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Luka Doncic sits comfortably among the NBA’s top five players, and few around the league would argue otherwise. His scoring totals and playmaking numbers place him in rare company. The one knock that keeps resurfacing every season involves his defense, and analyst Tim McMahon just pushed back against that narrative with specifics most critics ignore.
Doncic reshaped his body heading into last season, arriving in the best condition of his career. Even then, plenty of observers stayed unimpressed with his defensive output. McMahon countered that Doncic isn’t a lockdown defender, but he contributes far more than the common perception suggests.
“People don’t want to hear it, but the Dallas Mavericks, the year they went to the Finals, the final quarter of that year, they were the No.1 defense in the league. The year they went to the West Finals, they were seventh in the league in defense,” said McMahon. “Like Luka, as an off-ball defender, can be very good because he’s strong, because he rebounds.”
The Mavs Were a Defensive Force Late in 2024
Doncic stands 6’8″ and weighs 230 pounds, giving him the size and length to matter on that end of the floor. He won’t shut down elite scorers one-on-one, but his basketball IQ and physical tools make him a contributor rather than a liability within the Dallas scheme.
No public database confirms the Mavericks finished as the league’s No.1 defense during the final quarter of the 2023-24 season. The team did rank second in defensive rating across the final month of that campaign, and Doncic ranked first among 142 players with at least 750 possessions logged during that identical stretch.
Luka Posted the Best Defensive Rating for the Mavs in the Finals
Dallas carried that momentum into the 2024 Finals against the Boston Celtics, a team that led the NBA in offensive rating during the regular season at 124.23 points per 100 possessions. The Mavericks held Boston to 111.0 points per 100 possessions across the series.
Among the 11 players who logged at least 40 minutes in that Finals matchup, Doncic posted the best defensive rating on the Mavericks roster at 105. Brian Windhorst pointed to that stretch as the moment expectations shifted, and when Doncic failed to replicate that level afterward, the “bad defender” label stuck.
“His defensive performance, his last full year in Dallas, was by his standards excellent, and unfortunately, that has set the standard for what you expect from him, and he has not equalled that,” Windhorst added.
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