On the Dallas Mavericks

Fun Fact

2011-06-30T23:42:00.002-05:00

The NBA names fifteen players to its three All-NBA teams (1st, 2nd, and 3rd) each year. This year exactly three teams had two players among those fifteen, and as it happens those players were all in the top ten.

The Mavericks played and beat all three of those teams in the playoffs:

OKC: Durant (1st team) and Westbrook (2nd team).
LAL: Kobe (1st team) and Gasol (2nd team).
Miami: LeBron (1st team) and Wade (2nd team).

Or another way to put it: of the nine All-NBA first- and second-teamers aside from Dirk, the Mavericks in this playoff run played and beat six of them.

Yes We Did

2011-06-13T01:02:00.005-05:00

(Okay, so I have to figure this title for a blog post is going to be used 600 times in the next two days, but I’m riding with it anyway...)

I have to say, with the Mavericks winning the championship, it’s feels like a major anticlimax. My wife even commented that I didn’t giggle near the end of this game like I did in some of the other games of this series and earlier in the playoffs.

It’s true, and I think that’s because the best parts of a championship season are all the moments where you think you’re going to win it all, even though it hasn’t happened yet. Once the final moment comes, it’s really more of a relief––that the team didn’t blow such a great opportunity––than anything.

Lots of the press have commented recently, and I think they’re right, that we spend so much time discussing legacy and story and greatness and such while the games are happening, that there’s not much left to say once the season is over. We’ve spent the past two weeks obsessing over the possibility of the Mavericks reversing the 2006 Finals with poetic justice, and drooling over how Dirk can finally cement his place as an all-time great.

(I can’t resist a couple of stats to throw in: with the last two wins against the Heat, the Mavericks now have a winning record in the playoffs over the past 11 seasons, going 65-63. This playoff run also means they have now won more playoff series than they’ve lost over that span as well, going 13-10 in series. Not counting tonight’s game, Dirk has career playoff averages of 26.0 points (on 46.5% shooting) and 10.4 rebounds per game. But again, we already knew about Dirk’s numbers; the championship just means no one can say they’re empty numbers anymore.)

I’ll celebrate the championship, but what I hope I remember more is what it was like to watch all the games along the way: the relief of winning game 5 against the Blazers after blowing game 4, and JJ Barea hitting the and-one with Andrew Bynum’s flagrant foul in the sweep of the Lakers (see the website didthelakersgetswept.com), and laughing through Dirk’s absurd 12-for-15 shooting in game 1 against the Thunder, then watching with disbelief as the Mavericks erased a 15-point Thunder lead in game 4 of that series, and then watching in even greater disbelief as the Mavericks did the same thing to the Heat with the season practically on the line in game 2 of the Finals.

Forget espn classic, which I don’t watch anyway. We got to see the games live, and it was as much fun as you can really hope to have watching TV, plus we got to crash facebook after every game and celebrate with the community, even though my Mavs fan friends are all over the globe. When Dirk hit a big shot, this series, I was never surprised; when he kept missing during the first half tonight, I never worried about whether he would get his touch back. When he hit 10 points for the fourth quarter *again* tonight, it was just gravy. The missed shot at the end of game 3 was a genuine shock, and that says something about a player.

From here on, everything changes. Next year (if the season happens), we get to just enjoy what comes without all the angst and doubt. Unless the Mavericks can pull off another year like this, other teams will always have longer dynasties and more title banners. But that’s the great thing about a championship: this year is all that matters. For this year, Dirk was the best when the game was on the line. For this year, no deficit was too big to race back from. For this year, not a single team could blow the Mavericks out of a single playoff game. For this year, Terry was fearless (and money) when the biggest games were on the line. For this year, JJ Barea was a crunch-time contributor in the deciding game of the season. For this year, our team was better, and played better.

As my wife posted on facebook tonight, Thank God it’s finally over. I think we can all use a little rest.

On the Line

2011-06-07T13:07:00.006-05:00

One of the great things about the playoffs is that you get to see how people play when their backs are to the wall.

One of the best places to see this is when a team is leading the series by a single game (1-0, 2-1, or 3-2), as opposed to when it's tied or when a team is leading by two or three games. The reason is, of course, that the outcome of the game leads to such a big difference: either the series will be tied, or else someone will have a two-game lead, which is tough to overcome.

Now of course, in a game 7 you get to see both teams with their backs against the wall, which is a lot of fun. But I think in games like the one tonight, with Miami leading 2-1, you get to find out something even more interesting abuot who these teams are. What I mean is, at least from a fan’s perspective, the game at 2-1 (like the games at 1-0 and 3-2) means more to the team who’s trailing in the series than it does to the team who’s winning.

A few years back I wrote a post about how the Mavericks under Dirk had won every game 7 (or game 5 in a five-game series) that they had played. (The same is still true today, since they haven’t played any games 7’s since I wrote that post.) That looks impressive, until you reflect that the *best* teams don’t have to play very many game 7’s, because they put away their opponents quickly. So most seasons, when the Mavericks are the better team, it still often takes them the full seven games to finish a series. When they’re the lesser team, they never stretch the series to the limit.

Now let’s go back to the 2-1 series. What we find out tonight is whether Miami is good enough to beat the Mavericks even when Dallas *has* to win the game, while Miami doesn’t. It’s more interesting than a game 7 because we don’t just see who’s better –– we see who wants it more. If Dallas can win big tonight, we’ll know they play well when they’re desperate. But if Miami can win big tonight, we’ll know they can keep their effort up even if they’re not desperate.

However, there’s a catch. If the game is close, luck comes into play. Dirk could have made that shot at the end of game 3, just like he could have missed his layup at the end of game 2. Wade could have hit his desperation heave at the end of game 2, or the refs could have called a phantom foul and given him three shots on the play. These things happen. In other words, this series could easily be 2-1 Dallas or 3-0 Miami, and some of it depends on luck.

So then there’s tonight. Dallas needs the win more, and we’re playing at home. And so I think you really can say, that if Miami beats us convincingly tonight, they’ll prove that they deserve to win the series –– and the resulting 3-1 lead will mean they surely will win the series.

Of course you hope for the blow-out win. It would mean that Miami can be beaten soundly, and not just on a fluke. You willingly settle for another close win (or three more close wins), because even a championship won with a little luck is still a real championship.

But if Dallas loses another close one tonight, it will be extremely hard to swallow as a fan, because it will feel like the series could have swung the other way so easily. If that happened, we would probably lose game 6 in a blowout, and it would look like Miami was simply a lot better, but I don’t think that would necessarily be the case. In a 3-1 series, at least from a fan’s perspective, the trailing team is likely to lose heart, which helps the leading team smell blood and play with more energy to finish them off.

So you worry about the close loss. Then it’s just more “what if” piled on the list with Dirk’s WCF knee injury in 2003, the 2006 Finals, and the Golden State upset. As Mavericks fans, we’ve had enough “what if.”

But what if we win tonight?

All Over Again

2011-06-02T22:26:00.002-05:00

Here’s what I wrote tonight during the fourth quarter after the Heat took their fifteen-point fourth-quarter lead. I titled it “All Over Again” because it felt like the loss to Miami in the Finals in 2006:

I think I’m finally convinced: Miami was better than we were in 2006, and they’re better than we are now. It is, after all, a sport, which means that things like speed and strength matter, they’re not incidental.

Why did we lose tonight? Every time we turned the ball over, Miami beat us down the floor for a dunk. When the Heat missed a shot, there were at least three times that Wade was already springing to the rim before he even knew if the shot was going in. At least a couple of times, he got rebound-dunks from it. Jason Terry has basically been shut down these two games, partly because the Heat defenders are taller than he is, and partly because they’re so fast in closing out on shooters that Terry has hardly gotten any open looks. Dirk definitely doesn’t shoot as well when defenders are physical with him. In the regular season, he gets foul calls a big chunk of the time. When the fouls aren’t coming, he still adjusts, be he isn’t as dominant.

So, uh, after the borderline-miraculous comeback and win tonight, I guess what I really meant by “All Over Again” was that it was just like the fifteen-point fourth quarter comeback against Oklahoma City last round. Yeah, that's what I meant.

Rolling the Dice

2011-05-31T23:10:00.003-05:00

Okay, so two different ways to tell the “story” of tonight’s game 1 Finals loss.

STORY #1

One is that we hung in there for the first half, but then the Heat shifted gears, buckled down, and put us away.

That’s definitely possible, but I think we could be a little misled by the big Lebron dunks that he put in once the game was mostly over and we were already playing desperate. I’m not saying I’m not worried about those plays, but I think it’s possible they would go down a bit differently if it were a two-point game instead of an eight-point game with a couple of minutes left.

STORY #2

Another way to view the game is that our bench has really been the difference throughout the playoffs, and that bench did not show up tonight. As in, 17 points on 4 of 22 (18%) shooting from Barea, Terry, and Peja.

Someone could point out that the Miami bench didn't play great either, shooting 8 of 22 (36.4%) for 27 points.

The difference is that our bench is a big part of how we got to the Finals. Despite Nowitzki’s brilliance through most of the playoffs so far, Barea, Terry, and occasionally Peja need to show up with big games for us to succeed against good teams. We have gambled by placing heavy stock in the ability of those guys –– especially Barea and Peja –– to make big plays and help us get wins. Now we risk paying the price for placing a lot of weight in players who may have been playing beyond their potential for awhile now.

We didn’t always close great against Portland and Oklahoma City, but we played well enough across the span of the whole game to win those series convincingly, and that overall play included nice contributions from the bench.

So for me, two big questions now are, is Barea really a rotation player for a contender, or just a guy who got hot for a couple of weeks? And, can Peja still hit big shots in big games, or have we already gotten out of him more than we bargained for?

T.E.A.M. ... but I love Jason Kidd

2011-05-25T22:58:00.007-05:00

My wife can attest that the two most common things I say during Mavericks games are “Kidd wants the ball” (whenever I seem him run down a loose ball) and “I love watching Jason Kidd play basketball.” I’m the proud owner of a commemorative opening night towel from Kidd’s first NBA game in November 1994, when he missed a triple-double by one rebound, I believe. My brother and I got cheap tickets in the upper deck end zone, and I’ve been in love with Kidd’s game ever since.

It still boggles my mind that the Mavericks let coach Jim Cleamons push to trade Kidd in 1997, and I was a big advocate of getting him back a couple of years ago, even if it did cost us Devin Harris.

Dirk is having a spectacular playoff run this year, but you could the Mavericks’ quality as a team summed up in their last offensive possession, when Jason Kidd came up with a tough offensive rebound after Dirk barely missed a 14-footer, then got the ball back to Dirk to force a Thunder foul and two free throws.

Kidd can’t really be called a star anymore, but he knows how to make winning plays. As much as I love watching Dirk shoot, Kidd’s play may be even more delightful. And in this particular series, he came up big over and over again.

In addition to the big offensive rebound to seal the game tonight, in game 4 Kidd also had the big three-pointer in overtime, plus a steal against Durant with four minutes left and the Mavericks trailing by four. Kidd just grabbed the ball and took it from him, and three seconds later Shawn Marion was scoring at the other end; in overtime, Durant did the same thing to Durant again, stealing the ball from him with a minute left and the game tied. This was actually the *third* time Kidd stripped Durant like that in a key possession in the series––the other one happen with 1:47 left in game 2. Add to that another big offensive rebound with 1:04 left in that game.

I don't know if the Mavericks will beat the Heat in the Finals, but this guy plays like a winner, and he deserves a title. He’s not an all-star anymore, but he plays the right way.

We’ll take it

2011-05-21T23:23:00.002-05:00

Looking at the big picture, the outcome of tonight’s game 3 of Mavericks-Thunder doesn’t make very much sense. Dirk and Durant both shot horrible, Jason Terry didn’t have a good game for Dallas, and Russell Westbrook was dominant for the Thunder. Dirk had more turnovers (seven) than his combined rebounds-assists-steals-blocks. And the Mavericks still won on the road.

I suppose it comes down to this: if you shoot 37 percent from the field, including 1-17 three-pointers (which is what the Thunder did), you’re usually not going to win a playoff game.

What it would take

2011-04-16T09:13:00.003-05:00

This blog has been obsessed with Dirk Nowitzki over the years, and I think it's justified. Apart from 1988, the Mavericks have had virtually no success as a franchise apart from the years he’s been on the team. And it’s often been noted that this regular season, Dallas was 55-18 with him in the lineup, and 2-7 without him.

2010 PLAYOFFS

I want to look at last year’s playoffs and talk about the Mavericks’ identity as a team, and what Dirk means for them. His numbers for the Spurs series last year were strong (26.5 points and 8 rebounds on 54.7% shooting), but I want to focus on one game––in fact, one quarter––where I think the Mavericks lost the series, and in a sense I think they lost it because of Dirk.

His biggest weakness, in my opinion, is his struggles to make something happen when opponents play rough and he gets angry. I don’t mean angry like his 50-point WCF barrage after Tim Thomas blew him a kiss in 2006, but rather angry like when Bruce Bowen or Udonis Haslem is holding him and shoving him 17 feet from the basket.

If the refs are calling fouls in Dirk’s favor, he can barrel into the lane and get to the free throw line anyway; but when he doesn’t get calls, his angry playing often just ends up in missed shots and turnovers. Or sometimes, he seems to check out of the game completely.

MAVS-SPURS 2010, GAME 3

Consider what happened in game 3 against San Antonio last year. During the third quarter, Antonio McDyess started holding and shoving Dirk every possession, and Dirk lost it. You could see he was angry, shoving back and flailing his arms, trying to get the refs’ attention. He got bullied.

