Monday, February 26, 2007

Wow.

Rough night for Atlanta. The Hawks shot 51.5% from the floor, and they still only managed to tie Dallas' top four scorers––Nowitzki, Terry, Howard, and Stackhouse combined for 87 points on 36/57 (63%) shooting. Each of the four scored at least 19 and hit more than half his shots. There were only 49 rebounds the entire game (which means there weren't a lot of missed shots), and Dallas outscored Atlanta every quarter.

Oh--and according to nba.com, the Mavericks' 3rd 12-game winning streak of the season sets an NBA record.

4 comments:

scoots said...

Anyone got any new superlatives? Not that Minnesota’s all that great, but 13 in a row for the second time in one season isn't bad.

scoots said...

Oh, they're also 11-0 on the second night of back-to-backs. Including wins at Phonix (albeit back when neither team was playing so great) and at San Antonio.

micah said...

Regular season stats might not mean much come playoffs, but when should we start talking about 70 wins?

scoots said...

It's certainly possible. Among Dallas' next 8 opponents are the Cavs, the Lakers, the Suns, and the Pistons. Before we get too excited, I don't think it would be all that much of a shock for Dallas to lose 3 of those. But if they can come through that stretch with only, say, one loss, I think they'd have a real shot at 70 wins.

Dallas finally passed San Antonio again in the Hollinger ratings. I was reading some Dallas writers like here (under "Wednesday stuff") and here who challenge Hollinger's numbers.

My take on the whole thing is that point differential (Hollinger's primary standard for how well a team is playing) is a lot like IQ –– IQ is a good predictor (on average) of future academic success, but it doesn't prove anything at all. You can be far more successful than your IQ would suggest, and you can certainly fail to fulfill the academic potential that your IQ suggests you have.

Hollinger insists that point differential is a great predictor of future success. And I'm sure that on average, it is. But David Lord at dallasbasketball.com has an interesting article suggesting that Dallas has consistently defied this supposed predictor throughout last year and this year.

It's like a kid who does poorly on IQ tests but succeeds in school because she knows how to succeed. Her success might surprise some people, but it doesn't mean you should use the IQ ratings to insist that she's not as good as she seems.

So maybe San Antonio's numbers would suggest that they should have won more games than Dallas. But Dallas has proven precisely that Hollinger's numbers don't prove anything. They're worth something, to be sure, but in the case of Dallas they have to be set aside to recognize a dominant team for what it is.