https://youtu.be/4T7ymSI6DS4
Dwight Powell hasn’t been as good this season as he has been in the past. It would be extremely easy to blame his regression on the Achilles injury he suffered last season. I can easily imagine the so-called “experts” at ESPN claiming such a thing. But DownToBuck is not content with superficial explanations like that. He strives to dig deeper, to probe further, than any other NBA personality.
The real reason that Powell has regressed is because he doesn’t have J.J. Barea throwing him lobs anymore.
Everyone who watched the Mavericks over the last few seasons knew that the Powell/Barea lob connection was one of the top lob connections in the league. Two role-players joining forces to become more than the sum of their parts. It was a one-way relationship: Barea threw the lobs, and Powell threw the lobs down. Never the other way around. Alas, Barea had a great career, but age catches up even to the midgets of the league, and he has departed Dallas to enjoy a post-basketball career of banging hot chicks in Puerto Rico.
And for some reason, as great of a playmaker as Luka Doncic is, he just doesn’t have the same uncanny knack to find Powell for bigtime wham-blams of the alley-oop variety as Barea did. Not even close. It’s clear that Powell has the demonstrated ability to catch all sorts of lobs; the problem lies entirely on Doncic’s end. Perhaps this game will mark the start of a new Doncic/Powell lob era (we can call it “Lob City Part 2”) without Kristaps Porzingis involved because he’s too fragile.
Note: I am currently considering whether to retire, in the fact of a growing awareness of racism and social justice, my nickname for Powell, “Dwight Power”. Stay tuned for further updates.