Dallas started the third quarter with a 14-point lead. Dirk’s stats for that quarter? He shot 0/1 FG, 2/2 FT (after being flagrantly fouled), he got 1 rebound, 3 turnovers (including an offensive foul on George Hill), and 1 technical foul. But aside from the numbers, you could see that the Spurs got into his head. When he did get the ball, it was obvious he had no interest in shooting or making a move. He’d catch it and just pass it to someone else on the perimeter.

Dallas’ 14-point lead turned into a 7-point deficit by the end of the quarter. Dallas ended up losing the game by 3.

Dirk wasn’t the only one with a problem that quarter. The whole team only scored 11 points. But on all those possessions where the rest of the team was missing 12 shots and committing 4 turnovers, what they needed was for their best player to take his share of shots and keep his mind in the game. Aside from the fact that Dirk probably would have hit a higher percentage than the rest of the team was hitting that quarter, they needed him taking shots to keep the offense flowing, and to help the team keep a mindset to win with.

AND, THE SERIES?

If Nowitzki had kept his head in the game, it’s easy to imagine a 3-point swing and a win that game for the Mavericks. Then the series goes 7 games, and the Mavericks probably win game 7 at home. Nothing guaranteed, but that first-round series was winnable.

Now, there are two different ways to look at the series. One is that the Mavericks should have won easily, and that saying one quarter swung the series is kind of missing the point. The other way to look at it is, if Dirk were tougher mentally, the Mavericks could have won anyway.

Any of course, you could say the same thing about the 2006 Finals. The officiating in favor of Dwyane Wade was of course a factor there, as was Wade’s brilliance in hitting big shots. But the other main thing going on was that Dirk got bullied by Udonis Haslem and others in that series; and while his numbers were still pretty good, and he had some big moments, the Mavericks needed him to be consistently brilliant. It didn’t quite happen. To put it another way, they could have won even despite the officiating, if Dirk had held it together more consistently.

AND, THE TEAM

And here we see the problem with these Mavericks. Dirk has to play out of his mind for them to win a playoff series, and even then it’s regularly not enough. One bad quarter from Dirk might swing a whole series, if the other team can stick on its game. Put yourself in that position, and imagine if you’d hold up knowing you had to be on your best game for every moment of a seven-game series. I’m sure there are players who can do it, but I’m pretty sure Dirk can’t.

As always, of course, I have to stress that it’s very rare for a single star to have to stay on his best game like that. Shaq and Kobe could take turns being the hero, as could Duncan/Ginobili, Pierce/Allen/Rondo, and most recently Kobe/Gasol. (Remember that last year Kobe shot 6/24 in game 7 of the Finals while Gasol saved the series for the Lakers.)

But for our Mavericks, we’re left with this problem: no one has shown that they’re ready to step up consistently and make big plays if Dirk doesn’t do it. Butler was pretty good in last years’ playoffs, averaging 23 points and 7 rebounds on 44% shooting, but he’s injured now. Terry and Kidd have been erratic in the playoffs recently. And Dirk has a decent amount of mental toughness, but it’s clear he doesn’t have enough to keep things together consistently by himself.

DALLAS-PORTLAND 2011

Dirk will have a lot of good moments against Portland this series, but at some point they’ll start bullying him, and the refs won’t call things in his favor. If Dirk can turn that frustration into strong moves to the basket, Dallas will beat Portland in the series. If Terry and Kidd can step up their games and score consistently, Dallas will win even if Dirk *can’t* get past the physical defense. But if neither one of those things happens, my money is on the Blazers for the first-round upset.

Half-Baked?

2011-04-01T16:25:00.005-05:00

I haven’t posted here in almost two years, but the drubbing by the Lakers last night is enough to get a guy thinking.

I should say up front I haven't read anything beyond the espn daily dime for the day, so hopefully I'm not just repeating what everyone else is saying.

My wife and I went to our favorite pizza place to watch the game last night, and fortunately the place closed at 12:30ET so we had to leave before the game got too ugly. We were dreading it going in, and now it's hard to even care. The Mavs' play has seriously lagged lately, and some of the Dallas media folks (Mike Fisher and Mark Followill) were analyzing on a podcast the other day who the Mavericks should be more worried about in the first round. I don't think the Lakers are worried whether they can take Portland or New Orleans.

But what's worse is what I saw last night, and not just the score: Lakers laughing after big plays, Kobe going into overdrive and breaking up a Mavericks fast-break. And then there's Matt Barnes. He was on the Warriors when they embarrassed Dallas a couple of years back, and last night after Terry almost got in a fight with Steve Blake (?!), Barnes was walking around Terry taunting him. And what was he saying? According to Terry, “same thing he's been saying since he played for Golden State, which is a bunch of nothing.” There’s no way I believe Terry on that point.

They're already in our heads, and the playoffs haven't even started. They're already paving ground to beat us mentally in the second round, if we even make it there. We could have only lost by 5 last night, and I'd be just as convinced. Barring a miracle, this team is done.

But were we ever not done?

I’m thinking of the ends of movies where the plot twist hits, and they show you scenes from earlier in the story that you suddenly realize you misunderstood. This is where my mind is going with the Mavericks right now. I'm sure people have outlined all this before, but it’s never hit me quite the way it’s hitting me today.

Flash back to 2003, when the Mavericks beat the Sacramento Kings in game 7 of the second round to go to the Western Conference Finals. (By the way, that was an insanely entertaining playoff series.) Dirk injured his knee in game 3 of those WCF, and the Mavericks lost in 6 after giving the Spurs a run for their money; the Spurs went on to win the title that year. You had to wonder, what if Dirk had been healthy?

But look at it another way: What if Chris Webber hadn't blown out his knee in game 2 of the Sacramento series. Would Dallas have won?

Then look at 2006. Dallas beats the Spurs in 7 games in the second round, then Phoenix in 6 in the WCF. We lose to Miami by 6 in the Finals, partly due to two of the most atrociously-officiated games I’ve ever seen, and partly because we fell apart mentally.

But look at it another way: What if Duncan was completely healthy for San Antonio? (He put up big numbers in those playoffs, but it was a well-known fact he suffered much of that season from plantar fasciitis.) Don’t we think a little extra mobility for Duncan might have swayed game seven in overtime on the road? And what if Amare Stoudemire hadn’t been out for the year for Phoenix? Would we have beaten *either* of those teams?

So what’s left?

Of course, *maybe* we would have won all those playoff series even without the injuries (minor or major) to key players on the other teams.

But consider this: if Webber stays healthy and we lose to the Kings, and if Duncan is healthy and we lose to the Spurs, here's the Mavericks’ playoff history in ten straight 50-win seasons with Dirk:

2001: lost 2nd round
2002: lost 2nd round
2003: lost 2nd round
2004: lost 1st round
2005: lost 2nd round
2006: lost 2nd round
2007: lost 1st round
2008: lost 1st round
2009: lost 2nd round
2010: lost 1st round

The tally: in ten years we have *never* gotten past the second round without the other team's best big man being injured. Our actual record in playoff games over that span: 49–57.

The point of the NBA is entertainment, and the Mavericks have not let me down from that perspective, whether in the regular season or the playoffs. Also, Dirk’s numbers have been stellar in the playoff (as I’ve argued over and over), and that includes the last couple of years. What’s more, we’ve legitimately won plenty of playoff series along the way, so it’s not like a McGrady–type curse or anything.

No, it’s much more mundane. Once we have to compete against the best, we’re just not that good, and it’s looking more and more like we never have been.

And it's on

2009-04-18T19:11:00.003-05:00

Mired in comprehensive exams for the next two weeks, I probably won't get to watch hardly a minute of Mavericks-Spurs. But I would like to go on record here with this (not too risky) prediction: Dirk and Terry will probably do fine, but whether the Mavericks win the series will depend on whether Josh Howard plays like an all-star or a head case.

Very Interesting

2008-06-06T19:13:00.002-05:00

Here’s something that every critic of Dirk ought to read:

Career Regular Season Averages:
Kobe: 25.0 points, 45.3% FG, 5.3 rebounds, 4.6 assists
Dirk: 22.4 points, 47.1% FG, 8.6 rebounds, 2.7 assists

Career Playoff Averages:
Kobe: 24.2 points, 44.6% FG, 5.0 rebounds, 4.6 assists
Dirk: 25.3 points, 44.7% FG, 11.1 rebounds, 2.5 assists

Career Finals averages:
Kobe: 23.3 points, 41.2% FG, 5.4 rebounds, 4.9 assists
Dirk: 22.8 points, 39.0% FG, 10.8 rebounds, 2.5 assists

Now, obviously Kobe is better than Dirk, and with the game on the line Kobe is perhaps the most valuable player in the NBA, while Dirk usually chokes at the end. However, the stats reveal that Dirk is the one who steps up his game when the playoffs come around, while Kobe slips a little bit when compared with the regular season.

But what’s more than that, people such as my brother criticized the way Dirk played in the Finals a couple of years ago against Miami, because Dirk had a couple of bad games, while Dwyane Wade played phenomenally. But how about this: Kobe Bryant has been the the Finals four times now (before this season), and his Finals numbers are only slightly better than Dirk’s. If Dirk was mediocre for one series, Kobe has virtually duplicated those scoring and shooting numbers over the span of four series.

And for the record, in game one of this year’s Finals, Kobe scored 24 on 9/26 (34.6%), with 3 rebounds and 6 assists.

Anyway, all this points to the argument I’ve tried to make again and again: the only real reason people hate the Mavericks and Dirk is because they lost to Miami. People can talk about how they lost, but the fact is that Dirk’s numbers were just fine, and no one thinks particularly less of Kobe, even though Shaq was the MVP of all three championships Kobe won, and even though Kobe’s numbers in the Finals are only slightly better than the numbers Dirk put up when Dallas lost.

I feel the sting of the losses, and I think criticisms for that are completely fair. What I don’t like are smoke screen arguments, such as criticism of Dirk’s stats. With the game on the line, give me Kobe. But don’t tell me that the Mavericks lost the championship a couple of years ago because Dirk’s shooting percentage was kind of low.

Counting the Stars and Weak Links

2008-04-29T21:44:00.006-05:00

Watching tonight's game, I think there was one very obvious reason why the Mavericks couldn't beat the Hornets in this series: the Hornets had two stars, and Dallas only had one. Closely related to this is the sad reality that Chris Paul had a triple-double in the series, and Jason Kidd didn't.

My brother Jeremy will doubtless continue his blaming of Dirk, but the fact of the matter is that Chris Paul--utterly brilliant especially in the first the fourth quarters--was able to relax for large portions of the game, because David West repeatedly hit big shots, even when Paul wasn't setting him up.

Having two stars instead of one makes an enormous impact on a team's offense, because the Hornets could regularly double-team Nowitzki with only minimal fear that anyone else would hurt them. In several cases Dirk (6 assists) found Terry for open shots, and that's a big part of the reason Dallas stayed in the game at all. But Terry can't get his own shot, which means the Mavericks weren't able to stretch the defense as well as the Hornets could.

But Dallas, faced with Paul and West as offensive threats, had few options for forcing the ball out of either of their hands. This amounted to a huge tactical advantage for the Hornets, and it's why they were simply the better team this series.

J-Ho and Stackhouse

The other reason for the disastrous series was the continued lousy offensive play of Josh Howard and Jerry Stackhouse. Both players actually started out game 5 quite well, Howard hitting 4 of his first 5 shots, and Stackhouse hitting 4 of his first 6. Yet 7 of these 8 made shots were layups or dunks. And what's more, after Stackhouse made a jumper with 5:50 left in the 2nd quarter, here is the offensive output the Mavericks got from Stackhouse and Howard combined:

Howard layup with 7:46 left in the 3rd
Howard jumper in the lane with 10:48 left in the 4th
Stackhouse dunk with 3:41 left in the 4th (a breakaway off a nice pass from Kidd)

All in all, for those last two-and-a-half quarters, Howard shot 2 of 9, and Stackhouse shot 1 of 6. Neither player could hit anything from outside all game: In fact, Howard didn't score a single point outside the lane, and Stackhouse only made one jump-shot. Other than that, every basket for either swing-man was a layup or dunk. I think they each air-balled at least one 3-pointer, and most of their shots weren't even close to going in.

Yet Avery allowed Howard and Stackhouse to continue setting up from outside, and between them they missed their last 8 outside shots, including 5 three-pointers.

With 1:47 left in the game, after Dallas had almost miraculously managed to pull within 8 points, hitting 3-pointers on three consecutive possessions (Kidd, Dirk, and George), Stackhouse inexplicably fouled Paul in the backcourt, which game him two free throws, and then Stackhouse slapped the ball out of Paul's hands, drawing a technical FT. Mercifully, this was Stackhouse's second tech of the game, which means it got him ejected--so at least Avery couldn't leave him in the game to keep missing shots.

What was particularly infuriating about this is that both Howard and Stackhouse have been completely incapable of scoring from outside for the entire series. Both players had scored a few points here and there, but virtually all of them were from layups and free throws. To have both players continue to take these shots in the fourth quarter of an elimination game was unconscionable from a coaching standpoint. Miraculously, the Mavericks almost managed to come back at the end anyway. Imagine what could have happened if these two guys had stopped taking shots they were almost certain to miss.

For the series, then, Howard shot 21/72 (29%) for 12.2 PPG, and Stackhouse shot 12/38 (32%) for 6.2 PPG.

