Sep 29, 2014; Dallas, TX, USA; Dallas Mavericks guard Monta Ellis (11) poses for a seflie portrait during media day at the American Airlines Center. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports
With the Opening Night just around the corner, Nylon Calculus is going to be previewing the upcoming season by taking you through some of the most important numbers to know, numbers that help tell stories about players, teams and league-wide trends.
The big story for the Dallas Mavericks last season was Monta Ellis’ supposed “re-invention” with the Mavericks. After two terrible years with the Bucks, his move to Dallas was said to have brought unprecedented efficiency and smart play along with it.
For most people who have followed Monta’s career somewhat closely, that was fairly clearly not the case: his True Shooting Percentage last season of 53.2% was much higher than his sub-50% number with the Bucks, but still below league average and lower than his shooting percentage was on average with the Warriors. He did shoot passably from the three-point line for the first time in years, but 33% is nothing surprising for a guy who was getting a ton of corner looks and playing off Dirk Nowitzki.
Similarly, you can tell from his shot chart that he’s getting more shots at the rim and cleaner looks overall (mostly a function of Dirk Nowitzki rather than re-invention), but the pattern between the years is very similar:
From Monta’s time with the Bucks
From Monta’s time with the Mavs
His passing too, wasn’t remarkably better. His assist rate of 24% is incredibly high for a shooting guard, but Monta has always been a top-five passing two-guard, and that rate of 24% is lower than it ever was in Milwaukee.
What was most interesting, though, was that Monta led the league in the average number of points created on drives per game, at 12.4, according to the NBA’s SportVU player tracking statistics.
As well, he was tied for third in the league at drives per game at 10.2. Monta’s reining ability to contribute massively on runs to the basket is what makes his impact on the Mavs so unique and so huge. It’s also, probably, what people are really talking about when they talk about his “re-invention” in Dallas.
To say that his driving is a “re-invention,” too, is a bit of a misnomer. Probably more of a renaissance back to his days in Golden State, where he didn’t feel obliged to carry a bad Milwaukee offense through mid-range jumpers and bricked three-pointers’s.
His drives are, however, an almost literal engine that drives a ferocious Dallas offense. It’s telling that not only did he get to the basket really often (the only players who drove more often were Ty Lawson and Tony Parker), but he created more points on drives than any other player in the league. Monta was a great finisher last year, but just as importantly, he was really, really good at finding an open Dirk Nowitzki on a pick and pop after drawing Dirk’s man under the basket, or a cutting big man trailing behind.
Without Monta doing that, you could ask legitimate questions about how much space Dirk (and Vince Carter, among others) would really have gotten on jumpers all season: San Antonio kept Dirk shut down in the postseason in part because they limited Monta’s effectiveness in separating Dirk’s man with drives.
Their is a reciprocal relationship there too. What helped all of this driving happen was Dallas’ incredible spacing via Jose Calderon and Dirk Nowitzki, something Monta’s never really had before, even when he played alongside Stephen Curry (before Curry had gone full nova). Drives or cuts following a Dirk pick-and-roll with Calderon (or even Carter and Calderon) spotting up on the weakside left Monta a completely free lane to the basket.
Next season, though, Calderon is gone, and he’s been replaced by a tandem of Jameer Nelson and Devin Harris. Vince Carter, too, has been replaced by Richard Jefferson, who’s certainly a spot-up threat but nowhere near the same off-the-dribble concern. Carter shot far more pull-up threes and pull-up shots in general than Jefferson in far fewer minutes, per SportVU, making the need to stick to him like glue on the weakside much more pressing.
The question then becomes quite serious: will Monta have as much room to wreak havoc with Devin Harris spotting up in the corner and Jefferson on the weakside, instead of Calderon and Carter? Can Chandler Parsons — a career 37% 3-point shooter — replace the spacing of Calderon or Carter, both over-40% guys? What happens if Monta can only produce 9.5 points per game on drives? How much does the loss of “Monta Ellis: Chaos Engine” hurt Dallas, or Dirk in particular?
Dallas’ offense will likely be fine without Monta leading the league in points per drives, they have a lot of ways to attack a defense, but the element of chaos he brought to opposing defenses is what scrambled them enough to allow Dallas to take advantage of broken systems.
Will Monta be able to keep up the performance with less space in the lane? Or will the spacing be there after all? And what happens if the drives do become more limited?
For all this, Dallas will be a team to watch next season.