis and Shawn Marion over Shane Larkin and Jae Crowder. Rajon Rondo acquired for Crowder and a first-round pick. Al-Farouq Aminu struggling to get minutes. David Lee playing over Dwight Powell. Justin Anderson averaging 12 minutes a night in his time as a Maverick.

Certainly the point is not to say that this particular collection of players was the key to the Mavericks future. Some of them have shown improvement in other cities, some haven’t. But the point is that the Mavericks have largely picked in the portion of the draft where it’s very difficult to find impact talent (for everyone but the Spurs), and then favored veteran minutes in the name of giving Dirk the best chance to make the playoffs.

Does this mean Rick Carlisle hates the idea of playing young players? Or does it really mean that Rick Carlisle is not interested in giving minutes to players taken late in the draft while trying to make the playoffs? Does the fact that Carlisle couldn’t develop Ricky Ledo or Justin Anderson while somehow getting a team to 45ish wins really mean you don’t want him coaching Dennis Smith Jr. and Deandre Ayton together? That’s as foolish as it sounds.

The last 20 months have provided a stark change for anyone paying attention. After winning 42 games in 2015-16 and being summarily shown their postseason exit, the Mavericks faced the music. The allocation of minutes changed.

Season	MIN BY PLYRS 26 & UNDER
2015-16	1,832
2016-17	11,064
2017-18	10,714 (on pace)

That's a dramatic increase for any team. Despite having played in just 50 games over three journeyman seasons, Steph Curry played 29 minutes a night in 70 games. Rookie Yogi Ferrell clocked in with 29 a night as well. 24-year old Harrison Barnes took on a heavy load, attempting to take his game to the next level in an expanded role. The Mavericks lost 49 games, their worst season since Cuban bought the club. But it was clear they knew what needed to be done, and were now doing it.

The directive was perhaps never clearer than on draft night, when the Mavericks got their wish and selected 19-year-old point guard Dennis Smith Jr. out of North Carolina State with the 9^thpick. On draft night, Carlisle surprised many by saying “I would project him as a starter, but he will have to earn it,” Carlisle said. That statement is a recognition of two things:

1) This kid is not Shane Larkin, and

2) Rick knows the time to shepherd the next generation of Mavericks has arrived. It's not exactly the sort of decision and language that would be espoused by a stodgy stalwart not amenable to adaptation.

When the organization decided its focus was development, it appears clear Carlisle was perfectly fine buying in. Yes, he will still ride his players hard, and at times he’ll still sound like that professor who cannot believe he has to explain this 101 material.

But lost in the debate over “will Rick be good with the kids” and “will Rick even want to deal with the kids” is that coaches are competitors. Competitors like challenges. What the Mavericks are attempting to do is exceptionally rare in sports. A coach takes his team to the mountaintop, endures a time of uncertainty, regroups all the way down at base camp, and then starts the trudge back up. Leading them through it all.

There are a million unforeseen things that could throw this plan off track. Cuban could sell the team, Carlisle could decide for any number of reasons basketball-related or otherwise that he’d rather do something else at this point of his life, etc. What seems clear to me, though, is that the Mavericks organization, collectively, have signaled that they are betting on stability and culture in an otherwise volatile industry.

(At this point, I think I should stop and stress that I am referring to Mavericks basketball culture. I do not wish to make light of the recent reports detailing the workplace environment on the business side of the Mavericks operations. Everyone can make their own judgements about what Mark Cuban did or didn't know regarding those accounts. I, for one, find it impossible that he had not at least heard whispers about the behavior of former CEO Terdema Ussery. I also disagree with his logic for keeping former Mavs.com writer Earl K. Sneed employed after a second domestic violence incident. However, I don't believe that the toxic culture on the business side of the building negates decades of positive culture built up on the basketball side. In fact, the SI report quotes one former female staffer thusly: “I dealt with players all the time. I had hundreds of interactions with players and never once had an issue…they always knew how to treat people. Then I'd go to the office and it was this zoo, this complete shitshow. My anxiety would go down dealing with players; it would go up when I got to my desk.” For years, incoming veterans have lauded the culture of the Mavericks as a basketball team, and I want to be clear that when referring to the culture of the team and how it relates to their future, this is what I'm referring to. OK, back to hoops.)

If Carlisle wanted no part of this, wouldn’t he have jumped ship two years ago? He certainly had options, as I’m sure he does today. This man fought through coaching a team that lost 60% of their games last season, and will probably lose more this year. Doesn’t it stand to reason to think he’ll want to be in Dallas on the other side of this? It seems clear the front office wants him here, and plans to be patient.

Of course, there are no guarantees that this plan pans out, even if Carlisle is fully on board. The road will be bumpy and heads will butt. Even this season, there have been nights when Smith Jr. hasn't been on the floor in crunch times, and fans have questioned the logic. The reality is, DSJ has played more minutes than any rookie PG not named Ben Simmons.

In a recent road game against the Clippers, Dallas held a 10 point lead with under five minutes to play. Carlisle opted for a lineup with two rookies, two second-year players, and Wesley Matthews. The Mavs coughed up the lead and lost.

 "I decided to play the young guys down the stretch to get them the experience of closing the game -- and they learned a few things."

The Dallas Mavericks are squarely in the ashes of this new life cycle. What seems much clearer now is that if the Mavericks do rise from this, it will be with Rick Carlisle on the bench. And that’s a good thing for the city of Dallas.