Side-note

For what it's worth, Dirk has never been swept in a playoff series. From what I've seen of the NBA playoffs, a superstar should always be able to get his team one win in a series, however out-matched they are (think: Allen Iverson in the finals against LA). The fact that Dirk has always come away with at least one win suggests that he's done his job: he has often been a superstar on an overmatched team, but only very rarely a playoff no-show. This is why Dirk has career playoff averages of 25.3 points and 11.1 rebounds (on 44.7% shooting, averaging 1.38 points per field goal attempt).

Minutes, Minutes, Minutes

2008-04-29T07:34:00.002-05:00

Something to watch for in tonight’s game is whether Avery finally gets over his urge to give useless playing time to Jerry Stackhouse and JJ Barea. (Mike Fisher at dallasbasketball.com has great analysis this week, and he raises and answers a lot of these questions about minutes.) The Mavericks need at least two scorers on the court the entire night, and they already have the minutes to do that -- if Avery has the will to follow through.

Here are the average minutes that have been played by Dallas’ top players so far this series:

Dirk: 40.8 minutes
Howard: 35.0 minutes
Kidd: 35.0 minutes
Terry: 34.0 minutes

Since I'm not an NBA coach, I welcome someone to correct me if I'm wrong on this, but what jumps out at me is that, between Dirk, Howard, and Terry, that’s only 34 minutes of rest, which means there is no reason for more than one of them to be out of the game at any given time. Which means there is no reason not to have two scorers on the floor for every minute of the game. If Avery just bumped Terry and Howard up to 36 minutes each, he could rest Dirk the last four minutes of the first and third quarters, rest Terry the first six minutes of the second and third quarters, and rest Howard the last six minutes of the second quarter and the first six minutes of the fourth quarter. Or something like that.

Then just make sure that Kidd is in the game all the minutes that Terry is out, and you (1) always have a viable point guard on the floor, (2) always have two scorers on the floor -- that is, assuming Howard remembers how to score at some point, and (3) have all four of your best guys playing together the first six minutes and the last six minutes of the game.

If you figure those 40 minutes for Dirk and 36 each for Kidd, Howard, and Terry, then that leaves 92 minutes for the rest of the team. Then maybe 26 minutes for Dampier, 30 for Bass (at center for the 22 minutes Dampier is on the bench, and at power forward for the 8 minutes Dirk is on the bench), and then 36 minutes for the other swing men: Maybe 16 minutes for Devean George, 12 for Eddie Jones, and 8 for Jerry Stackhouse--always with two other scorers on the court.

Or better yet: I don't know exactly how much rest the 4 stars need, but if you give Dirk, Kidd, Terry, and Howard 40 minutes each for tonight's game (it is an elimination game, after all), then you only need 32 minutes of rest total among the four of them. That means you can have all four guys on the court for the first 8 minutes and the last 8 minutes of the game, and then you have three of the four on the court the entire rest of the game.

That also means you can cut an additional 12 minutes from George, Jones, and Stackhouse -- which would probably mean dropping Jones from the lineup altogether.

Blame J-Ho

2008-04-27T23:15:00.003-05:00

I don’t have a lot to say here, except that (1) thank goodness at least Dirk is playing well, and (2) Dallas isn’t going to win a playoff series when both Josh Howard and Jerry Stackhouse have 4 straight awful scoring games.

Howard's lines:

Game 1: 4/16
Game 2: 3/10
Game 3: 5/16
Game 4: 3/16

Overall, that’s 15/58, or 25.9% field goal shooting for the series. Howard has also made a good number of free throws, so he’s managed 12.8 points per game, along with 6.5 rebounds.

Stackhouse’s lines:

Game 1: 2/9
Game 2: 4/10
Game 3: 0/2
Game 4: 1/5

Overall, that’s 7/26, or 26.9% field goal shooting for the series. He’s averaged 5 points and 3 rebounds.

Jason Terry’s numbers are somewhat better:

Game 1: 3/7
Game 2: 5/8
Game 3: 8/18
Game 4: 6/16

Terry’s totals have been 16.5 points on 44.9% shooting, which is pretty close to his season average. His play was impressive for most of tonight.

So here’s the problem: assuming we give Kidd at least a little bit of credit for his 7 rebounds and 6.3 assists (lame for him, but still obviously a valuable contribution), that means that Brandon Bass has been Dallas’ fourth best player this series, after Dirk and Terry, and Kidd. That’s a bad sign for the team, since ideally, Bass should never be better than the fourth best player on the court for the Mavericks at any give time.

I’m actually starting to feel sympathy for Avery Johnson. It should be outrageous to have Devean George (a stiff, in my book) taking 7 shots in a playoff game, except that the Mavericks really don’t have anyone else passable to bring off the bench. In the second quarter, Dallas was running Barea, Stackhouse, George, and Bass alongside Dirk. Nowitzki is a great offensive player, but he’s simply not dominant enough to score a bunch of points when there are four stiffs on the court with him (with apologies to Bass), which means the Hornets don’t have to guard anyone else.

As far as I can tell, for the Mavericks to succeed, they need two solid scorers on the floor at any point in the game. If Howard were scoring like he’s supposed to, Johnson could save Terry for the sixth man, to come in alongside Stackhouse for the second unit. But with Howard playing badly, Dallas needs Terry for the first unit; then with Stackhouse playing badly, Dallas is left without any dependable scorers in the second unit. The result is what we saw tonight: a strong start, followed by a huge drop-off when the bench comes into play.

All this adds up to how the Hornets could win even when Chris Paul didn’t have a great game: tonight, Dallas shot 36% overall, and 3 of their top 5 scorers didn’t show up. That’s essentially been the case for the series so far, so it’s little surprise the Hornets are up 3-1. In theory, the series could still turn around if the Mavericks played according to their talent. Unfortunately, there’s no real reason to think that they will.

Born Losers?

2008-04-23T09:58:00.002-05:00

I can’t help seeing irony in a comparison between last season and this one, when we look at how the Mavericks ended their regular season and how they’ve begun the playoffs.

Last year, Dallas was widely criticized for blowing off one of its last regular-season games against Golden State, which helped allow the Warriors to make the playoffs, where they faced and demolished Dallas. It seemed to be bad karma for the Mavericks not to play hard as they finished their season, and it seemed that they were basically paying for that mistake as they lost to a hot Warriors team that bullied them throughout the series.

This year, Dallas came into its last regular season game against New Orleans, in basically the reverse situation. Whereas a win against the Warriors last year would have meant the Mavericks would not have had to face them in the playoffs, a win against the Hornets this year assured that the Mavericks would face them in the first round. This time around, it seemed that the Mavericks got it right: they played hard against the Hornets and beat them, which would seem to build up some good karma going into the playoffs. Right?

The plan seems to have backfired, though. Avery -- whom seems to have lost his ability to win big games as a coach -- trotted out a full-court press that frustrated Chris Paul in that last regular season game, and it did help Dallas build some confidence. Unfortunately, it also allowed the Hornets to adjust before the first playoff game. Whereas you’d really hope to bring out the surprising strategy as an edge to help you win game 1 of the playoff series, Avery unveiled it ahead of time. The result is a strategy that actually worked -- but at the wrong time.

There is one thing in common: in both cases Dallas told the other team that they weren’t afraid to face them in the playoffs. Which is another way to say that Dallas showed disrespect toward the team they would ultimately face in the first round. I’m not sure that necessarily has anything to do with their failure last year and (so far) this year, but it obviously hasn’t helped.

And surely there has to be a certain amount of luck that has gone into the playoff losses these last three years: Dwyane Wade’s parade to the free throw line, Baron Davis hitting half-court shots and falling-out-of-bounds 3-pointers, and Chris Paul hitting identical off-balance buzzer beaters at the ends of consecutive first quarters. These kinds of plays are extremely discouraging for a team -- after all, how can you expect to win when you’re playing against Superman?

Yet once the pattern sets in, it starts to seem less and less like luck. Whereas Dirk was the one playing Superman a couple of years ago, with his 50-point WCF performance against Phoenix (see this pose, where I compare it to a similar LBJ game in last year’s playoffs), this year he’s merely been good (27 point on 11 FG attempts is actually very good, at least on paper), while Paul has been the superhero. But more than that, the Mavericks are getting mediocre play from Stackhouse, Howard, and Terry, plus they’re playing lousy team defense. In the end, it looks like the Mavericks just aren’t very good.

This is ultimate fan hell: when your team does the wrong thing, it blows up in their face. When they do the right thing, it backfires. Bad luck, bad karma, bad effort, or bad coaching: more than anything, it’s just a bad experience for a fan.

50-Game Winners

2008-04-18T17:29:00.003-05:00

A couple of weeks back, ESPN posted a stat (here) about how the Spurs have won 50 games for 9 seasons in a row (including this one), a stat which ties them for second place on the all-time list, alongside Bird’s Celtics (1980-1988), and trailing only Magic’s Lakers (12 years in a row: 1980-1991).

Dallasbasketball.com also posted a stat a couple of days later about the Mavericks’ place in that list, which puts the Mavericks only one 50-win season behind the Spurs, since Dallas finally reached 50 games this season, to make it 8 in a row. I can’t remember what that stat was exactly, except that it tried to put Dirk in the company of Magic, Bird, and Duncan, in light of the Mavericks’ long-term success. I can’t find the link to that page anymore, or I’d cite it specifically.

In any event, as it turns out, the whole ESPN statistic is skewed, because it doesn’t take into account 1998-99, when a lockout limited the regular season to only 50 games total, and no one finished with more than 37 wins. Now granting that no one actually won 50, still for the purposes of measuring long-term success it’s silly to skip that season, which cut off a couple of pretty impressive streaks of 50-win seasons.

So I did a run-through of every NBA season since the league first went to 79 games in 1961 (then 80 games in 1962, and finally 82 games in 1967). (Note that I didn’t get to double-check the results, so there might be mistakes in this list.) After adjusting for the 61% winning percentage that a 50-win season represents with the current schedule, here are the best streaks (with an asterisk by the active streaks):

12 - Lakers ('80-'91)
11 - Spurs ('98-'08)*
9 - Celtics ('80-'88)
9 - Lakers ('96-'04)
8 - Jazz ('94-'01)
8 - Mavericks ('01-'08)*
7 - Bucks ('81-'87)
7 - Suns ('89-'95)
7 - Pistons ('02-08)*
6 - 76ers ('80-'85)
6 - Sonics ('93-'98)
5 - Bucks ('70-'74)
5 - Celtics ('72-'76)
5 - Pistons ('87-91)
5 - Bulls ('90-'94)
5 - Heat ('97-'01)
5 - Kings ('01-'05)

A couple of comments, before I get to my main point. Three teams (the Nets, the Warriors, and the Nuggests) have never had two consecutive 50-win seasons, and another four (Bullets/Wizards, Cavs, Rockets, Hornets) have never had more than two.

Next, Chicago surely would have won 50 or more in 1995 if Jordan hadn’t absurdly retired for a year and a half to play baseball, which would have given them 9 consecutive years ('90-'98). But of course, he did retire, at his own whim (unless Bill Simmons is right about it being a secret suspension for gambling), and the franchise paid the price.

And third, to keep things in perspective, the Mavericks had won 50 games only twice in their franchise history (1987 and 1988) before Nowitzki joined the team. My childhood memory wants to say that Dallas just had bad luck in always having to face Magic’s Lakers in the playoffs, but in reality the Mavericks just weren’t that good for very long.

The Top of the List

So then, the numbers put the Mavericks as tied for 5th on the all-time list (that is, since 1961). That position seems impressive, except that it only ties them with the Jazz (who could never quite get the job done), and it only puts them just ahead of Bucks, Suns, and Sonics teams that weren’t exactly known as dynasties.

I find the top three teams particularly impressive, because their respective stars (Magic, Duncan, and Bird) played their entire career with the same team and led their respective teams to 50 wins every year they played for them (only counting Magic until his first retirement).

With the Jazz and the Mavericks, that isn’t the case. The Jazz with Stockton and Malone had some other good seasons, but they weren’t great every year. The Mavericks, in Dirk’s first two seasons, only won 14 (23 if adjusted for lockout) and 40 games.

In one way the Mavericks’ streak is the more impressive of the two, because the Jazz had two superstars, while Dirk is the only Maverick on the team for their entire streak. Still, Mark Cuban has consistently put a lot of good players around him, so we should also credit the organization of adjusting quickly (e.g., to the departure of Nash) to keep the team good.

If Dirk isn’t going to fall into the Karl Malone mold (as my brother Jeremy thinks he will), it’s going to depend on what happens with the Mavericks these next couple of seasons. If they stay strong, they could jump into 3rd place on this list, which would help solidify Dirk (at least in my opinion) as a hall-of-fame player. A championship, of course, would do the same.

On the other hand, it’s easy to see the Mavericks fading if they don’t make a significant playoff run this year. There’s a reason that only Magic, Bird, Duncan, and Shaq have kept teams good for longer: it’s difficult to do, and most players/teams fade before they get there.

In Rhythm

2008-04-10T21:55:00.007-05:00

We’re seeing a trend here:

Against the Lakers on March 2, with the Mavericks trailing by 3 in regulation, Kidd sets up Dirk for a nice 3-pointer, which he hits with two seconds left to send the game into overtime.
Last week against Phoenix, with the Mavericks up 4 late in the game, Kidd gets the ball to Dirk off a pick at the top of the key. Amare Stoudemire is forced to close out on Dirk, who quickly makes a nice head-fake and then drives past Stoudemire, then hits an off-balance fade-away off his bad leg with 32 seconds left to basically seal the win. (If you haven’t seen the play, it’s at the 1:40 mark of this video.)
Last night against Utah, because Dallas is out of timeouts after Deron Williams ties the game with 5 seconds left, the Mavericks inbound the ball and push it up the court quickly. Eddie Jones finds Dirk for an open 3-pointer, which he sinks with less than a second left to win the game.

