What the numbers say is the biggest position of need for the Dallas Mavericks this offseason

Even if Kristaps Porzingis hadn’t suffered through a knee injury or Luka Doncic’s sprained ankle wasn’t stepped on, almost no publicly available analytical models considered the Mavericks to be favorites against the Clippers in their first round playoff series.

Dallas finished with the best offensive rating in NBA history, and yet conventional wisdom suggests this team needs one more star to compete for a championship.

Finding the right player can be a challenge in today’s era of position-less basketball, where seemingly anyone could catch and shoot a three-pointer, a player’s height and wingspan tell us less now than ever about their skillset and ball movement is stressed more than isolation plays (unless you’re James Harden).

However, sorting through the offense and defense produced by each position group can help at least identify where a team is deficient and who has had enough success to suggest they would be potentially ideal acquisitions.

To complete this exercise for the Mavericks, I will use a metric called player efficiency rating (PER). This metric looks at basic statistics like field goals, offensive rebounding, etc., plugs them into a complex formula and later adjusts for how many minutes that player was on the floor and the pace of play for their team. The website 82games.com grouped these PER results by position, both offensively and defensively.

Looking at this past regular season, the Mavericks were third highest in point guard offense (21.9), second highest in shooting guard offense (20.9), 14th best in small forward offense (20.9) and 12th best in center offense (22.1).

Dallas’ most glaring weakness is power forward offense (4th lowest at 12.7), an interesting finding given that basketball-reference.com estimates that Porzingis played the power forward position 67% of the time.

However, Porzingis finished 10th among all power forwards in the NBA in PER even though this season was the first for Porzingis since left knee ACL surgery and his first season to play with the Mavs and with Doncic. The depth at that position might explain the disparity.

Another way to approach this problem is to determine which position groups best dictate the top teams in the NBA. I put together a simple linear regression where I took every position group’s offense and how well they defended those same positions for all 30 NBA teams, and then modeled these variables on regular season wins from this year. Using this technique, the two most significant indicators that dictate winning are shooting guard offense and power forward defense.

The first should make sense given some of the game’s overall best performers play this position, like Harden and Paul George. While there may be deficiencies in how PER defense is calculated, this metric still features performances from Giannis Antetokounmpo and Anthony Davis, who have each helped lead their teams to the top spot in their respective conferences. As for the Mavs, their defense against power forwards ranked 21st in the NBA with a PER of 16.7, just worse than league average.

What these approaches tell us is someone who can play some power forward (or at least alleviate that role as a center or stretch forward) who will also improve the Mavs’ defense against bigs could be their missing ingredient.

It is worth noting, among all Mavericks this season, Doncic had the most net points per 100 possessions (+10.5) when he was paired with center Dwight Powell. However, Powell could not finish the season because of a ruptured Achilles tendon. If he is not traded, his health could be important for a run next season.

Denver power forward Jerami Grant has been mentioned by Mavs radio voice Chuck Cooperstein as an option as a potential addition, and he does fit the analytic criteria outlined. Using a quick online search, other names bandied about as Mavs trade targets include Rudy Gobert and Kevin Love.

What should be the prevailing wisdom is the last step in this exercise, where I combined a net PER contribution among all five position groups for all 30 teams. It turns out that point guard play is the most indicative of wins. Given Doncic’s development after just two seasons, there’s more than enough reason for optimism, no matter the moves.