How the Wizards solved Luka Doncic… for one night originally appeared on NBC Sports Washington
WASHINGTON — It’s possible that Thursday night will go down as the Wizards’ crowning achievement on defense this season. They made Mavs superstar Luka Doncic, the NBA’s leading scorer, look mortal. He scored a season-low 22 points, shot just 8-for-21 and tied a season-high with five turnovers.
Doncic may go on to win the league’s MVP award this season, but for one night the Wizards had his number and the result was a 113-105 victory.
“He’s going to get it in a lot of ways. You could chalk it up maybe to the 2nd night of a back-to-back, but I thought collectively we did a good job of making life difficult for him,” head coach Wes Unseld Jr. said.
As Unseld Jr. noted, Doncic played the night before in Orlando. He also struggled in that game, which was also a loss for the Mavs.
So, the Wizards may have caught him at a good time. Still, it was a standout performance for their defense and an essential ingredient for a win with both Bradley Beal and Kristaps Porzingis unavailable.
Unseld Jr. said the Wizards’ approach to guarding Doncic was “by committee.” The general goal was to match him up with size. Doncic saw a heavy rotation of Kyle Kuzma (6-foot-10), Deni Avdija (6-foot-9) and Rui Hachimura (6-foot-8).
Kuzma broke down the Wizards’ strategy by the granular details.
“We know that their team is very limited outside of him. Obviously, with Christian Wood out, a big-time player, the ball was going to be in his hands the whole time. We wanted to make sure when he was posting up, we were doubling the whole time, and then our rotations were really crisp. On top of that, when we didn’t double, playing on the perimeter, allowing ourselves to guard 1-on-1 without fouling and then just playing on a string defensively. That was huge,” Kuzma explained.
Doncic got some help from Spencer Dinwiddie, who had 33 points and tied a career-high with seven threes. But the Wizards were okay with other players making shots here and there. They knew if they stopped Doncic, it was going to be difficult for the Mavs to win.
Kuzma, Hachimura and Avdija had some success playing physical defense against Doncic. Anthony Gill and Jordan Goodwin also got in on the action. In the 1st quarter, Gill got Doncic to dribble out of bounds and fall on the baseline by walling off his path to the rim.
Kuzma drew the Doncic assignment during key stretches in the 4th quarter and managed to get steps even while making shots on the other end.
Avdija, Gill and Goodwin combined to send Doncic to the line nine times, but he only made three free throws, which did the Wizards a favor.
Naturally, there has been a correlation to how Doncic shoots and how the Mavericks fare in games. They are now 0-4 when he shoots below 50% from the field.
That’s going to happen when one player accounts for such a large share of a team’s offense. Doncic entered this game with the NBA’s highest usage rate (39.7%) and the 3rd-highest in NBA history, behind only Russell Westbrook in 2016-17 and James Harden in 2017-18.
The Mavericks are the NBA’s most top-heavy team. They go as Doncic goes, especially right now as they deal with injuries. In addition to Wood being out, Dallas was missing Davis Bertans. Both players are among the team’s biggest scoring threats.
Getting Doncic once is possible, fooling him twice is a tall task. The Magic know that well, as despite holding him to 24 points the night before Dallas lost to the Wizards, they gave up 44 points to him on 65.4% shooting on Oct. 30 in their 1st go-around.
The Wizards play the Mavs one more time this season, on Jan. 24. in Dallas. He will get another shot at them and next time things could go differently. Last year, he dropped 30-plus points in both meetings between the teams.
The Wizards, though, had the antidote for one night and it helped them come away with the win.
