BOSTON — Luka Dončić made half of his shots on Saturday, and if not for other events that took place in that game, we might be discussing that fact a bit more.
It was only the second time as a Los Angeles Lakers player that he managed the feat, and he just barely scraped to 50 percent (11 of 22) with a meaningless layup in the final minute that cut a 12-point Boston Celtics lead to 10.
The Lakers have been winning, but Dončić’s numbers are down. He was shooting 55.5 percent on 2s and 34.5 percent on 3s at the time of the trade from the Dallas Mavericks. With the Lakers, he’s at 50 percent on 2s and 32.4 percent on 3s. He’s also seen his turnover rate spike despite lower minutes and usage thus far.
As it turns out, we probably should have expected this.
Before we go forward, let’s back up a bit. The Lakers have gone 12-3 since they shockingly pulled off the Dončić deal, including 8-3 in the games Dončić has played. But there’s been a very odd underlying statistical story to their overall strong play: The defense has been much better than the offense.
That, of course, is the opposite of what you would expect from a team that traded an elite defensive big man (Anthony Davis) and what passed for its best perimeter stopper (Max Christie) to acquire Dončić, a pick-and-roll savant who hasn’t been a factor in the NBA’s All-Defense voting. Yet, a Lakers defense that ranked 21st at the time of the trade has been the NBA’s top-ranked unit in 15 games since, while L.A.’s offensive efficiency has hardly budged.
Some caveats: Yes, there is some Jedi 3-point defense baked into those defensive numbers, and the opposite might be happening at the offensive end. Also, never forget that the games are played by humans, and things like effort and spirit matter.
“(Dončić’s) buy-in and level of engagement on defense has been awesome for us,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said before the Celtics game, a statement that didn’t always apply to Dončić’s tenure in Dallas. Similarly, the entire roster seems galvanized by the sudden uptick in its championship equity.
However, there is another issue: Chemistry matters. This can be demonstrated with the camera and play-by-play data we now have available.
That takes us to the other reason I was in Boston: the 2025 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. After almost two decades, it’s a very different animal from the one that had me and a few other interested nerds sitting in a classroom. Now it’s huge and as much a sports business conference as an analytics nerd fest — perhaps appropriate since analytics has become more impactful in areas like ticket sales and gambling than in the actual playing of the games.
But a good sports analysis can still deliver. In a presentation by Ben Alamar and Dean Oliver, they showed exactly the nature of what we would witness on the court for the Lakers later that night. Using shooting results and tracking data from the NBA, they demonstrated at least one way in which chemistry does matter at the offensive end and the time frame needed to build it.
In particular, Alamar and Oliver studied shooting percentages on passes from teammates and concluded that there was a marked decline in both shot quality and shooting accuracy from those passes when players were interacting with new teammates. While the study focused solely on catch-and-shoot shots to simplify the analysis, the results were perhaps more staggering than you’d expect: Overall expected points from those shots are 5.5 percent higher by the start of the second season together and 11.7 percent higher by the end of it.
For high-volume passers like Dončić, the bigger results might not even be in his shooting stats but in everyone else’s. The study noted that Chris Paul’s first season with the Phoenix Suns saw his teammates shoot an effective field-goal percentage of 46.6 in his first two months and 72.3 over the final 20 games. The Suns began the season 8-8 and eventually made the NBA Finals.
In another example that is perhaps more relevant to the current discussion, Alamar and Oliver also noted that Kyrie Irving shot dramatically worse on passes from Dončić in his first season with him — one that ended with Dallas in the draft lottery — than in the second one that ended with the Mavs as Western Conference champs.
It’s not hard to find other shards of evidence for this trend post-deadline. De’Aaron Fox, Jimmy Butler, Andrew Wiggins and D’Angelo Russell have all had fairly sharp post-trade declines in their shooting percentages. Going back further, the lack of chemistry in the first season of Damian Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo playing together in Milwaukee was palpable, as they hardly even ran pick-and-roll together; that partnership has become much more potent. Similarly, any semblance of the Dončić-LeBron James two-man game has been MIA since Dončić joined the Lakers.
The good news for L.A. is that the worst parts of this effect are on the earliest games together, as you might expect. The presenters’ charts showed a sharp curve over the first several shots that flattened over time but whose slope never quite reached zero. In other words, it’s still probably marginally helpful that Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum are building even more chemistry in Year 8 together, but vastly greater gains are available for recently thrown-together teammates like Dončić and James.
James’ groin injury will stop the clock on that, but it also makes you wonder if the newly formed “Luk-ers” era was always destined to be more potent in Year 2 than Year 1. An extended absence from James only makes things more challenging for the Lakers, and not just because of its potential impact on playoff seeding.
In a very real, provable way, the Lakers are racing against the clock to wring out the worst impacts of new teammates playing together before the playoffs start. Can they be Phoenix in 2021 and click by the time the games truly matter? Or will the Dončić-James pairing need more time?
Cap Geekery: How Mavs tied their own hands
While Dončić rolls along in L.A., his former team is down badly. The Mavs are running out of players, with season-ending injuries to Kyrie Irving, Olivier-Maxence Prosper and (potentially) Anthony Davis, plus several other long-term absences, leaving the roster denuded. Dallas was already down to nine players Sunday against Phoenix before two of them ran into each other and were knocked out of the game.
