The Whiteboard: Why Daniel Gafford is the perfect partner for Luka Doncic

Today on The Whiteboard, why Daniel Gafford is such a perfect fit for Luka Doncic, the NBA's next big gambling scandal and more.

The Dallas Mavericks thrashed the Sacramento Kings, 132-96, giving them a 9-1 record in their last 10 games. It also gives them a 12-0 record with both Luka Doncic and Daniel Gafford in the starting lineup.

Gafford, who was acquired from the Washington Wizards at the trade deadline, led the league in field goal percentage last season and has made 77.3 percent of his shots since coming to the Mavs. He challenged a Wilt Chamberlain record for most consecutive made field goals and has become a monstrously effective complement to Luka Doncic.

Daniel Gafford is the perfect partner for Luka Doncic

Since Gafford joined the Mavericks, he and Doncic have already played 299 minutes together and Doncic has already assisted him 43 times. That works out to just over five times per 36 minutes, an astronomical rate and significantly higher than Doncic's connection with any other Mav this season.

The nature of their partnership and why it works well is fairly obvious. Luka Doncic has as much offensive gravity as anyone in the league. He's also an exceptional passer and any time he draws multiple defenders he's capable of finding a seam to deliver the ball to an open teammate. If that teammate happens to be a long, bouncy big man with an enormous catch radius, then a lot of those passes are going to turn into dunks.

In a play like this one, Doncic's gravity, patience, vision and passing ability are doing most of the work. Gafford simply slides into space, catches and dunks.

But Gafford brings plenty to this partnership as well, things that Doncic hasn't gotten from other bigs he's played with over the years, like Dwight Powell, Kristaps Porzingis and Maxi Kleber, or even from rookie Dereck Lively II, who has a similar frame and athletic tools.

The first is a single-minded focus on dunking. He's not looking to pop for a jumper like Kleber or Porzingis, or looking to draw the defense and make a pass out of the short-roll like Dwight Powell. Gafford is rolling hard to the rim, at every opportunity meaning there's no question about where he's going to be and when.

Gafford is a very effective screener but he makes contact and then rolls immediately. If he's not catching the pass early on his roll, he's sealing his man and parking, waiting for it to come. Here, Doncic knows exactly where Gafford is going to be and feels comfortable taking the time to freeze the sagging big man defender with a pass fake and then whipping the ball directly into the paint even though he's off balance and has a hand, literally, in his face.

Doncic had some success with Lively earlier in the season, a relationship that should blossom next year and beyond. But Gafford has a similar frame with a lot more functional strength at this point. He's better at catching in traffic and far more effective at finishing through traffic.

With Dallas, Gafford ranks in the 89th percentile in scoring efficiency as the screener in the pick-and-roll, the best mark in the league among any player who finishes two or more possessions per game. He is getting more and more comfortable in his role and Doncic is clearly trusting him more and more.

On some level, it's kind of remarkable that the Mavericks haven't really paired Doncic with this player archetype all that much before. Over the past five years, the bigs he's played the most with are Kleber (a pick-and-pop big), Dwight Powell (a more traditional roll man, but without the length or explosive finishing ability of Lively or Gafford), or Kristaps Porzingis and Christian Wood(who were more interested in post-ups or spot-up 3s). The most similar hyper-athletic, vertical spacing threat he played with was Willie Cauley-Stein who shared the court with Doncic for just 775 minutes.

The Mavericks still have clear weaknesses and will have their work cut out for them in the playoffs. But Gafford, as a mid-season trade acquisition, is pretty close to a best-case scenario in terms of a player archetype that helps optimize Luke Doncic and specific player equipped to excel in that role.

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An honest-to-goodness gambling scandal in the NBA

The proliferation of legal sports gambling has clearly had an effect on the NBA, even if, until recently they had avoided the scandals of players betting that have hit the NFL and MLB. But last week, we briefly touched on the ways in which sports betting is affecting the relationship between players and fans, including threats being leveled at coaches.

But now the dam may have broken. Over the weekend, news broke that the NBA was investigating Jontay Porter (brother of Michael Porter Jr.) of the Toronto Raptors, over "betting irregularities."

The allegations stem from two recent games where DraftKings Sportsbook tracked suspiciously large sums being won on the unders for prop bets on Jontay Porter. In both cases, Porter left the game early with an injury and illness that seemed suspiciously vague.

On one hand, this could be read as the league's monitoring systems working as intended. But this is also, if true, seems like a painfully obvious and poorly camoflaged scheme, leaving the door open for even slightly more complex schemes going on undetected.

READ MORE:

• Sources: NBA eyes Raptors' Jontay Porter for betting issues by David Purdum, Brian Windhorst and Adrian Wojnarowski, for ESPN
• Porter betting scandal the latest in a chaotic Raptors season by Josh Lewenberg, for TSN
• NBA investigating Raptors’ Jontay Porter for betting irregularities: Report by Eric Koreen and Mike Vorkunov, for The Athletic

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