One point here is that it’s nice to see Dirk hitting big shots, even if one of them (the one against the Lakers) didn’t result in a win. But the more important thing (as I argue here and here) is that he hit all three of these shots in the rhythm of the game and off of good passes, not in isolation sets. I’m not sure if Dirk just psychs himself out when he has too much time to think about a shot, or (more likely) defenses just know how to guard him when he gives them plenty of time to get set, but these plays that are less planned just seem to work more often.

In my last post, I criticized Avery Johnson for pulling Dirk with two early fouls in the Phoenix game, even when Avery admitted during an on-court interview a few minutes later that Dirk is good at avoiding fouls, and that he wasn’t really worried about him fouling out of the game. The needlessness of the automatic benching after the second foul is something Mike Fisher at dallasbasketball.com has harped on for a long time, and that some of the TV commentators have mentioned occasionally as well.

What bugs me is that Avery follows basketball orthodoxy even when he admits it doesn’t fit the situation, and this is exactly what happens late in games when the Mavericks call the standard timeout to set up a careful half-court set to go for the game-winner. Considering how seldom those work for the Mavericks in particular, surely they would be better off just getting the ball into Kidd’s hands and pushing it up the court in late-game situations, trying to catch the defense off-balance and find one of their outstanding shooters (Dirk, Terry, Stackhouse) with an open shot in rhythm. Other teams do this (especially in the NCAA, if I remember correctly), and it appears to be the Mavericks’ best shot at actually winning those game.

Last night’s game was a huge relief, both to get the team into the playoffs and to see Dirk hit a big shot when it really mattered. We’ve seen he can make those in the playoffs too, but it’s up to the coach and the team to put him in situations where he’s best. I have to admit I still have some hope for this season.

Not off the hook

2008-04-08T10:44:00.007-05:00

A few of the Mavericks’ coaching gaffes (a couple perhaps up for dispute) from the startling win over Phoenix:

Middle of first quarter -- Avery takes Dirk out of the game when he gets his second foul, even though Avery admits in an interview a few minutes later that Dirk is great at avoiding fouling out of games. Dirk finished with 4 fouls in 38 minutes.
End of 1st quarter (as db.com points out): Dallas has time to hold for the final shot, but Jason Terry shoots too early, which gives Phoenix time for a good shot.
After the Phoenix rebound, Dallas has a foul to give, which could break up the flow of that final play for Phoenix; instead, Dallas doesn’t foul, and Phoenix gets a bucket.
End of 2nd quarter: Nash figures out that Dallas is going to give a foul, so he starts his drive early, leaving enough time after the foul for Phoenix to get a good shot. Who wants to guess that Avery was screaming across the floor (where Nash could hear it) that Dallas should give a foul?
Start of second half, Dallas gives up two quick baskets, and Avery calls a timeout less than 2 minutes into the quarter. Isn't it at least partly the coach's responsibility if the team starts the second half not ready to play?
As Dallas is getting repeatedly burned by the pick-and-roll, Jeff Van Gundy says they should be giving up the open 3-pointer, but not uncontested dunks.
Late 3rd quarter: Mark Jackson points out that no one on Dallas is talking on the court about how to make defensive adjustments. Wouldn’t a well-coached team be doing that when they’re getting burned repeatedly?

It was embarrassing as a fan to listen to two sharp commentators (Jackson and Van Gundy) pick the Mavericks to pieces, and it was coaching decisions they repeated criticized, even if they weren’t using Avery’s name. Now admittedly, part of this is just the way that NBA coverage always work: if you’re winning, every decision is good, and if you’re losing, every decision is bad.

But still, for most of the game it seemed clear that Dallas was simply not playing like a team that is well-prepared, and as a result, I think Johnson should still be taking heat despite the win. The Suns missed their share of open shots this time, and Mavs fans all know that you can’t count on getting that kind of luck in the playoffs. Details matter a great deal, and I think it’s clear that Johnson still needs to figure some of them out.

and again and again

2008-04-05T00:13:00.008-05:00

How many times can we ask this? Is Avery Johnson not aware that Dirk is horrible at scoring on isolation plays at the ends of games? I only remember seeing that play succeed three times in all the years I’ve watched Dirk: once against the Spurs in the playoffs two years ago, once against the Heat in the Finals, and once in the regular season against Phoenix last year.

Other than that, Dirk’s points at the ends of games almost always come from either free throws or shots in rhythm, off the pass. Time and again, though, the isolation play fails.

As I wrote over a month ago (in this post), the Mavericks only hit game-winning shots when they’re set up with open looks in rhythm. Those kinds of set-ups, of course, are exactly what Kidd is best at. Get Kidd the ball, get people moving around, and let him find Dirk or Terry, or maybe even Dampier for a dunk if the defense breaks down.

So what do the Mavericks run tonight, with the game on the line and 30 seconds left?

Isolation to Dirk.

It has never worked with any consistency. Doesn’t matter why -- that play simply doesn’t win close game for the Mavericks. If Avery doesn’t get this simple fact, I don’t see why we think this team will ever succeed under his leadership.

Squeeze

2008-03-20T10:49:00.002-05:00

Today, the top 7 teams in the West would all fit between 2nd and 3rd place in the East.

As before, it’s Personnel

2008-02-29T20:52:00.005-05:00

ESPN.com correctly crucified Avery Johnson this morning for absurdly pulling Kidd out of the game with 34.5 seconds left in last night’s loss to the Spurs.

Anyone who has watched the Mavericks over the past few years is surely aware of a few important facts about the team:

Dirk can’t get, and make, his own shot in the closing seconds of a game.
Jason Terry, with the game on the line, can hit a big shot if he’s set up properly, but he get a lot of turnovers when he’s the one handling the ball.
Jerry Stackhouse can get hit game-winners if he’s set up with an open look.
And above all: Dallas, before the Kidd trade, didn’t have what it takes to get good shots at the end of games.

The Kidd trade was a clear admission that what the Mavericks lacked was not the right training, but the right personnel, to fix these problems. Avery Johnson has been such a successful coach in so many ways that Mavericks fans have tended to brush aside suggestions that Avery should be held responsible for those late-game failings. After all, if Dirk misses good looks (and he usually gets pretty decent looks at the end of games, especially considering his speciality is the fall-away jumper), Avery can’t be held responsible if he just keeps missing them.

True enough. But when a head coach can’t recognize (or refuses to acknowledge) that his star player is unable to make the big play at the end, that’s an entirely different problem.

Before the trade, you couldn’t blame Avery for going with Dirk anyway, because Dirk was still the Mavericks’ best chance in those situations. Dallas traded for Kidd because they realized that having a certain amount of talent isn't enough. You have to have enough of the right kind of talent. And they lacked players who had a sense of how to close out tight games. Kidd, as everyone except Avery seems to be convinced, will make the Mavericks better in those situations.

But players aren’t the only ones who have to be able to make good decisions in the heat of the moment. The coach has to be able to do it too. What we now know of Avery, as of last night, is that he can’t. In the past, this shortcoming has been masked by the players’ own problems, but with Kidd there’s no longer any excuse. Granted, Avery probably won’t make this particular mistake again (lest he lose his job), but then the Mavericks have found all kinds of ways to lose big games at the end, and Avery is showing that he knows all kinds of ways to contribute to those losses.

Uh-Oh

I have to admit, rather sheepishly, that I actually didn’t notice Kidd was out of the game at the end. I’ll blame this partly on my distracted efforts to explain NBA jargon to my girlfriend while the game was going (she knows football, but has just never gotten into basketball much...), but mostly I think I’m just so used to the Mavericks’ end-game script that I forgot we have Kidd now. I just expect Dirk to fumble the ball away, or miss the jump-shot (or get it blocked, like at the end of the all-star game this year), or for Terry to dribble the ball off his foot. In other words, when the game is on the line, I’m used to the Mavericks looking like they don’t really know what they’re doing.

But here’s something I did notice last night: A long time before those last 34.5 seconds, back near the end of the third quarter, Kidd faked a behind-the-pack pass before missing a lay-up on one possession, and then the next possession he miss-guessed which way Jerry Stackhouse would break, and threw the ball out of bounds.

Avery Johnson immediately pulled Kidd from the game and put in Jason Terry for the last 2 minutes of the third quarter. And here’s what was really scary: Avery looked angry as Terry ran by him to get into the game. Now granted, Avery always looks a little angry during the game, but I had the distinct impression that he put Terry into the game because he was frustrated with Kidd’s turnover.

This was a manifestly stupid substitution in the first place, because Kidd is a veteran superstar who should rightfully expect not to pulled because of a mistake. Avery could get away with that with Devin Harris, but he simply cannot do the same thing to Kidd. He just can’t, if he wants Kidd to thrive in Dallas, and the fact that he doesn’t realize that he can’t treat Kidd that way is terrifying to witness as a fan.

Perhaps more to the point, this was an obvious example of Johnson making a tactical decision based on emotion. Let me put that another way: the Mavericks have a head coach who makes personnel decisions based on how he feels. Granted, players need to be emotionally involved enough that they can succeed, and the coach needs to show enough emotion to motivate the players. But what happens on the court should not be about Avery, unless he makes it that way. If Johnson doesn’t have the self-control to stick with the appropriate game-plan even when his anger makes him want to do something petty, then he has no business coaching a contender.

One of the most counter-productive parenting strategies is to punish kids out of anger. The reason is, discipline and punishment should reflect what’s best for the kid, and angry punishments typically line up primarily with what the parent wants, not with what’s best for their child. Take that onto a professional basketball team, and you end up with a situation that is decidedly unprofessional.

Off With His Head

So here’s the only logical conclusion that I can see: there is no reason to think the Mavericks can win a championship with Avery as coach. A coach who allows his emotions to dictate his tactical decisions will never allow his team to play at their best in stressful situations, and it is obvious that things will only get more stressful in the playoffs.

Eleven years ago, the Mavericks allowed their head coach, Jim Cleamons, to push through a trade that sent Jason Kidd to Phoenix for Sam Cassell, Michael Finley, and A.C. Green. The coach and the player apparently had irreconcilable differences in style, and while the team was probably right to conclude that a personnel change was the only solution to the problem, they sent away the wrong person -- a conclusion that was confirmed when they fired Cleamons only a couple of weeks later. The Mavericks made that mistake once, and it will be difficult for the franchise to ever win back its fans if it makes the same mistake again.

As I said, this year‘s Kidd trade was the Mavericks’ admission that the team’s ultimate problem was one of personnel. I submit that Avery’s coaching performance last night was proof that it still is.

Rejuvenated?

2008-02-24T20:51:00.005-05:00

You hate to pin too much on three games, but since Kidd got to Dallas, Dirk is averaging 29 points on 64% shooting, and Kidd is averaging 12.3 assists. Howard is still trying to get into form, but this could be very good.

Whether I Believe it or Not, it’s a Great Show

2008-02-20T10:15:00.001-05:00

Although I’m still too gun-shy from the spate of Dallas sports disappointments to feel all that confident that Jason Kidd can get the Mavericks a championship, I love this deal.

If anyone has been keeping up with this blog, you know that I have suffered from apathy this entire season. I still check box scores, and I’m still happy when Dallas is up in the standings. I watched a good chunk of the All-Star game, and I probably would have watched Dallas-Phoenix last Thursday if it hadn’t been Valentine’s Day. But I’ve written infrequently, and mostly written about generalities, because I just haven’t cared much about what was happening on the court.

I know a lot of Texans have experienced the same feelings. Mark Stein wrote this morning that Mark Cuban “spoke repeatedly Tuesday of a growing ‘malaise’ in Big D,” so I assume it’s not just because I’m out of range for watching local telecasts that I haven’t really cared.

I had a post before the season started where I pushed for Kobe, even if it meant giving up Howard, Harris, and Dampier. The point was not that Kobe would guarantee a winner, but that he would make it worthwhile to watch the regular season again:

Here’s the real issue: if we don’t trade for Kobe, we’re facing 82 games of the most meaningless basketball any of us can imagine. It’ll be like watching the pre-season out there. And I know we all said the same thing going into last year, but this time it’ll be for real.

Going back to where I started: basketball is supposed to be entertainment. I’m sure there will be exciting individual games, but the real fun of an NBA season comes with arguing with your friends about whether the team has what it takes to win it all, or whether your best player has a shot at MVP. If ever there have been two moot points, they are these two questions for this squad.

What I anticipated has matched reality, at least in my experience. In fact, the last post that I was particularly excited about was all the way back in November, and it was about Jason Kidd. Last year, I admit I was pretty committed to Dirk, even though I knew his flaws pretty well. I still think he earned his MVP, and I still think he’ll always be remembered as a great player. But one truly great regular season is still just one season, and disappointment can stifle a guy’s feelings.

My admiration for Jason Kidd, on the other hand, runs deep -- all the way back to my sophomore year of high school, when my brother had the good sense to suggest that we get tickets for the Mavericks’ opening game of 1994. It was evident by the end of the game that Kidd was the best thing that had happened to the Mavericks in a long time.