Jason Kidd’s Mavericks have been struggling recently. (Jerome Miron / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
Things could get worse before they get better, as Dallas is relying on three two-way players who are only eligible for a subset of the remaining 20 games. The Mavs can’t sign another two-way player, as the league’s deadline for that was March 4.
However, the biggest issue for Dallas is the collective bargaining agreement’s first-apron threshold, which takes us to Dallas’ other move at the trade deadline. The Mavs sent out Quentin Grimes, who has been balling since arriving in Philly, and added Caleb Martin and two second-round picks. That deal left the Mavs just $51,148 beneath the first apron, where they are hard-capped due to the offseason Klay Thompson sign-and-trade.
Normally, the Mavs would be eligible for multiple roster exemptions due to their myriad injuries, but Dallas can’t take advantage of any of them because the remedy for a roster exemption is a 10-day contract, which is worth more than the $51,148 they have left to pay somebody.
Dallas’ options for the roster are more remote: The Mavs could waive a player and pray somebody claims him. (The way to do this would be to call around the league and see if somebody would claim Spencer Dinwiddie’s minimum deal, strike an agreement and go through the process. This has happened before, although it is extremely rare.)
Or the Mavs can tough it out until their final two games of the season and then sign a player for the remainder of the season, which would just put them under that $51,148 limit. More remotely, they could sign 2024 second-rounder Melvin Ajinça for the rookie minimum in the final week of the season, covering three games, and have enough remaining to sign another player on the season’s final day.
The Mavs painted themselves into a terrible corner by not including another small contract in their trade deadline deals. But this takes us to another competitive issue the league needs to re-examine: Do we want the roster limits of the apron rules to be this harsh, where it’s possible a club could not be able to field a team due to injuries and apron restrictions?
The Mavs are perilously close to that point, and I doubt this will be the last time that happens. It’s not like they’re shutting guys down either, not with their team still in position to make the Play-In Tournament. (Although I’ll note that lucking into Cooper Flagg might be the only way to salvage this disaster of a season.)
Prospect of the Week: Derik Queen, 6-10 Fr., PF/C, Maryland
Queen is a near-certain first-rounder based on his huge production as a scoring big man for the Terps in his freshman season. But how high should he go? Queen is an interesting mix of pros and cons for evaluators, and part of the drill is deciding which side of the coin will win out.
Let’s start with the good stuff. Queen is a big guy who can shoot, handle and pass. He has a knack for finishing around the basket, especially with his left hand, but also is comfortable starting his move from the perimeter and working his way to the cup on dribble drives. For the season, he’s scoring 29.6 points per 100 possessions on 56.0 percent shooting on 2s, with a ton of free throws baked in. And he’s doing it on a good team, a likely top-five seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Although right-handed, Queen plays as a left-handed player once he puts it in on the deck and is capable of some artistic finishes on the move. (Queen is easy to pick out on video: He’s the dude in the long-sleeve shirt.)
DQ with the drive! pic.twitter.com/Ddsi5mlUdn
— Maryland Men’s Basketball (@TerrapinHoops) March 5, 2025
Elite from DQ.
📺: @BigTenNetwork pic.twitter.com/3Wc15dzqRT
— Maryland Men’s Basketball (@TerrapinHoops) March 1, 2025
The thing that is perhaps less clear from the stat line is his shooting. Queen doesn’t show 3-point range at this point, but he’s a 76 percent foul shooter on the season who is very comfortable from 15 to 17 feet. He’ll likely be able to stretch out his game as he gets older.
Queen’s most notable impact has come as a scorer, but his other metrics are solid. He rebounds at a fairly high rate, considering he plays next to another center. The eye test on his passing is better than his assist total, and whatever you think of his overall defense, his team is ninth in the nation in defensive rating with him as a major piece.
But Queen’s overall mobility, athleticism and conditioning have provoked … concerns. Queen was overweight entering the season, but that has improved, and his conditioning isn’t NBA level. Check out Queen in one of the season’s most hilarious clips from Wednesday’s win at Michigan:
A full 10 seconds elapse between when Queen lands from blocking the shot and when the ball finds him again, still on his side of half court; this is roughly the equivalent of running a 40-yard dash in half a minute. We can’t see what he might have been doing while off-camera, but “running” seems unlikely.
Changing ends is one thing, but even in half-court situations, Queen can be exposed defending in space. That opens positional questions at the NBA level; he’s 6 foot 10 without great hops, and his block rate (1.5 per 100 possessions) is extremely weak for a center prospect.
But if he’s going to play power forward as a pro, he has to be able to contain basic perimeter action. Here’s 7-footer Danny Wolf of Michigan cooking him with little resistance on Wednesday:
Finally, there’s the age issue. He’s not exactly ancient, but for a freshman, Queen is long in the tooth. He is more than two years older than Duke’s Cooper Flagg and will be 20.5 years old by draft night. That caps some of the upside in his projection.
So … are you feeling lucky? The upside play on an offensive talent who might be more potent defensively with improved conditioning is tough to resist. On the other hand, if he’s not a rim protector and the stretch capability on offense is still mostly theoretical, how much of an offensive impact can Queen make while you wait for the defense to come around?
Background information is going to matter here, too. What teams find out about his work ethic and commitment to improving his physique are likely to weigh heavily in teams’ evaluations. That could be the difference between Queen being a lottery pick or falling to the back half of the first round.
(Top photo of Luka Dončić: Meg Oliphant / Getty Images)
