How Mavericks stars Luka Doncic, Kyrie Irving’s surprise defensive dominance sets tone vs. Clippers

“It changes the team a lot. You know, they take the one-on-one challenge,” Lue said. “Kyrie is picking up full court. Luka is taking the one-on-one challenge, he got mad at the bench for double-teaming because he wanted to take that challenge. So when your best players step up and do that, it means a lot. It sets the tone for your team.”

Mavericks stars taking care of business on defense

In all reality, both Doncic and Irving have played hard on defense throughout the 2023-24 season. Doncic, though, has especially received backlash in the past. He doesn’t mind, and understands that people are going to have their opinions.

Doncic’s teammates fully believe in his ability on the defensive end of the floor, however.

“I mean, I’ve been saying it all year long, Luka has always taken the challenge,” Mavericks forward Derrick Jones Jr. said. “I mean, people have always said that he’s not good defensively, but I haven’t seen it at all this year. Yeah, he has lapses, I’ve had lapses too and players have gotten by me as well. I mean, you can’t just say that somebody isn’t a good defender because somebody got by him… It happened to me before, happened to me plenty of times and I know for sure that I’m a great defender.

“So Luka has been doing great all year long. Hope he keeps doing that, I hope he keeps it going.”

“I think he (Doncic) has great timing,” Mavericks forward Maxi Kleber said. “Anticipates what guys want to do, knows the tendencies, so you know, he’s a very high IQ player… I think he puts himself in a great position. Obviously… you know he has the ball on offense for us all the time so that’s tiring too. He will not be able to put the same effort on the defensive side all the time. But if you get it like 80 percent of the time, whatever, you know, that’s a big step because it helps everybody else. But just his IQ helps him a lot on the defensive side and I think right now he shows what he’s capable of… Sometimes there’s like one play that will be picked out where he maybe missed something. But that’s just… Everybody has mess ups during a game.

“It’s a long game and he plays the most minutes. So obviously sometimes it’s going to happen, people want to pick it out. But overall, I think he’s a very smart defender, he’s in the right positions and that helps the team.”

Dallas preparing for Game 3

The old adage is that defense wins championships. Dallas’ entire roster has stepped up on defense over the past few months, and their hard work has led to results in the NBA playoffs. Still, the Mavs would like to score a bit more, as they have yet to exceed 100 points so far in either game of the series against the Clippers.

Perhaps playing in Dallas at the American Airlines Center will lead the offense to a big performance. However, Dallas will certainly benefit from another strong defensive effort on Friday.