Friday, May 4, 2007

Defenseless

Thirty-seven 3-point attempts.

Out-rebounded 53–38.

Two Blocks as a team.

Two of the Warriors’ 5 starters utterly hobbling around the court.

Maurice Ager (3/4 FG) was the only Maverick to make more than half his shots.

And Dirk’s line: 8 points, 2/13 FG, 10 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 steal, 0 blocks.

But the problem was deepter than any of that. On offense, Dallas spent 3/4 of their possessions passing the ball around the perimeter. Most of the time the Warriors’ defensive rotation was faster than the Mavericks’ passes. I would think it might have made sense to reverse the pass and drive, but that adjustment wasn’t made.

On defense, it was open 3-pointer after open 3-pointer for the Warriors. They made 46.7% of them.

I think Mo Ager and Austin Croshere are the only Mavericks who shouldn’t feel ashamed of their individual performance after this one, since they at least played hard and contributed about what you’d expect from them. Maybe give a little credit to Devin Harris and his 13 points and 9 assists, not to mention the pressure he put on Baron Davis and his gimpy leg.

Other than that, oh my, it was ugly. It’s hard to tell if the Mavericks were playing without pride, or if they were just out-classed by a better team. Dirk really did look like he was trying most of the time, which is an incredibly scary thought. The Warriors’ defense appeared impenetrable.

There’s just no defense, no excuse for that.

And throw lots and lots of blame on Avery and the coaching staff. The Mavericks are a very fast, very talented team. If you allow your players to just pass the ball around the key for most of the shot-clock and repeatedly toss up 3-pointers––when the season is on the line and you’re making fewer than a third of them––then there is something very, very wrong.

Yikes, I don’t want to read the news tomorrow.

8 comments:

micah said...

At the start of the 4th quarter, down by 20 did it seem that Avery finally started coaching. We started driving the lane and shoot 2 point shots. What an embarrasment. When does football season start?

BTW - Scott, I really enjoyed the blog this season. It was a lot of fun. Consider resurrecting it again next season. Even if we become the Seattle Supersonics.

JKnott said...

So what's for next year? 73 wins, sweeps all the way to the finals, up 3-0, 20 point lead in the final quarter, and then a monumental collapse? Or is that too much like last year? What can they do to us?

Go Warriors!

Mr. Parker said...

I'm not sure Mavs fans can recover and care about the regular season next year. How could they after this. I don't think I will care.

Anonymous said...

I think I agree with most of your analysis except that I think it looked like Dirk wasn't trying the whole game. He looked out of it from the very beginning. I don't know how many times he recieved the ball on the perimeter, held for about three seconds, and then passed back around the perimeter. When he didn't get the ball he was hiding in the corner like you said. I could probably go back and count on one hand the times he actually put the ball on the floor and dribbled. Aside from that, his body language looked like he didn't care either: Where was the emotion that we saw last year in this guy? Some blame has to go to Avery for not figuring out how to get the ball to Dirk, but at the same time, it didn't look like he wanted it that much.

I'm with connor; it's going to be very hard to care about the long regular season next year. I might start watching if we make playoffs. Any thoughts as to what the Mavs do from here? Any personnel changes?

Anonymous said...

I can't wait to here all the jokes and repetitive phrases from the commentators next year. Every Mavs's game will start with, "This is the team that won 67 regular season games last year and then lost to the 8th seed in the first round" and "The Mavs are determined to make up for last year's debacle in the playoffs." That's enough right there not to watch any basketball next year. Maybe I'll think differently come November.

Anonymous said...

I said earlier that I'll boycott mavs next season if they played their last game of this season on May 1. Guess what? They manage to play their last game of this season on May 3. Fantastic.

So I decide I'll boycott only portion of mavs' next season: I'll start watching as soon as they reach the final.

scoots said...

As to the blog, this is going to be a tough one. I love following the team, and I love writing about them, but it takes a lot of energy to follow closely enough that I have anything worth writing. If I decide to end it, I’ll do a wrap-up post or something.

In any event I have one more post for this season that I’m going to try to finish up in the next day or two, while people are still checking.

micah said...

Following the Rangers this year will probably leaving counting the days until meaningless basketball games. Cuban will owe Tom Hicks big for getting the fan base excited again