**tl;dr warning**
People complain about Carlisle and his rotations, or his timeouts, or his Xs and Os, and whenever we lose, he takes the brunt of the blame. But regardless of everything else, Carlisle puts his guys in a position to take wins. It's the players not executing that's the problem.
And that's not just me saying it, it's the stats.
Off the top of your head, a good coach on offense would ideally try to get our guys open looks, right? Open looks presumably mean that a defender is not nearby to contest the shot. We also all know that Carlisle's play-calls focus around us taking a heavy amount of 3s. We were 6th in 3PA in 2017, and 4th in 2018, 2019, and 2020. [As per Bball Ref]. So presumably, if Carlisle were coaching well, we should see a lot of open looks from 3.
The NBA's stats catalog has a section that shows shots taken by a team characterized by the closest defender. There are 4 categories: Very tight (where the nearest defender was 0-2 ft), tight (2-4 ft), open (4-6 ft), and wide open (>6 ft).
Now, off the top of your head, what percentage would you expect an NBA team to make 3s that are open or wide open?
League average for 3pt% is 34.5%, and the Mavs are at 33.8%. So if it's an
open 3 I would expect
AT LEAST that percentage right? To be honest with you, if given an open look, I would expect our guys or any NBA team to be hitting at 40%.
Last night, as per the NBA stats, we attempted 36 3s. And of those 36 3s, 31 were either open (20) or wide open (11). That means that Carlisle's gameplan got us 31 open looks from 3. If we shot at our current 3pt%, that would've meant 10-11 3s hitting. If we shot at 40% from open 3s, that's 12-14 3s hitting.
We hit 7 of 31 from open 3point land, an abysmal 22.5%.
If a coach is able to game-plan in such a way that
86% of our looks from 3 are either open or wide open, I would argue that the coach did a good job, at least on the offensive end. Our 2pt FG% last night was pretty good, 28-48 (58.3%.) But if guys don't hit their shots, there's not much Carlisle can do on the offensive end.
To be clear, there
are valid criticisms to make for the coaching. We need to do a lot better defensively and lock opposing teams down, stopping them from going on these runs. We need to hold our leads better. The sooner we figure out the finalized rotations, the better. We need to figure out plays where KP becomes more active and comfortable in his role (this particular one I believe comes with time.) But that being said, fussing at Carlisle when he's provided our guys the opportunity to win just by hitting 1-2 more open shots seems a bit reactionary.
And also to be clear, this isn't an isolated situation. We're 7th in the league when it comes to wide open 3pt frequency, and 1st in the league when it comes to open 3pt frequency. We are 16th in the league when it comes to tight 3pt frequency, and we have
never had to shoot a 3 that was very tightly defended.
- Against our loss to the trailblazers, we shot 50 3 pointers and only hit 13 (26%). 47 of those shots were either open (21) or wide open (26). We lost by 2.
- Against our loss to the Knicks the first time, we shot 44 3 pointers and only hit 14 (31.8%). 42 of those shots were either open (26) or wide open (16). We lost by 4.
- Against our loss to the Celtics, we shot 42 3 pointers and only hit 11 (26.2%). 40 of those shots were either open (21) or wide open (19). We lost by 10.
The one loss I skipped was the Lakers game, where we shot at a pretty good 3pt% (38.9%). Obviously though, we would've won that game if Powell hit that 2nd FT, the refs noticed the jersey grab, or numerous other things that might have gone our way. It was a close game in regulation.
tl;dr: Carlisle, who has had an emphasis of game-planning for us to shoot a 3, has consistently provided us heavy opportunities to have open 3s. Our players just don't seem to hit them. We still have a lot to work on when it comes to the defensive end, but calling for Carlisle's head for players not hitting 3s seem reactionary to me. He's provided them the opportunities with his coaching strategy- they just need to take advantage of it.
PS: This data is also promising for the Mavs as a whole. Everyone talks about the fact that Rick is trying out new rotations and the players haven't necessarily settled into the their role. But given more time, as we do settle into our role, we'll see a lot more consistency from our players, and our offense will improve even more as these open shots start falling more.
