PJ Washington was added to the Dallas Mavericks at the trade deadline in an attempt to rectify an off-season mistake. Washington has been a revelation defensively, despite modest counting numbers. Plus/minus is a flawed statistic because of the old statistics fact that association does not equal causation. That being said, the Mavericks have been much better with Washington on the floor since he got here, and he is part of the cause.
With Washington on the floor, the Mavericks’ defensive rating is nearly a full seven points per 100 possessions lower than it is with him off the floor, dropping from 118.3 to 111.6, per stats site PBPStats.com. Perhaps most telling in that stat is that the Mavericks average defensive possession is nearly half a second longer with Washington on the floor. This may appear to be a negative as it implies fewer steals or forced turnovers, but it also means teams are not scoring as quickly in transition. The Mavericks have long been a horrendous transition defense team, and Washington is slowly changing that through sheer effort.
The Mavericks are only giving up 13.5 fastbreak points per game over the last 10 games after giving up nearly 16 per game prior to that. The Mavericks have always been a low turnover team, and they continue to be. That didn’t matter until Washington, with some help from Derrick Jones Jr. and Daniel Gafford among others started defending with pure energy in transition.
All of those great defensive things were being somewhat offset by Washington being unable to shoot. The history of defensive wings artificially inflating their offensive value by taking shorter corner threes goes all the way back to the mid-2000s with Spurs legendary role player Bruce Bowen. The Mavericks generate better quality corner looks than any team in the league by the sheer dominance of Luka Doncic. Therefore, once on the Mavericks, Washington would shoot more and better corner threes and his percentage would improve.
There is only one small problem: Despite the value of analytics, basketball is not played on a spreadsheet. Washington shoots worse from the corners than he does from above the break. Washington shot 25.6 percent on corner threes with the Charlotte Hornets and took 17.6 percent of his threes from the corner. With the Mavericks the percentage of his corner threes has more than doubled to 36.2 percent. Unfortunately, the shooting percentage has fallen even further to 21.4 percent.
There is a glimmer of hope though. Over the last four games, Washington has shot 11-of-25 from three for 44 percent. Of those 25 threes, 10 of them are from the corner, according to NBA.com. He has improved to a still-bad 30 percent on those corner threes by making three of them. He has made a staggering 8-of-15 above the break threes for 53.3 percent.
This is still far too few games and shots to believe that they are incredibly meaningful, but it is clear that Washington shoots better from above the break than the corners. He has shot 34.7 percent on above the break threes with the Mavericks. Doncic always looks for corner shooters, but he is one of the best playmakers ever. He can get the ball to Washington in his preferred locations. If the Mavericks are able to put Washington where he is actually best, rather than where most other players are best, he may be able to help as much offensively as he has defensively.