It’s starting to look like the marriage of coach Jason Kidd with superstar Luka Dončić is a perfect match.
Sometimes, any sport’s best players have a hard time transitioning to coaching because they want everybody to be as good as they were.
In Kidd’s case, it means being as smart as he was in his playing days.
Luka might be the closest Kidd will ever get to having somebody match his basketball IQ as a player.
“Luka’s MO (method of operation) is to make the right basketball play every time,” said Spencer Dinwiddie, who was on the receiving end of the Dončić assist that set up the game-winning 3-pointer with 10 seconds left in Sunday’s 95-92 win at Boston. “Whether that’s post up a smaller guy, feeding a big, stepping back for a three if he’s feeling it, or get all the way to the rim, getting fouled. Or making plays for his teammates.
“That’s his mentality. And so far for us, he does it a really high clip. Obviously, he’s in the MVP race for a reason.”
Kidd has a great appreciation for the things that Luka sees on the court – and elsewhere. It’s eerily similar to some of the assets Kidd had when he was playing. He had an uncanny ability to let his smarts make up for any shortcomings he may have had in other parts of his game.
“He’s a very smart player, sees everything, not just on the court but on film and in meetings,” Kidd said of Dončić. “There’s nothing that’s going to get past him. That’s just very high IQ. There’s not a lot of people who see that.
The Mavericks have won seven of their last eight games and the win Sunday over the Celtics was one of the signature wins of the season. Boston had won 16 of their past 18 games coming in.
Here’s our takeaways from the big win as the Mavericks catch a two-day break in New York before meeting the Brooklyn Nets on Wednesday.
Twitter: @ESefko
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