Austin Reaves, Quentin Grimes, plus Collin Sexton are all guys who will be tasked with taking the ball out of Luka Doncic's hands this season and ensuring the Los Angeles Lakers offense is not solely reliant on their franchise superstar. Having that is a must for their long-term championship hopes.
The 2024 Dallas Mavericks already proved that a team built around Doncic cannot be simply asking for Luka to play hero ball and save the day 24/7. That deep run gave their former superstar the most support he had for a postseason. It made a difference.
Doncic had four trips to the NBA Playoffs with the Mavericks. His combined usage percentage over the first three runs was a whopping mark of 39.8. That included two instances (2020-21 and 2021-22) of Luka leading the postseason in usage percentage with a figure of 40.4 both times.
During the 2024 NBA Playoffs, running the Western Conference gauntlet before ultimately falling short in the NBA Finals saw Doncic post the lowest mark in that category of his time with the Mavericks. Luka only had a 33.4 usage percentage that year. The counting stats were relatively modest, by his standards, too. In short, Dallas showed Los Angeles exactly what they need to do.
Lakers cannot put all their offensive eggs in the Luka Doncic basket
One of the best things about not asking Doncic to carry an overly heavy offensive burden is what it does for your defense. People forget now because of the 2024 NBA Finals, but Luka had a very good defensive run throughout the Western Conference stretch of that postseason.
Even after slipping up against the Boston Celtics at the end, the Mavericks still finished the 2024 NBA Playoffs with a top five defensive unit. That might comes as a shock to those who believe Doncic is this soul-crushing liability on that end. Luka has shown that with the right support, he is just fine.
Decreasing his offensive burden is a great way to draw more consistent defensive effort out of Doncic. Having multiple ball-handlers like the Lakers do now is a great way of aiming for that goal.
Granted, Los Angeles will still need to assess if each of those previously-mentioned guys is a true long-term fit. They may still need to tinker with their collection of players who share in those duties.
In the time they take to try and do that, perhaps they can even find out that someone like Cameron Carr is capable of doing more than just operating off the ball. The options should be there for the Lakers one way or another. All the same, they need to be exploring them.
Everyone knows Doncic is unbelievable when asked to carry an offense. The Slovenian superstar is one of the greatest engines in NBA history on that end. To fully unlock that championship upside in Los Angeles, though, the Lakers cannot be asking Luka to unreasonably test the limits of his power.
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