Dallas Mavericks: Examining the driving skills of Dennis Smith Jr.

Dallas Mavericks point guard Dennis Smith Jr. drives the basketball a ton, but let us examine his numbers to see the improvements.

Drives are an important part of the basketball game of Dallas Mavericks second-year player Dennis Smith Jr. In his rookie season, DSJ did 12.7 drives per game, according to NBA Stats. Only four rookies ever made more drives per game (Ben Simmons, Donovan Mitchell, Elfrid Payton, Michael Carter-Williams). Among all NBA players, it was the tenth most last season.

It is not working out so far. Among 103 players who played at least 41 games and made at least five drives per game last season, Dennis Smith Jr. ranked 96th in field goal percentage (40.3 percent), 85th in points percentage (39.7), 42nd in assist percentage (10.9), 71st in turnover percentage (6.8).

Improvements coming?

Mavericks fans should not panic. There are reasons to expect DSJ to improve his numbers. First, youth is on his side. Last season was his NBA debut, so it’s not surprising that some things turned out worse than in the NCAA. With every NBA game and training under the guidance of Coach Carlisle, he is gaining invaluable experience and knowledge.

This is confirmed by the stats. After introducing tracking in the 2013-2014 season, 13 players had at least 41 games and five drives per game in their first two seasons. Their numbers on drives improve in the second season in every case.

They have become more and more accurate (field goal attempts rose from 3.08 to 3.81 and field goal percentage is up from 41.86 to 43.38). As a result, they began to gain almost 0.9 points per game over their rookie season.

Changes in other indicators are not so noticeable (within +/- 10 percent). Yes, in many ways, the increase in performance is due to the uptick in the attempts to drives.

In the case of Dennis Smith Jr, it may not work. But, for example, field goal percentage of the number of attempts is independent, and its growth of 3.62 percent is simply due to the fact that the player has become more experienced.

Drives improved during his rookie year

The changes for Dennis Smith Jr. were visible over the course of last season. For the main indicators in the drives, here are 15 game rolling chart, following the example of baseball charts on Fangraphs. Here’s what happened.

NOTE: The comma in the charts is the decimal separator.

These charts show that after a stormy start, Dennis Smith Jr. had a natural failure for a beginner in the middle of the season. But by the end of the season, most indicators show good growth, which is an indicator that the rookie worked on improving his game.

His field goal percentage after falling in the middle of the season to the level of 25 percent by the end of the season goes to a stable 45 percent. The 45 percent ranks about 60th out of 103 qualifiers, which is still below average, but much better than his 96th ranking for the entire season.

Points and points percentage indicators by the end of the season almost reach the maximum values and the figure of 5.75 points per game is significantly higher than the average (4.44 per game), which would allow Dennis Smith Jr. to take a place in the top-30 players.

By the end of the season, there is a sharp increase in assist percentage and the same sharp drop in turnover percentage. Dennis Smith Jr. began to assist at the level of the top 30 players, and rarely lose the ball as the best qualifiers do.

However, his passes became qualitatively better, it shows growth assist to pass rate. DSJ actually attempted fewer passes, but now his transmission is more likely to become easy points for his teammate.

The only negative trend towards the end of the season is a sharp drop in free attempts during drives. The sharp drop to 0.11 is alarming because, even though Smith has a low field throw percentage, foul shots are the easiest and most qualitative, in terms of points per possession, way to score.

Breaking it down by games

Obviously, the performance will vary greatly from game to game. Here is a look at how the games for Dennis Smith Jr. were shaping up, regarding his drives. To do this, there are four indicators (FG%, PTS%, AST%, TOV%) plus the number of points per game and divided all games into four categories: excellent, good, bad, poor (Notes and data in Google Sheets).

Here’s the chart for this impromptu race.

At the end of the season, Dennis Smith Jr. has two of the three matches of the “excellent” category. He also has many games of the “good” category with only one contest in the “bad” category.

It should be noted that as the year wrapped up, he has three of eight games in the category of “poor”, so we can say that Smith was hot and cold on drives.

Examining the tape on DSJ

Now let’s move from numbers to video and visually assess the skills of Dennis Smith in the drives. In the video of Smith’s drives, there are some noticeable positive and negative points.

Dennis Smith Jr. has a good first step and dribbling that allow him to break away from his opponent, especially when against big. Here is an example where he draws a foul against the Hornets from Jan. 10, 2018.

DSJ uses his exception speed to get separation from the opponent and drive for a layup or dunk. In the March 24 game against the Hornets, he produced this play.

Also, Dennis Smith Jr. passes well on his drives. He is a skilled drive-and-kick player and if Dallas Mavericks had better shooters, Smith could have had more assists.

DSJ needs to work on his alley-oop passing. J.J. Barea has the skill down, but Dennis sometimes forces you to catch and then slam, resulting in missed time.

Here is an example for the New Year’s Eve game last season against the Oklahoma City Thunder.  Smith Jr. drives-and-kicks to a wide Harrison Barnes for a corner three.

From the negative, it is worth noting that DSJ struggled shooting the ball. If the driving ends with a pull-up jump shot or floater, most likely it is a miss. Also, he should work on shooting through contact, because any bump greatly reduces the probability of an accurate shot.

Here is a play from March 17 against the Nets that displays his shot.

It is difficult to give a comprehensive assessment of Dennis Smith Jr’s ability to drive the basketball. There are positives and negatives from both sides.

Do not count him out yet, though. DSJ has youth and a coaching genius in Rick Carlisle to give fans hope that his driving will become a formidable weapon in the attacking arsenal of Dallas Mavericks.