In the first three games of the series, the Golden State Warriors made the life of the Dallas Mavericks miserable. The Warriors handled Luka Doncic better than the Jazz and Suns, making life difficult for him at the point of attack and using a strong dose of zone defense.
In Game 4, the Warriors played a lot of zone defense, but Luka illuminated how he can expose himself by doing something that everyone has been asking of him all season: cutting the ball.
The zone defense works relatively well when Luka passes the ball and stays stuck outside the 3-point line. It is too easy to defend others in this way. But when Luka puts the ball on the deck and attacks the edge, things get harder. Then he throws some cuts off the ball when his teammates have the ball and it’s basically impossible to protect.
See how he scored his first field goal in Game 4:
Luka leaves his dribble and passes the ball to Frank Ntilikina, which we are used to seeing. But what he does differently this time is instead of pressuring Frank to create the dribble, he simply outdoes his defender who had been overly committed to bombing the bomb. Draymond Green is the guy who is supposed to be defending the edge in this play, but he turns his back on Luka assuming he wasn’t going to cut the edge without the ball in his hands. Luka makes him pay by throwing himself on the edge and Frank gets an easy assist.
Later in the fourth quarter, Jalen Brunson had the ball in the corner with the other four boys spaced around the perimeter. Normally, this is a move that would cause Brunson to create itself and would be a draw on whether or not it would work as the launch clock ran out. But check this out:
In the play above, Luka takes advantage of a sleeping Jordan Poole at the top of the Warriors area and cuts in the middle of the ground where Brunson gives him the ball and Luka does some pirouettes on the edge.
This is what the Mavs need Luka to do. When he moves off the ball, he opens the whole attack and makes the Warriors’ zone defense useless.
Luka is one of the brightest basketball minds in the world, so it’s no wonder he discovered it. You just have to be more discriminating with the help you render toward other people. Cutting hard when your opponent is in an area is always helpful, whether you receive the pass or not.
Another way Luka was able to punish the zone defense was to notice when he had a mismatch at the top. Take a look:
In this play, Luka raises the ball to the ground and immediately notices Jordan Poole at the top of the area. He immediately turns around and starts walking back into Poole. He tilts his post-up away from the assist defense and then easily dominates Poole and gets a tray.
They are small things that become big things. Obviously, the great story of Game 4 is that the Mavericks are a better team when they make three (shock!), But small things like cutting the ball and finding mismatches end up demoralizing the defense and making your team appear more open as the game progresses.
Is it too late for the Mavs to win this series? May be. Time will tell. But moving away from Luka’s ball is something he has to keep working on as his career progresses. It’s the kind of thing that will separate his work from the first James Harden, often compared.