The decision to trade him two years later was just one in a long string of absurdities that culminated in the Mavericks having traded 10 of their 12 players by the end of that season. Faced with locker room conflicts early that year, the Mavericks lost their mind just long enough to allow Jim Cleamons to push through a trade of Kidd for Michael Finley, and only a few games later (if memory serves), they brought in Don Nelson, who then traded, basically, the rest of the team. If management had had any foresight at all, they surely would have kept Kidd and traded everyone else, but those were not years in which Mavericks’ management was known for doing things sensibly.

On the bright side, the monumental mismanagement of the team in the mid-90’s may have contributed to Mark Cuban becoming frustrated enough as a fan that he just decided to buy the franchise. He had a great quote a few years ago (again, if I’m remembering correctly) that ran something like, “I was looking at how the Mavericks were being run, thinking, ‘Man, I could do better than that.’ And then I realized: ‘Hey, I can afford that team.”

So it’s good to have Kidd back, mostly because I’ve missed being excited about my team.

But here’s another point that it’s fun to think about: with nine Western Conference teams on pace to win 50 games, and only 4 1/2 games between first and ninth, plus the trades for Gasol, Shaq, and Kidd, could this be shaping up as the coolest finish to a regular season of my lifetime so far? I’m thinking these playoffs might even top out 2006, which folks said might have had the best first two rounds ever, with its first-round duels of Nash-Kobe and LeBron-Arenas, and the second-round match-up between Dallas and San Antonio. One way or the other, this regular season is on its way to becoming historic, and the Mavericks just became a serious part of it.

That's Four

2008-01-13T20:29:00.000-05:00

I think Fox had a problem with their NFL broadcast this afternoon. They seem to have re-aired last year’s Cowboys playoff game by mistake.

Frustrating Week

2007-12-29T15:49:00.000-05:00

The Mavericks’ local TV and radio crews were happy to put a positive stamp on the team’s 13-point home win over Atlanta today, but the fact is that after jumping to a 12-0 lead in the first quarter, Dallas barely edged the Hawks the rest of the way. Dallas’ defense in the fourth quarter was as porous as ever, while Dirk shot 1 for 5 for the quarter, and the Hawks’ aggressive defense forced a handful of turnovers and made the Mavericks look timid.

Dallas has many strengths, but in the second half what I saw was (1) Atlanta punishing the Mavericks with blocks and turnovers every time they tried to get into the lane, and (2) Atlanta getting close to the hoop and drawing a foul almost any time they wanted to.

I don’t like to be too harsh on Dallas when they lose a game, and here’s an example of where they don’t deserve much credit for winning. Dallas won, but they looked like they got bullied. Against Utah the other day, when the Jazz tightened up the lane, Dallas settled for (and missed) a series of three-pointers late in the fourth quarter. Tonight they tried harded to get inside, but they couldn’t for the most part. They made enough shots to win, but their performance wasn’t much more impressive than it was against Utah.

As a footnote, the Mavericks deserve to get called out for a lame performance against Cleveland on Thursday night. My brother and I were there in the upper deck, and the effort by the team was abominable, with the lone exception of Nowitzki, who fought for 20 rebounds. No one (Dirk included) could shoot that night, and no one other than Dirk bothered to rebound or defend for most of the game. Just like Utah the night before, any given Cavs’ player could count on an open shot most any time he wanted it. That Cleveland only shot 36 percent (same as Dallas) was the Mavericks’ good fortune, not the result of defensive aggressiveness. In the end LeBron only needed an average performance (with a pair of nice dunks) in order to win on the road.

Dallas or Miami?

2007-12-14T11:25:00.000-05:00

OK, setting aside the specific question of Dirk’s play, and whether he has the heart/guts to win a title, let’s talk about the Mavericks as a franchise during the Dirk era. If Dallas somehow wins a championship the next couple of years, this will all be moot, but let’s assume for the sake of argument that they just have three or four more decent playoff runs with Dirk, with maybe one WCF appearance, and that they won’t make it to the finals again.

If that’s what happens, I have two questions:

1) Who would you rather have been a fan of over these past few years and the next couple of years: Dallas or Miami?

2) Who will history have more respect for as a team?

First of all, this question is not about whether the Mavericks have done what they should have done. I think it’s safe to say all of us are disappointed or even angry with the past two seasons. Both Dallas and Miami appear to have been severely flawed, so saying the Mavericks have problems is irrelevant to this question unless you’re also prepared to say that Miami’s problems are no worse.

Of course everyone remembers the title, but Miami also has to contend with being known as one of the worst championship-winning teams ever. The year they won it, they came out of an awful eastern conference and won only because (1) Dallas choked and (2) Dwyane Wade put on one of the most spectacular finals performances that I know of (with some help from the refs, I think everyone would have to admit, but still spectacular). After winning the title, they promptly crumbled as a team.

Dallas, of course, shares part of the shame of Miami’s victory, so that goes against Dallas’ legacy. At the same time, though, Dallas has contended year after year, and just never had enough to get the title. Of course everyone would rather have been Miami the year they won, but I’m talking about the longer term.

So, will commentators 5 years from now speak fondly about a very good Mavericks team that just couldn’t get the title, while shaking their heads at a Miami team that had everything go just right once, but then crumbled? Or will they scorn the very good Mavericks team that couldn’t hold on when it counted, while wondering what might have happened if Dwyane Wade hadn’t gotten injured this past year?

Dirk a Coward?

2007-12-07T20:51:00.001-05:00

Jeremy wrote: “Has there been a bigger coward in NBA history than Dirk Nowitzki?”

This is becoming a scripted argument for us, but here goes again.

If you’re talking about how he misses almost every potential game-winning shot, then I would say your criticism is probably fair, although I'd want to check a bunch of other players’ stats in those situations. I hear Kobe’s percentage of makes in those final shots is well south of 50% too.

If you’re saying Dirk was a coward in the Miami series, I’m still not buying it. His game 5 line overall was weak, but he hit a couple of big shots down the stretch, including the potential game-winner with 9 seconds left in overtime. In game 6 he didn't finish as well, but he still ended up with 29 points (10/22 FG, 8/8 FT) and 15 rebounds. That loss had far more to do with Terry and Howard combining to shoot 12 of 41 (29.3%). My post is here, although now I would change a big part of what I wrote to admit that Dirk fouled Wade on the last play of game 5.

I’d also remind you of Dirk’s 50-point game to save the Pheonix series and get the Mavericks into the finals two years ago. (Post is here.) Nothing cowardly about that.

But if by “coward” you’re talking mainly about is last year’s Golden State series and this year’s mediocre start for Dirk, I have a different answer.

I have a lot of sympathy for Dirk because I think he plays like I would if I had his height and shooting touch. I tend to get pushed around on the court, and there's usually nothing I can do about it short of punching someone. I think Dirk is physically unable to do what you need to do when you get pushed around by an NBA athlete. This isn’t so much an excuse as a physical fact; what’s amazing is that he’s gotten as far as he has with that limitation.

This came up here, and in another blog I was reading, this past summer. Specifically, I don't think Dirk has the coordination to channel force into successful moves. Most big players are a lot stronger than he is, so the great ones (Duncan, Shaq) simply don’t have to worry about getting pushed around. Garnett is thin, but he’s also quick, so if someone wants to be shove him, he can just go around them. Dirk can’t do either.

People might ask why Dirk isn’t more like Larry Bird. If anyone can watch this video and still ask that, we need to talk. Bird was not slow, and he had amazing hands; Dirk simply can’t do most of the great stuff he did. (The video will also make you really depressed about today’s NBA.)

To put it another way: if Charles Barkley got mad at someone for trying to push him around, he could push back in such as a way as to get open, controlling his energy and force to get to the basket or put up a good shot. When Bird was getting pushed around he could make a quick spin move to get open, or else he could rely on his phenomenal passing ability. When Dirk pushes back, or tries for a spin move, he mostly just flails, and he either misses the shot or commits an offensive foul. This lack of coordination isn’t unusual, even in the NBA –– it’s just that most players who can’t harness their strength don’t ever have the kind of success Dirk has had, so they never have to deal with being criticized for their limitations.

What does this mean? It means that if Dirk were only 6'-3", he’d be Steve Kerr: a gifted shooter, but not much else. Apart from Dirk’s height, there’s no reason he should be able to get his own shot. I think it’s safe to say that last season was an example of Dirk doing as much with his physical abilities as a player can reasonably do. But because of his unique combination of height and finesse without quickness or strength, success for him simply depends on the refs calling the games tightly so that players can’t push him around. Most of Dirk’s inside game actually consists in drawing fouls, and you can’t count on that in the playoffs.

This all changes when he’s hot from outside -- then there’s no stopping him. But that’s not enough to win in the playoffs.

So is Dirk a coward because of this? You can’t get your own shot against tough athletes; does that make you a coward? OK, let’s get more reasonable. Eduardo Najera can’t get his own shot if a defense decides to shut him down; does that make him a coward? Would you call Steve Kerr a coward for not being able to get open against a tough physical team when the refs are allowing a lot of shoving?

Like I said, there are plenty of other players who could easily be pushed around because of their physical limitations. They just aren’t the ones defenses focus on defending with the game on the line, so they rarely get exposed the way Dirk does.

So say Dirk is weak if you want –– it’s true enough. And it’s also true that he doesn’t have great nerves with the game on the line. Maybe it’s the Mavericks’ fault for counting on him. But I maintain that he does about as much with what he’s got as anyone in the league.

That Kid was Special

2007-11-22T19:04:00.000-05:00

Last night Dallas came back from 17 down against Houston, which gives me an excuse to tell about the best regular-season Maverick game I’ve ever seen.

The game was April 11, 1995, near the end of Jason Kidd’s rookie season and just four days after his first career triple-double. It ended up having probably the wildest ending of any NBA game I’ve ever seen.

For starters, the defending-champion Rockets started the 4th quarter with a 12-point lead, but Dallas made a run and took an 8-point lead with just over a minute left.

If it had ended like that, it would have been a pretty exciting game for Mavericks fans, but then things got crazy. Houston scored 13 points in the last 30 seconds of regulation (capped by a Sam Cassell 3-pointer with 1.9 seconds left) to force overtime. Houston then jumped out quickly at the start of overtime to take a 13-point lead, and it looked like Houston would win after all.

But then, with just a minute left in overtime, Dallas came to life. In that last minute, Dallas scored 14 points, including three three-pointers by Kidd –– who normally was a mediocre jump-shooter at best. One of those shots (I can’t remember which one) was a one-handed sideways miracle heave that Kidd somehow made while leaping across the three-point line to save clock time. The third of those came with 2.5 seconds left, forcing double OT.

Dallas went on to take over at the end of the second OT and finally won 157-147, scoring the last 10 points of the game.

By the end of the game, Kidd had his second career triple-double, with 38 points, 11 rebounds, 10 assists and three steals. Dallas and Houston combined for an NBA-record 28 3-pointers for the game, and Kidd had 8 all by himself. The teams also set an NBA record by combining for 46 points in the first OT.

So that's 3 sizeable leads overcome (1 in less than a minute, 1 in less than 30 seconds), 2 buzzer-beating three-pointers, 2 nba records, a triple-double for the rookie Kidd, and a total score (304) that hasn't been topped in the 11 years since that game.

As much as I talk about Dirk, Jason Kidd is still probably my favorite Maverick ever. I went to his first NBA game as a rookie in 1994, where he missed a triple-double by one assist, and I’ve been a fan ever since. It’s sad that Dallas traded him after just two and a half years. (Blame Jim Cleamons for that, if I remember correctly.)

By the way, if anyone knows where I could buy a copy of this game tape, please let me know. Or get it for me for Christmas.

Entertainment vs. Winning

2007-11-05T23:01:00.000-05:00

Jeremy wrote: The purpose of a pro basketball team is to make money for its owners. If entertaining basketball were more profitable than winning basketball, every team would play like the Harlem Globetrotters.

I have to disagree. The Globetrotters are only fun to watch for one game every once in awhile. The most entertaining basketball to watch for a whole season is excellence with style. And the most successful basketball (i.e., that wins titles) is excellence with a dominant big man.

The Suns have the highest combination of excellence and style, which is why people love watching them; unfortunately, you just can’t seem to win in the NBA without a big man (Stoudemire might get there, but who knows?), so their excellence can only get them so far.

Dirk has mostly excellence without much style, but when he's hitting everything from the outside it's still fun to watch, because he can put up so many points so fast. Plus Howard and Terry, and maybe Harris, all play with style, which takes up some of the slack for Dirk. And then Dampier and Diop are enough of a presence in the paint that Dallas has a pretty good shot at a title, too.

The Spurs don’t have much style at all with the exception of Ginobili, which is why everyone complains about watching them. But they obviously have excellence combined with a dominant big man, so they have titles. It’s just that they’re mostly only entertaining for their own fans.

I need to do a post on why I think we like watching pro sports so much. Maybe next week.

Hypocrite

2007-10-31T20:00:00.000-05:00

Mavs-Cavs game chat, starting around 8pm ET.

The Case for Kobe

2007-10-24T16:37:00.000-05:00

Although it gets said a lot, It’s not true, strictly speaking, that the purpose of a pro basketball team is to win a championship. We certainly want them to act as if that’s their purpose –– since it’s almost always more fun to watch a successful team play –– but in reality their purpose is to entertain.

In light of this, it’s time to gather support for bringing Kobe to Dallas, for which I have a great rally cry: Make the Regular Season Fun Again.

