Dereck Lively's rookie playoff run showed far more than lob finishes. His ability to protect the rim and defend in space gave Dallas a foundation it still needs to get back.
Most Mavericks fans remember Dereck Lively II's rookie playoff run in the same way and it usually involves a lob. He was the rim-running finisher who shot a comical percentage from the field, caught everything Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving threw at him and did it all as a 20-year-old in the NBA Finals. That version of the story is true, but it undersells what made him so valuable. A highlight package that resurfaced this week serves as a reminder.
The reel is all defense. Lively appears as a brick wall at the rim, meeting drivers head-on and swatting shots with real aggression instead of simply contesting them. There are chase-down blocks in transition, the kind that require both length and a relentless motor to run someone down from behind.
Most impressive are the possessions of genuine on-ball defense, including sequences in which he switches out and contests 3-pointers against Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum in the Finals. A rookie center holding up on the perimeter against that level of wing talent is not normal.
The numbers support what the film shows. Lively posted a 109.0 defensive rating across the 2024 playoffs and Dallas as a team jumped from 21st in defensive rating in 2022-23 to sixth in 2023-24 in the regular season. The center position was the biggest personnel upgrade driving that leap. Lively averaged 7.9 points, 7.4 rebounds and 1.3 assists in 21 postseason appearances while playing roughly 22 minutes per game. He did it while coming off the bench behind Daniel Gafford for much of the run.
The advanced numbers are where things get striking. Lively finished with the highest net rating on the entire Dallas roster during that playoff run. In the 261 minutes he shared the floor with Doncic and Irving, the Mavericks outscored opponents by 19.7 points per 100 possessions, the best mark of any of the 178 three-man combinations leaguewide that logged at least 175 minutes that postseason. That is not a rounding error or a small-sample fluke. That was the best trio in basketball for two months.
His peak came in the Western Conference finals against Minnesota, where he averaged 9.5 points on a perfect 16-of-16 from the field, 7.8 rebounds and 1.5 blocks across five games. Going a full series without missing a shot gets the attention, but the defensive work against a Timberwolves frontcourt built to punish smaller lineups mattered just as much.
What makes the film worth revisiting now is the switching, Lively's ability to guard in space, help off his man and recover and hold his ground against both guards and bigs is the exact skill that separates a good defensive center from a foundational one in the modern NBA. Rim protection alone gets you played off the floor in a playoff series. Rim protection plus perimeter mobility gives a defense far more answers.
That is why the current injury situation is so frustrating. Lively is more than seven months removed from season-ending surgery on his right foot, the third procedure on that foot in roughly a year,and as of late June he still could not run or jump. He played seven games last season and has appeared in only 98 of 185 possible regular-season games in his career. Asked recently about a timeline, he declined to give one.
The ceiling has not gone anywhere, though. Lively was 20 years old during that Finals run. He is 22 now and Dallas is building a defense around Cooper Flagg's length and versatility. Pairing that with a healthy Lively is exactly the frontcourt Dusty May's staff would want.
The 2024 tape shows what that could look like. The only thing standing between Lively and that version of himself is his availability.
