Lowe’s League Pass Rankings – the top 10 must-watch teams this season

Here we go: The top 10 in our 2022-2023 League Pass Rankings! We revealed Nos. 30-11 on Tuesday, and you can read about the rankings formula there.

10. DALLAS MAVERICKS (35)

Look at this soul-snatcher:

That is the smile of someone who knows he has you. The Mavs’ offense is one-dimensional — Luka Doncic walks ball up, runs two-man game — but that dimension contains multitudes. The typical spread pick-and-roll pairs ball handler and rim-runner; Doncic can do that with any of Dallas’ bigs. He can make all the passes blindfolded.

Doncic’s size and comfort in the middle of the paint — the dead zone for some ball handlers — open up endless possibilities. He’s at his most predatory dragging smaller defenders into pick-and-rolls. Switch, and he mashes them in the post with smirking cruelty. (He took sadistic pleasure brutalizing Patrick Beverley in the 2021 playoffs.) Send help, and he picks you apart.

Even against like-sized defenders and traditional coverages, Doncic is a three-steps-ahead genius burrowing inside. His high-arching step-back is borderline unblockable, and he has hit 50% from floater range over the past two seasons — and a LeBron James-esque 73% at the rim last season.

The threat of those shots unlocks Doncic’s generational passing. He understands how every up-fake, pivot, and half-spin freaks help defenders into thinking they should swarm — and which passes any slight rotation might expose. Last season, he even started throwing straight backward overhead passes to pick-and-pop bigs. Maxi Kleber and Christian Wood must be ready at all times.

This is my favorite piece of Mavs art in ages:

The navy sings against the new white-washed floor.

Will Josh Green look at the rim? Can the Mavs maintain their top-10 defense? How many violations of the Theo Pinson bench decorum rule will Theo Pinson commit?

9. LOS ANGELES LAKERS (35.5)

The Lakers ranked No. 2 last season, but the idea of them — How will Russell Westbrook fit? — turned out to be way more interesting than the experience.

The Lakers played fast, but they were boring — unorganized, dispirited, lacking any cohesive identity. LeBron James remains the ultimate chessmaster, but there’s little reason to suspect the overall product will be much different. (Darvin Ham said this week he’s considering starting Anthony Davis at center, and leaning there would boost L.A.’s watchability. You can’t play Westbrook, LeBron, Anthony Davis, and a traditional center — even one with decent range like Thomas Bryant or Damian Jones. Don’t sleep on Jones’ passing!)

They scored this high only because of their art — including the league’s prettiest court — and the comedy category. Are Beverley and Westbrook really friends? Like, really? Or will latent tension boil over? Comedy can become pathos, and we reached that point with Westbrook last season when the Sacramento Kings’ blared “Cold as Ice!” on every bonked jumper and layup.

Will James engage pout mode once he breaks the scoring record if the…