There’s no denying the Mavericks star’s greatness, but his impact on winning is a different story. Is Luka really as valuable as he looks on the court and in box scores?
The basketball brilliance of Luka Doncic is so enthralling, so obvious, so utterly indisputable, that the only proper response to proclaiming his greatness would be: “Well, duh.” Anyone can see his talent—the smooth shooting, the slick passing, the way he effortlessly manipulates defenders and gleefully skips past them. Anyone can read the box scores, bulging with points and rebounds and assists. Fancy formulas like PER and VORP and EPM all confirm: Luka Doncic is, indeed, amazing.
None of these things are in doubt. But, well, not long ago Steve Ilardi had some doubts. Not about Doncic’s skills, mind you—“Just an elite player, one of the best we’ve ever seen,” he says—but about what those skills actually accomplished for the Dallas Mavericks. “What I doubted,” Ilardi says, “was the degree to which all of that otherworldly talent was actually translating to winning basketball.”
Ilardi isn’t some random fan with a spicy-hot take—he’s a data scientist who’s worked for multiple NBA teams, and ESPN. And this isn’t a story about Doncic being “overrated” or an empty-stats All-Star. This is, however, a story about trying to make sense of a specific sort of NBA conundrum: the superstar who doesn’t win—or at least, doesn’t win as consistently as we believe he should. It’s about how we, the NBA-watching public, try to make sense of all the fancy stats at our disposal. And it’s about what happens when our beloved “eye test” is defied by the data.
But also, yes, this is about Doncic—the player he’s been (great, with some flaws), the player he’s becoming (better, with fewer flaws), and the deficiencies he’s started to remedy.
Until last week, when the Mavericks dispatched the Los Angeles Clippers in six games, Doncic had advanced beyond the first round of the playoffs just once in five seasons. And it’s not like he was bereft of help. He’d played with a young All-Star (Kristaps Porzingis), a future All-Star (Jalen Brunson), and a star-crossed former champion (Kyrie Irving). He’d become a perennial All-Star himself, and a fixture on MVP ballots. And yet Dallas has won just 57 percent of its regular-season games with Doncic since drafting him in 2018. Even more puzzling:
Across Doncic’s first five seasons, the Mavs were only marginally better with him on the court than on the bench, according to advanced stats.
The math, as they say, wasn’t mathing.
The raw stats have always been robust. Doncic averaged a league-leading 33.9 points this season, with 9.2 rebounds and 9.8 assists. For his career, he’s averaged 28.7 points, 8.7 rebounds, and 8.3 assists. And he’s always been an efficient scorer, not just a volume shooter. And yet his “on/off” stats—the difference in the Mavs’ success with Doncic on the court vs. off the court, a generally reliable indicator of a player’s true impact—did not reflect his elite play.
This all confounded and fascinated Ilardi—a clinical psychologist, neuroscientist, and basketball enthusiast with an analytics background, who has worked with the Phoenix Suns and the Houston Rockets and helped develop ESPN’s “real plus-minus” model with Jeremias Engelmann, back in 2014. Ilardi was also one of the pioneers in developing adjusted plus-minus models. (Raw plus-minus measures a player’s impact by tracking his team’s net scoring advantage—points scored minus points allowed—while he’s on the court. Advanced models like RPM adjust for the impact of the other nine players on the court.)
Ilardi had been periodically checking Doncic’s “on/off” stats. And the numbers were, well, weirdly lackluster.
“Over 6 seasons the Mavs have been nearly as good when he’s on the bench as they are when he’s on the court,” Ilardi tweeted on Jan. 26. And this season, Ilardi noted then, Dallas was actually worse when Doncic played—posting an on/off net rating of minus-1.2 points per 100 possessions. “No other superstar shows this pattern,” Ilardi tweeted, punctuating his observations with a googly-eyes emoji.
Even as Luka’s on/off rating began to rise, he lagged far behind other MVP candidates, as Ilardi would note two weeks later, with a graphic showing Nikola Jokic (plus-18.1), Kawhi Leonard (plus-13.4), Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (plus-12.8), Giannis Antetokounmpo (plus-12.6), and Doncic (plus-3.4).
And then came the real kicker: a 20-year comparison, compiled by Ilardi, of every player who’s finished in the top five in MVP voting, listed by their career on-off ratings. At the top: Jokic (plus-11.8), Kevin Garnett (plus-11.3), LeBron James (plus-10.8), Joel Embiid (plus-10.5), and Stephen Curry (plus-10.4). And at the bottom of the 35-player list? Derrick Rose (plus-0.1), who was just below Doncic (plus-1.0), who was just below Joakim Noah and Jermaine O’Neal (both plus-1.1) and Carmelo Anthony (plus-1.7).