Last year, the Mavericks were a blast to watch in the regular season. Winning 41 of 45 games can make just about any fan giddy, even while we were all simultaneously terrified of the possible playoff disaster that became reality. This year, there will be none of that. Dallas could win 70, or 80 for that matter, and we’d all still be forced to shrug our shoulders and repeat the mantra: nothing matters till the playoffs.

And while I’m sure the local play-by-play guys will stop harping on it eventually, I live in Massachusetts. That means I only get to see nationally-televized games, where the announcers will talk about it every single time.

That got old last year, and this year it’ll be beaten into the ground with a fury we can hardly imagine.

Not to say we should give up Dirk, even if the Lakers wanted him. Kobe has never proven he can win anything by himself. But alongside another superstar, we might be looking at a different story. So I say, if the Mavericks have a chance to get Kobe and Dirk on the same team, they should give up whatever they have to in order to make it happen. That means package Howard, Harris, and Dampier if you have to. Certainly send Howard and Terry if you get the chance to keep Harris.

Getting Kobe is a great scenario for a fan: personality conflicts would likely disappear, as Kobe would suddenly turn into a great guy, like when Shaq went to Miami or TO came to Dallas. Then there’s the chance of getting to see him score 50 points several times a season, and if he ever finally exploded for 105, he’d do it as a Maverick. (This is like the Rangers getting Nolan Ryan just in time for his 6th and 7th no-hitters, his 5000th strikeout, and his 300th win.)

Can you imagine how much of a relief it will be, when the game is on the line, not to worry that Dirk will miss the big shot and disappoint us once again? Kobe can miss those all season, and at least no one will be saying it’s because he doesn’t have guts. And of course, Kobe has tons of championship experience, and he might genuinely help Dallas’ chances of winning it all some time (or 3 times) in the next few seasons.

But all that’s just gravy. Here’s the real issue: if we don’t trade for Kobe, we’re facing 82 games of the most meaningless basketball any of us can imagine. It’ll be like watching the pre-season out there. And I know we all said the same thing going into last year, but this time it’ll be for real.

Going back to where I started: basketball is supposed to be entertainment. I’m sure there will be exciting individual games, but the real fun of an NBA season comes with arguing with your friends about whether the team has what it takes to win it all, or whether your best player has a shot at MVP. If ever there have been two moot points, they are these two questions for this squad.

So unless the team crumbles early in the season and has to make a big push just to make the playoffs (which would create some drama, at least), there’s no way this group can give us what we’re really looking for. That’s November, December, January, February, March, and April we have to sit through, and I’m not really prepared to do that.

So let’s hear it: Bryant for a Brighter 82.

Heart of a Warrior

2007-09-07T01:25:00.000-05:00

This past May I wrote a post suggesting that the idea of having the heart of a champion is overrated in the NBA, largely because it seems that dominant big men (in particular, Shaq and Duncan) have ruled the NBA in recent years simply by virtue of their size and skill. I’ll gladly admit that Jordan won with heart (though having Pippen on the team didn’t hurt), but with most anyone else I have my questions.

However, there clearly are times you can perceive a notable lack of heart (think: Chris Webber), and this is what Dirk has been accused of. This summer I was surprised to find the same conversation about heart going on in a very different forum: Homer’s Iliad, the story of the Trojan War, written more than 2500 years ago.

The Iliad tells the story of the Greeks trying to sack Troy to win back Helen, the stunningly beautiful wife of a Greek soldier, who had been kidnapped by Paris, a prince of Troy.

Over and over again in the story, its characters talk about warriors in the same terms we use to describe athletes. I don’t know what real battle was like in ancient Greece, but people who listened to Homer envisioned mythic warriors who fought face-to-face at close range with sword and spear. They taunted each other aloud as they fought, and they took the weapons and armor of their fallen foes as plunder of war and as marks of honor. (They also held chariot races and boxing matches on the battlefield in honor of fallen comrades, seeking to display their valor in sport as fiercely as they did in battle.)

Centuries later, under the Roman empire, people apparently wanted to witness this kind of glorious battle so badly that they threw gladiators up against each other in the Coliseum, making battle and sport one and the same thing.

Today, we still have our images of great warriors--think Rambo or Jack Bauer--but it seems to me we save most of our warrior language for professional sports. This is where the Big German comes into play, and the light that the Iliad casts on him isn’t favorable.

Dirk, people say, has great skill but lacks heart. In the Iliad, people say the exact same thing about Paris, the prince of Troy who kidnapped Helen from her Greek home and took her as his bride, but who is a better lover than a fighter. A couple of quotes from book 6 will help show what I mean.

The first is spoken by the beautiful Helen, who apparently loved Paris at one point but has grown resentful that the entire city is about to be sacked by the Greeks just because Paris won’t send her home with them. She says,

I wish I had had a good man for a lover
who knew the sharp tongues and just rage of men.
This one--his heart’s unsound, and always will be,
and he will win what he deserves.

The next quote, from Paris’ warrior brother Hektor, is a little more generous:

My strange brother! No man with justice in him
would underrate your handiwork in battle;
you have a powerful arm. But you give way
too easily, and lose interest, lose your will.

What's especially interesting to me here, in light of the Dirk analogy, is that Paris is primarily an archer, which means he shoots from long range but gets accused of lacking the will to fight up close. And even though the Trojans do have their fair share of more forceful warriors (like Hektor), and even though Achilles has a frankly unfair advantage, being divine on his mother’s side, at the end of the day Helen is Paris’s wife, and the battle is his to fight. But instead he largely stays in the background, whereas Achilles becomes the aggressor.

Guess whose side wins the war.

I knew it

2007-07-20T11:26:00.001-05:00

An unnamed NBA ref has been caught betting on games he worked? Please let it be Bennett Salvatore...

Hope for next year?

2007-06-19T16:14:00.000-05:00

My attitude for next year, since the Golden State series, has been: Screw it. Let the Mavericks coast through the first 4 months of the regular season, then try to turn it on near the end like the Spurs and Shaq’s Lakers. Limit Dirk and Howard to 30 minutes a game for the regular season, and see how they do going into the playoffs rested. Even if it doesn’t work, it couldn’t possibly be as bad as this season, right?

Avery might be ready to try something like that: http://www.star-telegram.com/287/story/140077.html.

Deja Vu?

2007-06-01T17:38:00.000-05:00

I better make two disclaimers before I go on with the post: (1) LeBron has the potential to be the greatest player in the history of the NBA; (2) I didn’t watch last night’s game.

But I couldn’t help noticing that in espn.com’s experts round-up, no one compared last night’s game to a game last year that was eerily similar. Try this: beginning with 16 minutes left in the game, the team’s star exploded for 29 points to take a 3-2 series lead in the conference finals.

LeBron finished with 48/9/7. In game 5 of last year’s western conference finals against Pheonix, Dirk ended up with 50/12/3 (see my earlier post. The games had important differences: LeBron is a lot younger, has an awful team (the rest of them shot 0/9 in those last 16 minutes), and scored those 29 points in a close game on the road. He also scored the last 25 in a row for his team, including all their points in two consecutive overtimes. Dirk had a lot more help, and his performance quickly turned his game into a rout at home, so there presumably was less pressure on him for a lot of those points.

On the other hand, Dallas had finally beaten San Antonio for the first time ever, and they were trailing by 7 in the fourth quarter, facing the prospect of going back to Phoenix down 3-2. They also were playing a Phoenix team that would have Amare Stoudemire back the next year, which meant there was a very real window closing on their opportunity to get to the finals in a tough conference. Plus Dirk had had questionable playoff performances in recent years, and he was staring at a playoff legacy that could live or die by that series.

I don’t think that I’m just being a Mavs homer to make the comparison between these games. After game 6 against Phoenix last year, Mark Stein wrote, “Dirk Nowitzki has answered all the questions.” Bill Simmons said it was probably time to add Dirk to the NBA Pantheon. After the finals, though, the conversation sounded a lot different.

As for last night’s game, its “specialness” surely was enhanced by the recogniztion that LeBron might become the Greatest Ever, and we just never know when it’s going to happen. For Dirk, people were waiting for him to fail; for LeBron, people are just wondering when he’ll succeed.

In any event, here are the two players’ lines for those final 29 points of their respective games:

LeBron: 16 mins, 11/14 FG, 5/9 FT, 0 rebounds, 0 assists.
Dirk: 14.5 mins 8/10 FG, 10/10 FT, 8 rebounds.

As you may have noticed, Dirk shot better from the field and the line, and he also had a slight, 8-0 edge in rebounding down the stretch. LeBron was literally a scoring machine for the end of the game, but I think it’s also fair to point out that every assist and every rebound by a Cavs player over those last 16 minutes was by someone not named LeBron.

Here’s the thing: James might go on to become the Greatest Ever, and if so this game will be seen as a major starting point. But he has a significant “out”: if the Cavs make it to the finals and get beat 4-1 by the Spurs, no one will be surprised. They’re a bad team, playing in a bad conference against a Pistons team that wakes up every morning and thanks God that they play in the east. In the west, these two teams proably would have been seeded 6th and 7th, and there’s a good chance they wouldn’t have made it out of the first round. (Although perhaps I shouldn’t throw rocks in a glass house.) As great as LeBron was last night, if they hold on to beat Detroit, I’ll still take the Spurs in 6 for the championship, and most of the experts say the same thing.

But there’s another really important difference between Dirk’s 50 last year and LeBron’s 48 last night, and it’s the really depressing point that my brother brought up. For LeBron, it’s only going to get better from here. Dirk may have already peaked.

Dodged a Bullet

2007-06-01T14:10:00.000-05:00

I think maybe the basketball gods were just being merciful to Mavericks fans this year. Can you imagine if we had beaten the Spurs again, gotten to the finals again, and then gotten beat by LeBron just like Wade last year?

My brother says the Mavericks have officially missed their window. Might be.

What is the Heart of a Champion?

2007-05-11T15:15:00.000-05:00

OK, so what does it take to have playoff success?

Here’s a fun fact for Mavericks fans. In the 1998 playoffs, Tim Duncan (a rookie) and the Spurs lost in the second round to Utah. Since then, in the seven playoff seasons Duncan has played in (he sat out the ’00 playoffs injured), he has lost in the playoffs to exactly two teams:

1. Shaq’s Lakers
2. Dirk’s Mavericks

Detractors will point out that Duncan was injured for most of last season, but the reports were that his foot felt better when the playoffs came around, and in any event, against Dallas he averaged 32.3 points (on 55.6% FG) and 11.7 rebounds in 42.5 minutes a game. Anyone who watched that series remembers that Duncan was a beast.

What I’m getting at is the question, which my brother Jeremy along with half of America has raised, of whether Dirk has the “heart” to get Dallas a title. It’s quite possible, I guess, that he doesn’t. But a glance at recent NBA champions suggests that heart doesn’t usually get the job done anyway. Here are teams that have gone to the finals in the fifteen years since Bird and Magic last played a full season together:

’06: Heat-Maverics
’05: Spurs-Pistons
’04: Pistons-Lakers
’03: Spurs-Nets
’02: Lakers-Nets
’01: Lakers-Sixers
’00: Lakers-Pacers
’99: Spurs-Knicks
’98: Bulls-Jazz
’97: Bulls-Jazz
’96: Bulls-Sonics
’95: Rockets-Magic
’94: Rockets-Knicks
’93: Bulls-Suns
’92: Bulls-Blazers

First of all, in the past 15 seasons, 15 different teams have reached the finals. That’s half the league, which means it’s not a huge stretch to get there. Mavericks fans had a great run last year, but it hardly makes us special.

But how many teams have won the championship in that span? Six: Heat, Spurs, Pistons, Lakers, Bulls, Rockets. Here are the players that got those teams their titles:

Shaq and Wade
Duncan
Billups and Wallace
Shaq and Kobe
Jordan and Pippen
Hakeem

Other than with the Pistons, it’s pretty obvious why those other teams won championships. Shaq, Duncan, and Jordan, in particular, are probably the three best players to play in the last 15 years––and if anyone were to challenge that claim, Kobe would surely be the next candidate. Hakeem was great, but he was just lucky to hit his prime at the same time that Jordan inexplicably retired for two seasons; otherwise he may well have been another Karl Malone.

Coming back to the question of heart, I think you could safely say that Jordan won his titles with heart––and by being the best basketball playing in the history of humankind. I think you could say that Wade won with heart as well, but you can’t discount the fact that Shaq was on that team; without Shaq, it’s not at all clear that Wade would have had the chance to pull off his heroics.

The other winners? I have a tough time believing that Shaq and Tim Duncan won championships because of their heart. It’s possible they did, of course, but they also happen to be the two biggest, strongest, and quickest post players of their era. And considering that one or the other of them has won 7 of the last 8 championships, you’re going to have a hard time convincing me that every other star in the league has failed to win a title in that span simply because he didn’t have enough heart.

In the last 8 years, Duncan has only lost to Shaq and Dirk; Shaq has only lost to Duncan and the Pistons. The two big guys have basically dominated the league.

Next, here are the players in the last 15 years that led their teams to the finals but didn’t win the title:

Dirk
Kidd
Iverson
Mark Jackson / Reggie Miller
Ewing
Malone/Stockton
Payton/Kemp
Barkley
Drexler

Among those who have gotten to the finals but haven’t won, only Stockton/Malone, Patrick Ewing, and Jason Kidd have done it twice. (Ewing sat out the ’99 finals with an injury, so I suppose his legacy is debatable.)

So the question is, If Dirk doesn’t have enough “heart” to win a championship, who exactly do you want in his place? Who has what it takes?

