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The elephant in the room has been the play of Porzingis. Dallas traded for him to be the second star needed alongisde Doncic. After an up and down first season with growing pains early, followed by Porzingis earning “All-Bubble” honors for his play during the restart, it hasn’t really worked this year. The big Latvian is putting up some solid individual offensive stats, and lineups pairing Doncic and Porzingis have scored a very robust 120.1 points/100 possesions. But Dallas has still been outscored with that pairing on the floor, giving up 120.7/100.

That gets us to the apparent root of the problem: Porzingis is not having anything close to the defensive impact he had at earlier points in his career. While lineups featuring Porzingis and either Maxi Kleber or Willie Cauley-Stein have, just barely, tread water giving up 115.7/100. In lineups that better match the idealized version of the Mavs with Doncic and Porzingis joined by three wing- or guard-sized players, they are giving up an ungodly 128.4/100. Some of that ugliness is bad luck. Opponents are shooting 45.7 percent from 3 and 51.4 percent on long 2s against those lineups, demonstrably unsustainable rates. But even applying techniques to “luck-adjust” for that kind of shotmaking, this is by far the worst defensive season of Porzingis’ career.

Part of the reason lineups featuring a second big may have done better is that Porzingis has been something of a “reverse Lopez” on the defensive glass, whereby he does a decent job grabbing his share of boards, without seeming to do much to move the needle as far as the team’s overall performance goes. After what appears to be a slight upward blip last year, this year his rebounding has been as non-impactful as ever. Perhaps the most worrying single stat is the apparent decline in rim protection. After being among or at least close to the league’s elite as a help defender at the rim, Porzingis is allowing a very middling 58.0 percent on close shots. League average for centers is typically in the 57 percent range, with higher-end performers generally around or just below 50 percent.