“Shockingly low,” Ilardi said of Doncic.
Everyone on that list, of course, is a star by definition—but there are different tiers of star in this league. And Doncic, by any measure—eye test, box score test, Rorschach test—has to be a considerably better, more impactful player than, say, Peja Stojakovic (plus-2.9) and Isaiah Thomas (plus-3.6) … right?
“Yeah, it’s a compelling illusion!” Ilardi said via text, as part of our season-long discussion.
The thing is, Doncic isn’t merely a great player, but possibly one of the greatest. He’s a generational talent, an all-timer—“the best offensive player I have ever seen in the NBA,” Stan Van Gundy, the veteran coach and TNT analyst, told me. So none of this made much sense.
As the weeks went by, the illusion only got more compelling—and in a way, more complicated. Starting in late December, Doncic’s on/off number started creeping upward, a trend that continued all season. From Dec. 23 through April 14, his on/off net rating was a robust plus-14.4—a figure that would have been second only to Nikola Jokic among high-usage stars. For the full season, Doncic finished at plus-9.4, easily the best mark of his career.
So now we had two mysteries: How could Doncic’s on/off stats be so blah before? And why did they suddenly spike this season? Ilardi had theories on the first question.
- It’s the heliocentrism: Doncic is among the most ball-dominant players of all time, with a whopping career usage rate of 35.7. Perhaps this extreme brand of so-called heliocentric play was suppressing the impact of his teammates, ultimately hurting the Mavs’ offense.
- It’s the defense: Doncic has been an indifferent to poor defender for most of his career—perhaps even as a result of his ball dominance, because that style requires so much energy.
- It’s the boredom: Granted, this one veers more into Ilardi’s current day job, as a clinical psychologist. But having seen Doncic dominate in both Europe and the NBA, Ilardi wondered if the game was sometimes too easy, if Doncic “has done what a lot of immature, brilliant people do in any walk of life—they kind of coast a bit.”
It’s probably all of those things, according to an array of scouts, coaches and team executives interviewed for this story, all of whom required anonymity to speak freely about another team’s player.
One veteran assistant coach, underscoring the ball-dominance issue, said you can almost sense a “sigh of relief” among Doncic’s teammates when he checks out of a game, “because it opens up a little more freedom” for others to make plays. “It’s a sense of, ‘Hey, now we get to play,’” the coach said. “It’s difficult to have any rhythm if you’re not touching the ball.” And when Doncic is off the floor, it’s a chance for those teammates to show “we don’t have to depend on him.”
That view dovetails with a remark by former NBA player Chandler Parsons, during an episode of the FanDuel TV show Run It Back. “I think he’s an unbelievable talent,” Parsons said in March. “He’s mesmerizing with the basketball. But as a teammate, it’s—it’s a little exhausting watching the same shit over and over again. And then when you don’t win, it’s even magnified. Like, ‘OK, can we try something else? Can I maybe get the ball?’ It definitely can be frustrating.” Parsons never played with Doncic, but did spend two years with James Harden in Houston.
One longtime executive observed that Doncic loves to put on a show, and that on some nights it seems like he performs more than he competes. It’s not that Doncic doesn’t want to win—just that he’s not wired to destroy his rivals with the zeal of, say, a Michael Jordan or a Kobe Bryant. Amid the long slog of an 82-game season, it sometimes seems like Doncic downshifts on the nights he deems an opponent unworthy of his effort.
The games “are so easy for him,” the exec said, that he wonders whether Doncic sometimes tries to manufacture a triple-double by halftime just to challenge himself.
And then, of course, there’s Luka’s defense, which everyone in the league could tell you has been practically nonexistent, and an obvious drag on the Mavericks’ success … until recently.
“This is the most (defense) he’s played,” said a rival coach. “His commitment is the highest it’s been since he’s been in the NBA.”
And, accordingly, this is the best defense the Mavericks have played. From mid-February through the end of the regular season, Dallas was consistently among the top 10 in defensive efficiency. Over the final 17 games, the Mavs actually ranked first.
A few things happened around midseason. The Mavericks acquired P.J. Washington and Daniel Gafford, fortifying their frontcourt and their rim protection. Both became permanent starters, along with defensive ace Derrick Jones Jr. And, according to multiple observers, Doncic just started trying harder.