Call Kobe the MVP if you like, but he hasn’t taken his team deep into the playoffs since Shaq left. We could say the Mavericks shouldn’t have let Nash go, but we all know he hasn’t been to the finals yet. And Kidd went twice, but he did it both times in an Eastern Conference where no team won more than 52 games for two straight years. Iverson and Payton are the only other guys on that list who are still in the league, and it doesn’t look like either of them is headed for a championship soon.

The league is full of veteran stars who have done far less in the playoffs than Dirk: Garnett, Vince Carter, Tracy McGrady, Paul Pierce, Yao Ming, Jermaine O’Neal, Ray Allen. Shawn Marion has been to the WCF twice, but not as the best player on his team.

There are also young players who haven’t had much of a shot at the finals yet: Dwight Howard, Amare (this is only his third trip to the playoffs), Chris Bosh, Carmelo Anthony. Any one of those guys could theoretically dominate the league in future seasons, but most of them probably won’t.

Even LeBron still hasn’t beaten anyone good in the playoffs. Ten years from now, he might have a handful of rings, but then he might not have any.

Quick note (11:40pm Friday night): I just now read db.com and the dmn blog, both of whom had posts in the last couple of days that are really similar to this one. I just thought I should say I hadn't read either of them when I wrote this. Ok, I said it.

So who’s going to take us there? Go for Jason Kidd and hope he can get the offense back on track before he retires? Get Paul Pierce and hope that all those losing seasons in Boston weren’t his fault?

At the end of the day, here’s what I think you do: you look around the room and say, “OK, somehow we’ve ended up with a league that only has two individuals who you can put on a team and bet on a title, and one of them is fading quickly. Duncan is the other one. Who, then, has (1) beaten Duncan in a playoff series and (2) is under the age of 35?”

One guy raises his hand.

OK, we’ll go with him.

I love Mike Fisher

2007-05-09T14:42:00.000-05:00

Not every day. But this article (“Shame on You”) should be required reading for Mavericks fans.

We Know Drama

2007-05-06T21:04:00.000-05:00

One thing you can say about the Dirk-era Mavs: they have yet to give us a dull playoff season. And frankly, this year lived up to past standards––as awful as the losses were, the Mavericks’ two wins against the Warriors both had a surreal kind of feel that I suspect most teams’ fans don’t get to enjoy on an annual basis.

Either way, here’s my year-by-year run-down of why, win or lose, I love watching Dallas Mavericks playoff basketball.

2001

Dallas––with Dirk, Nash, and Finley––made the playoffs for the first time since ’89-’90. In the first round (a 5-game series), Dallas lost the first two in Utah, but then they turned around and won the next three in a row. In game 5, Dallas overcame a 14-point fourth-quarter lead and took their first lead of the second half on a Calvin Booth layup with 9.8 seconds in the game. I saw this one in a friend’s dorm room in Edwards Hall in Abilene (Binkley, your room, right?), and it was glorious.

In the second round, the thoroughly outmatched Mavericks fell to the Spurs, 4-1. Best moment: in game 4 (with Dallas on the verge of getting swept), Dirk got his front tooth knocked out by a Terry Porter elbow with 4:52 left in the game. He ran directly to the locker room, shoved some gauze in his mouth, and was back on the court after 33 seconds of clock time. Dirk finished with 30 and 9, and Mavericks took the game, 112-108, their only win of the series. The Spurs finished off Dallas in game 5, but not until Dirk had gone for 42 points (14/24 FG, 14/18 FT), 18 rebounds, and 6 steals; Finley shot 1/17 in the blowout loss.

The Mavericks finished the playoff season with a record of 4–1 when facing elimination, 0–5 otherwise.

2002

Dallas swept Minnesota in the first round, only to fall to the top-seeded Kings 4–1 in the second.

Although the Kings series was lop-sided, it was also a showdown between the top two scoring teams in the NBA, and it was a blast to watch. The Mavericks let the Kings get layup after layup, but they almost made up for it with their own offensive barrage. The Kings averaged 112.8 points for the series, the Mavericks 106.8. I watched this series in PTS Hodge Hall, during finals week, with a die-hard Kings fan.

After the series, Mark Cuban announced a new commitment to team defense. Let’s say they had marginal success.

2003

The 3rd-seed Mavericks jumped out to a 3–0 series lead against Portland, only to have the Blazers come back with 3 wins in a row to force game 7. In game 6, the Mavericks’ starting frontcourt of Nowitzki, Bradley, and LaFrentz combined for––I’m not kidding here––13 points and 2 rebounds (both by LaFrentz). In protest, I refused to watch game 7, although I did cave in and watch the last couple of minutes.

In the second round, after losing game 1 ugly to the Kings, the Mavericks bounced back with two of the most astonishing offensive performances I have seen. In game 2, after falling behind 20-10 just 3.5 minutes into the first quarter, Dallas went berserk, outscoring Sacramento 34-20 to end the first quarter leading 44-40. By the end of the half, Dallas had scored an absurd 83 points, and they went on to win in a rout. Nick Van Exel shot 14/19 for 36 points and 6 assists, and Chris Webber injured his knee for the Kings, missing the rest of the series.

Game 3 also went to the Mavericks, this time 141-137 in double overtime. Van Exel went for 40 points and 7 assists, Nash for 31 points and 11 assists, and Dirk for 25 points and 20 rebounds. Dallas eventually took the series in 7 games, with Dirk getting credit for stepping up big in the series clincher. I was in California at the time to see a friend get married, and I watched game 7 in an empty dining room on a college campus.

This brought up the Mavericks’ first appearance in the Western Conference Finals since 1988, facing the Spurs. In game 1, Dallas trailed by 13 at the end of the first quarter, but they ended up rallying, in part by hitting their last 49 free throws of the game. The Spurs shot 48 themselves (missing 17), so it wasn’t exactly lopsided officiating. However, several of the Spurs’ free throws came as a result of Don Nelson’s Hack-a-Bowen strategy, in which he put scrubs into the game to foul Bowen (a horrible free throw shooter) away from the ball and disrupt San Antonio’s offense. It was embarrassing, but Dallas closed the game on a 24–9 run, and Dirk finished with 38 points and 15 rebounds (Duncan had 40 and 15).

In game 3 against San Antonio, Dallas lost Nowitzki to a knee injury that would sideline him for the rest of the series. Then in game 5, Dallas (trailing the series 3–1) rallied from a 19-point deficit to force a game 6 by outscoring the Spurs in the fourth quarter, 29–10. I watched this with my best friend in the student center at his medical school; with 1:32 left, Dallas had a 13-point lead, and I was still sure they would lose. It’s nice sometimes when expectations get overturned.

In game 6 at home, Dallas opened the fourth quarter with a 69–56 lead. Unforuntately, they proceeded to go from the 10:52 mark to the 2:50 mark (more than eight minutes) without scoring. In the middle of the quarter, Stephen Jackson––yeah, that Stephen Jackson––made back-to-back 3-pointers, and then a couple of minutes later Steve Kerr hit three more of them in four possessions to give the Spurs an 8-point lead. Fortunately, I got to watch this one with good friends at my parents’ house in Texas. Season over.

2004

Despite having reached the Western Conference Finals, and even then losing only after Dirk went down with an injury, in the off-season the Mavericks opted for a big shakeup, trading for Antoine Walker and Antawn Jamison.

The group never quite gelled, and Dallas only won 52 after winning 60 the previous season. In the first round they drew Sacramento, losing 4–1 despite (oddly) outscoring the Kings for the series. The Mavericks’ last three losses were notable in that they each came down to a final possession, and Don Nelson called the play for a different one of the “big three” each time. In game 2, Finley got stripped by Peja Stojakovic while trying to take a tying shot with 11 seconds left. Then in game 4, Nash missed a fall-away at the buzzer that could have sent the game into overtime. And finally, in game 5 Dirk got a good look, with a chance to win at the buzzer, but he missed off the front of the rim.

As discouraging as it was to lose 4-1 after going the western conference finals the year before, these were close games, and the series was good basketball. Marquis Daniels had a nice series, but more importantly the early playoff exit convinced management of the need to get rid of Antoine Walker. Jason Knott and I caught most of this series in the basement of PTS Alexander Hall.

2005

That off-season, the Suns offered Nash the monster contract (which he, of course, took), and the Mavericks made a number of roster changes, somehow turning Antoine Walker into Jason Terry, and Antawn Jamison into Jerry Stackhouse and Devin Harris.

Dallas finished the year 58–24, but because of division realignment they opened the post-season as the 4-seed, facing the 5-seed Rockets. Infuriating as always, Dallas lost the first two games at home to Tracy McGrady’s Rockets, the second one on a long 2-pointer by McGrady just before the buzzer. However, the Mavericks turned around and won the next two in Houston, taking back home court advantage. The home team then won the last three games, with Dallas taking game 7 by an astonishing 40 points, the most lop-sided game 7 in NBA history. Dirk struggled a lot for the series, but Jason Terry stepped up, having a pair of 30-point games to help the Mavericks save the series

In the second round, Dallas drew Phoenix. The Mavericks got ripped to shreds repeatedly by first-time MVP Nash and Amare Stoudemire, as Amare had games of 40, 37, 33, and 30 points, and Nash had games of 48, 39, and 34. In game 6, Dallas led by 16 late in the third quarter, but the Suns quickly got back into the game, tying it early in the fourth. Dallas had a 3-point lead with just 11 seconds left, but Nash hit a wide open 3-pointer to force overtime, and Phoenix took the series.

Somewhere in the midst of this, the wheels came off, with Dirk yelling at Terry and a lot of fans in Dallas very very unhappy. I watched the game alone in the basement of a dorm (not mine) in New Jersey. That was a long night.

2006

This one is still fresh enough in memory that a quick review should be enough. First round was a sweep of Memphis. Second round was perhaps the best 2nd-round playoff series our generation has watched, with three games decided by a total of 4 points, and two other games going into overtime. The western conference finals saw Dallas turning a 2–2 series tie into a 4–2 victory for the Mavericks after Dirk’s 50-point outburst in game 5 at home, followed by a come-from-behind road win in game 6.

After game 6, Marc Stein wrote:

Dirk Nowitzki has answered all the questions. He has hushed every doubt about his playoff toughness, his fourth-quarter clutchness and whether he's sufficiently ruthless to beat his best friend for a spot in the NBA Finals.

All of which means Nowitzki can finally and definitively respond to the question he hears more than any other.

And then in Finals, Dwyane Wade pulled off one of the most remarkable performances in NBA history and won 4 games in a row to turn on 0–2 series deficit into an NBA title in 6 games. In those four wins, Wade averaged 39.3 points, 8.3 rebounds, and 3.5 assists to take the MVP.

Special thanks to Justin Burton (a Lakers fan) for watching game 5 with me at his house in New Brunswick, NJ, and to James Foster (a Tennessean but an adopted Mavericks fan) for showing up at my place in his Nowitzki jersey for the rest of the series. Also to Josh Ziefle for buying a high-def TV in the middle of the playoffs.

I lost sleep for two weeks after the finals ended (mostly anger because of the officiating), but what a great run.

2007

Holy crap. Polite words can’t describe what this one was like, but it had its moments, and there certainly aren’t any Mavericks fans who will forget it anytime soon. The Nowitzki question is officially re-opened. And Baron Davis had better put up a good showing against Utah in the second round, or I don’t know how I’ll function.

I watched most of this one alone in my living room in Boston, probably without any other Mavericks fans within blocks. My housemates were dutifully supportive, but the best night was game 5, when my friend Kevin Wells stayed up late with me to see the Mavs’ last win.

I don’t know if I’m going to be following next year’s regular season or not. But for crying out loud, bring on the playoffs. Good or bad, Dirk seems to be incapable of giving us anything but insanity, and that’s reason enough to keep watching.

Modern Mavs Playoff History

2007-05-06T17:31:00.000-05:00

If anyone is interested, here are links to pages (from espn.com and nba.com) where you can look at how the Mavericks have performed in their playoff runs for the last 7 seasons. Each page has recaps and box scores for every game of the series––a great resource if you’re a stat junkie like me.

2001:
Mavericks 3, Jazz 2
Spurs 4, Mavericks 1

2002:
Mavericks 3, Timberwolves 0
Kings 4, Mavericks 1

2003:
Mavericks 4, Blazers 3
Mavericks 4, Kings 3
Spurs 4, Mavericks 2

2004:
Kings 4, Mavericks 1

2005:
Mavericks 4, Rockets 3
Suns 4, Mavericks 2

2006:
Mavericks 4, Grizzlies 0
Mavericks 4, Spurs 3
Mavericks 4, Suns 2
Heat 4, Mavericks 2

2007:
Warriors 4, Mavericks 2

It Could be Much, Much Worse

2007-05-06T00:24:00.000-05:00

Whatever anyone wants to say about Dirk, he can take consolation tonight in the fact that he’s not Tracy McGrady.

Et tu, Avery?

2007-05-04T12:00:00.000-05:00

Jason Knott wrote:

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?

Jason, I think you’re on to something. To do this to the fans really takes something special.

To start out with, only two teams in any given year even have the opportunity to blow the NBA finals, and at most one succeeds. To lose it to (basically) a single player, when his team includes Antoine Walker and your own team is loaded with talent, is even worse.

And then blowing the first round to the 8 seed is another thing only two teams per season have a shot at. For crying out loud, the Mavericks had been trying for their entire franchise history to get the number 1 seed, and this is the first time they’ve done it. They hadn’t beaten the division rival Spurs in the standings since 1997, and that was only because David Robinson broke his foot and Sean Elliott had to get a kidney transplant; the Spurs ended up 20-62, the Mavericks 24-58.