“Derrick Jones and Gafford really, really helped their defense,” Van Gundy said. “I’m not sure those guys are good enough offensively that most teams would be able to play them the minutes that they do. But because of Luka and Kyrie, because of their offensive talents being so great, they can go put elite defenders like that on the floor. And so now the lineup numbers look really good.”
As another rival assistant coach noted, Doncic—like Harden—has been known for hiding on defense, away from the primary action. But now, “he’s more willing to be involved in the action.” He also appears to be in better shape, another coach said. As one of the league’s leading complainers, Doncic has in the past taken himself out of a lot of transition plays by stopping to whine to the referees—another area he’s started to improve in.
But perhaps the greater evolution has come in the one area Doncic was already elite—on offense. Though he’s long been an assist machine, Doncic is trusting teammates more now, rivals said. He’s empowering Irving more than he ever empowered another costar, possibly because Irving is a generational talent himself, possibly because Doncic has simply grown more comfortable deferring. He still led the league in usage rate this season (35.5), according to NBA.com, but that figure was down from the prior two seasons (both 36.8). His assist rate (42.8) was also up over the prior season (40.8), and spiked to 44.1 percent after the All-Star break.
“I think he’s gotten smarter,” said one rival assistant coach. “I think his dependency level on his teammates has risen. … Luka can go six straight possessions, and then let Kyrie go two. Or he’ll go four and then Kyrie goes four. And he’s fresh on all the possessions he’s going.”
Notably, Doncic also shot a career-best 38 percent from beyond the arc this season, on a career-high 10.6 attempts per game, for a career-high effective field goal percentage of .573. He’s more efficient than ever.
“There’s no holes,” Van Gundy said of Doncic’s game. “He’s got great size. He’s an elite passer. He’s become an efficient shooter. He can take you into the post. I mean, there’s really nothing that he can’t do. And there’s no answer. Double-team him, and he picks you apart; you don’t double-team, he’s going to score on anybody who guards him.”
So there’s at least a partial answer to the mystery of Doncic’s surging on/off figures since December. He’s a better player now—even if his box score numbers look similar to the past. And maybe it’s helped, too, that he has a better-fitting lineup around him and costar he fully embraces and trusts.
But what about the ho-hum on/off figures in prior years? The plus-4.9 last season? The (gasp) plus-0.2 the year before? Doncic has always scored a lot, assisted a lot and rebounded a lot. Maybe the on/off stats were misleading?
“It’s just too big a sample size to say, ‘Oh, that’s just a fluke,’” Ilardi said.
Maybe it’s just a reflection of poor supporting casts? Ilardi dismissed that possibility, too. Garnett, after all, was saddled with poor rosters for 14 years in Minnesota, and still emerged with an elite on/off rating.
To the contrary, the strength of Doncic’s most recent costars might provide a partial explanation. Both Irving (who arrived in a February 2023 trade) and Brunson (in his final two Dallas seasons) are elite scorers and playmakers—not at Doncic’s level, of course, but capable enough to keep the Mavericks offense humming at a respectable level when Doncic rests. That doesn’t fully explain the on/off puzzle, but it’s a piece.
And, to be clear, on/off stats (even the adjusted models) are not infallible. Occasionally, the numbers can mislead us. “I think you have to be careful with it,” Van Gundy said, “because there are teams out there quite honestly where one guy is trying to carry a mediocre starting lineup.”
But the details often don’t matter in our modern discourse. The greatest players are supposed to win big and make deep playoff runs—and to date, Doncic has just one conference finals appearance (in 2022). Like other high-usage stars before him, from Harden to Russell Westbrook and even LeBron James, he’ll inspire as much skepticism as praise until he starts winning titles, or at least making the Finals. (And then no one will care what the advanced stats imply.)
Some of this might just be unsolvable in real time. Ben Taylor, who writes and podcasts under the “Thinking Basketball” banner, dove into the Luka labyrinth himself in a recent video. He explored many of the same theories, reached some of the same conclusions—and ultimately came away unsatisfied, admitting we “haven’t completely solved this mystery.”
But Taylor did reach one definitive, comfortable conclusion—that Doncic is among the best offensive players in history. “So maybe,” he says, “the real mystery isn’t about his plus-minus; it’s how many better offensive players will have ever played when Luka’s career is all said and done.”
Maybe it’s a futile pursuit, trying to make sense of a single advanced stat in a complex game with infinite data points. Maybe there is no objective or “right” answer here, no pair of analytics glasses that will reconcile the eye test with the advanced stats. Maybe, as someone once sang, it’s best to let the mystery be.