So for a team pushing 30 years of history (coninciding almost exactly with my life span, incidentally), both their first finals appearance and their first top-seeded playoff series ended in catastrophic fashion.

(My housemates and I were debating this last night, and we decided that catastrophic is worse than disastrous; frankly, it’s the strongest word I can think of right now without using profanity. Actually, we might just have to coin a new word, like maveractic or maybe nowitztrophic.)

You would need to enlist Shakespeare to do justice to the degree of ironic tragedy we have witnessed in the last 10 months. The only think that can top it is if Dirk does indeed win the regular-season MVP and then Nash take the finals MVP.

Actually, Jason, I think that’s the key––the Mavericks can’t do anything worse to us, but Nash can actually go back in time and make a past Mavericks decision worse. That might be what we’re looking at.

Defenseless

2007-05-04T01:50:00.000-05:00

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.

Never Believe Anything You Read On This Blog Again

2007-05-03T19:35:00.000-05:00

Or else, never believe anything the people on TV say. But I think it's the first one.

Or, for alternate title: Why to Never Trust a Box Score. I ran Dirk’s and Duncan's averages for the first five games of the first round:

Dirk: 22.0 pts, 42.0% FG, 11.6 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 2.0 steals, 1.6 blocks, 2.2 turnovers.
Duncan: 20.2 pts, 47.3% FG, 10.6 rebounds, 5.4 assists, 0.8 steals, 2.8 blocks, 2.4 turnovers.

So Duncan has better numbers in assists, blocks, and FG%, and Dirk has better numbers for points, rebounds, steals, and turnovers. Just picking blindly, which set of categories would you rather have the better numbers in? Dirk's, right?.

True, Duncan has a lot more assists, but if you just add up all the stats (a rough but worthwhile measure), Duncan comes out to 39.8, Dirk to 39.6. Throw in Dirk’s 38/46 (82.6%) free throws against Duncan’s 13/22 (59.1%), and you might even say you have a wash.

Unfortunately, that's not what we've been seeing on the court. I only saw a couple of minutes of Duncan from the first round, but I assume he didn't spend large chunks of time stagnating his team's offense by either failing to get open or else hiding in the corner. And then there's the 4–1 advantage for Duncan's team, versus the 2–3 deficit for Dirk's.

Ack, my head is spinning––I want to trust the statistics, but they’re lying to me. Right?

One point back in Dirk’s favor: he has started games quite well this series. Dallas has jumped out to several early leads, and Dirk has been in the center, if I remember correctly, of all of them––driving to the basket, being aggressive, and generally being the player you'd expect. Late in the games he has faded, which has hurt his team, but I think you also have to say that his early play has helped make the Warriors’ second-half runs result in small Golden State leads rather than blowouts.

It’s still infuriating and embarrassing, and we still should demand far more, but his perhaps-better-than-Duncan numbers have not been, strictly speaking, meaningless. (Note: This keeps happening to me: I just saw over at truehoop that Hollinger made a similar comment; I wrote this before I saw it, so I'm sticking with the post.)

But there’s still a question: If Dirk has a couple of big games and Dallas somehow takes the series, how do you evaluate Dirk? Do the bad games offset the good ones? Can we be proud that he won 4 even if he lost 3 ugly? This might all be moot in a few hours (if Dallas’ season ends tonight), but I want to throw it open here.

Now That Was Shocking

2007-05-01T23:30:00.000-05:00

I wanted to rip my hair out every time Dick Stockton talked about how “shocking” the Warriors’ comeback was. Sorry to be cynical, but the first thing I saw that shocked me was the Warriors missing 8 consecutive shots to close the game.

It’s offical: nothing that happens in game 6 could shock anyone, short of a 70-point game from Baron or Dirk. Other than that, either team could win by 30, and I would not be in the least surprised.

Once More, with Feeling

2007-05-01T21:56:00.000-05:00

Let’s start with some nice things about Dirk.

First, the bad news: on offense, he’s at 20.0 pts and 2.3 assists per game, on 40.9% shooting. To get those up to his season average tonight, he’d have to score 43 on 18/24 FG and 8 assists. That’s a stretch.

On the other hand, his defensive numbers have been really good: 11.5 rebounds, 2.5 steals, 1.8 blocks. That’s up from 8.9, 0.7, and 0.8. Overall, if you just add up his stats (points + rebounds + assists + steals + blocks), Dirk is down about 0.3, from 38.4 in the regular season to 38.1 in the playoffs.

So what I see is a frustrated guy who’s getting flustered on offense, but is making up some of it on defense.

But my brother Jeremy raised what seems like a fair question: Has there ever before been a guy whose entire career was riding on a single game?

Never Underestimate a Team Like the Warriors

2007-05-01T11:35:00.000-05:00

OK, so I’m sitting here pondering how the Mavericks could still take the series.

People have talked a lot about Dirk getting on track, and that’s certainly an important point––not only does he have to start scoring for Dallas to win the series, but he’s practically bound to start scoring, since he’s had four games in a row where he hasn’t. My brother Jeremy made a comment recently about the Mavericks being a horse that has to run from behind. I think you have to pin that on Dirk, since he’s the consistent thread over their last 6 playoffs.

Here’s something that occurs to me: in Dirk’s career, Dallas has never been a heavy favorite to win a championship until their last two playoff series, and they've crumbled in both of them. When they have nothing to lose, they can do some remarkable things. But faced with the pressure of living up to what they know (at least in theory) that they’re capable of, they have gone oh-for-one, and they’re on the verge of oh-for-two.

So the two key questions are: Are they far enough behind for a switch to flip? And are they too far behind for it to matter?

Acknowledging that Dallas is utterly responsible for making something happen the rest of this series, there is one other possibility for the Mavericks winning in 7: Golden State could still, quite plausibly, experience a total melt-down, and come apart at the seams.

DallasBasketball.com had a story last week suggesting this, and truehoop puts things in perspective as well. And I think it’s true: Golden State clearly has got a ton of talent, but they’re also (1) injury-prone and (2) full of head-cases; well, we only know that Jackson is nuts, but there’s also a look in Davis’ eyes, and something about the perpetual creepy grin on his face, to where nothing he would do could surprise me. This series, for Golden State, depends on these guys holding it together. But that’s not a given.

This sounds like a really lame cop-out, and perhaps it is, but everyone knows psychology is part of the game. If being tough were just physical, then no one would ever blame a player for not being tough enough, right?

The fact is, it’s really difficult to maintain intensity and composure at the same time. Ask Jason Terry about punching Michael Finley in the playoffs last year, and then getting suspended for a game the Mavericks lost. Ask Jackson and Davis how they got themselves thrown out of the game last weekend. Ask Dirk why he looks like he’s ready to punch someone when he gets knocked to the ground but doesn’t get a foul call––and then looks like a beaten child when he can’t come up with any way to channel his aggression.

Back to the Mavericks: tonight will be the defining moment for these guys for a long, long time if they lose. Dirk, Terry, and Howard, unless one of them explodes for 40 or something, will never live down a home defeat tonight, and neither will Avery, unless/until they win a championship some other season.

My prediction: I’m not going to guess whether Dirk will start scoring or not, but unless Dallas wins in a blow-out, I’m putting my money on him taking 30 shots, make-or-miss. No way he gets more than 3 assists. And throw in 16 rebounds for good measure.

The Murky View from the Other Side

2007-04-29T23:59:00.000-05:00

The detachment strategy only sort of worked. I think I’ll be able to sleep tonight, but I still feel queasy.

The first must-win of the playoffs

2007-04-29T21:34:00.000-05:00

Note: if you’re looking for my testimonial about how I’ve taken my heart back from the Mavericks, it’s the next post down

10:34 PM ET: Don’t trust them! They’ll only break your heart! (Mavs up 21–12)

10:35 PM ET: Reggie Miller just said that Dirk is showing up tonight, in contrast to past games. Perhaps. But in game three he made his first 3 shots scored Dallas’ first 8 points, all in the first three-and-a-half minutes of thee game. After that, he shot 4 of 13. We’ll see how this goes.

10:40 PM ET: I can’t believe we drew Dick Stockton as the announcer again. Reggie Miller makes it a little better.

10:49 PT ET: (Dallas up 30–21) Anyone else notice that Dallas had early leads in both their losses so far, but not in their one win?

11:02 PM ET: I wonder if Dirk is falling down needlessly over and over again, or if the refs just aren’t calling anything.

11:08 PM ET: Bad form, Avery: you can’t go after the refs about an illegal move by Golden State when you’re on the road. It just feeds the crowd.

11:13 PM ET: With the camera panning the cheering crowd, Dick Stockton just said: “Barnes and Terry separated…but here they are––time out on the floor!” I have no idea what that means.

11:15 PM ET: Why does he get to do that? Terry starts to lose control of the ball, and Matt Barnes barrels into him, diving for the ball––no call.

11:23 PM ET: I just heard this exchange:

Stockton: “This is the first game where the Warriors aren’t playing their style.”
Miller: “And they’re only down three.”
Stockton: “And the Mavericks deserve the credit.”

I Don’t Believe

2007-04-29T00:26:00.000-05:00

My apologies to readers who aren’t into theology, but this post is going to be a cross-over into my other passion.

Of course, you can hardly follow the NBA these days without knowing a little bit of church talk: Nike’s pushing the Second Coming, King James had “Witness” t-shirts last year, which Mavs fans parodied with “Nowitzness” t-shirts (I own one) for last year’s playoffs. Dwyane Wade even suggested a couple of weeks back that he wanted to pull off a resurrection of his shoulder in celebration of Easter.

But along with Dirk and Avery, I want to talk about Abraham, Isaac, and Søren Kierkegaard. An odd mix, I know, but I swear it’ll make sense in a minute.

For those who aren’t obsessed with the Bible like I am, Abraham was the patriarch of the Jewish people, the man to whom God gave a son (Isaac) in his old age, in fulfillment of a promise to make Abraham into a great nation. Isaac was Abraham’s only son, and in the context of the Bible he’s the link between Abraham and the entire people of Israel, and ultimately Jesus.

But God decided to test Abraham, and so God asked him to sacrifice Isaac on an altar. Fortunately, God stopped Abraham from going through with it, but only once he had Isaac bound on the altar and the knife in his hand. As a result, Abraham is extolled for his obedience and faith.

It’s a horrific story, and Kierkegaard’s book about it is appropriately titled Fear and Trembling. His basic point is, if that’s what faith is, then we probably shouldn’t be too glib about saying we have faith. I think he’s got a pretty good point.

One of the central arguments of Kierkegaard’s book is that faith has to be a paradox. Abraham had to believe both (1) that he was going to kill Isaac as God had commanded, and (2) that God would still use Isaac to make Abraham into a great nation. It didn’t seem to make sense, but that’s what faith required.

If Abraham had only believed one of those two things, he wouldn’t have had faith: if he thought God was going to stop him, then it wouldn’t be a real test; and if he thought that he was losing Isaac for good, then he wouldn’t have believed God’s promise.

And what’s worse, if Abraham had thought he was losing Isaac for good, then he wouldn’t have been able to receive him back with joy. The reason why is, the only way Abraham could have resigned himself to losing Isaac would have been by loving Isaac less, and to make that kind of break––to really resign that you will kill your son––is not something that you can simply undo once the crisis is past. Abraham, Kierkegaard argues, never would have been the same.

Which brings me to my point.

As far as I can tell, I have officially resigned myself to the Mavericks losing this playoff series. In contrast to the Warriors fans and their t-shirts, I don’t believe. Of course the Mavericks aren’t worthy of the kind of trust that Abraham put in God. But if the Mavericks are my Isaac, my object of devotion that I’m afraid of losing, then I have officially resigned them as lost.

And as a result, if the Mavericks do come through against Golden State, I don’t think I’ll be able to receive them back with joy. This season is dead to me, whether the slaughter really ends up happening or not. I might keep watching games (and I’ll probably keep blogging, too), and who knows––they might still win the title this year; but I won’t be enjoying it the way I would if I had had faith all along. I’ll probably watch Sunday’s game, but I bet I could study instead, and not think much of it.

It’s a trade-off I decided to make. I can’t stand the kind of anger and frustration that messed with my sleep after last year’s finals, so on Friday night I turned off a little switch in my heart. It’s going to take a lot of emotional energy for me to finish my papers this semester, and I am not going down with this team.

If the Mavericks win it all this year, a True Believer is going to have to email me and tell me how it feels. There may indeed be a resurrection of this team that looks dead, but I won’t be a Nowitzness to it.

The Difference In Game 3

2007-04-28T01:36:00.000-05:00

The Warriors’ offense played on a bigger court than the Mavericks’ tonight.

Blame Dirk, blame a supposed lack of Dallas effort, or whatever, but I say that the Mavericks got blown out because Golden State was playing on a bigger court.

When Dallas was on offense, the lane was totally clogged with Warriors defenders, and yet there were no Mavericks open on the perimeter. There was nowhere for the Mavericks to go: if they went to the rim, they usually got blocked because the Warriors’ defenders were already right there. And yet Dallas never managed to get open shots on the perimeter.

When the Warriors were on offense, the court was completely spread with no one in the lane. Whoever had the ball just took his defender off the dribble, at which point the entire Dallas defense collapsed into the lane. They were usually too late, which meant the guy with the ball (usually Richardson or Davis) got to the rim for the layup. But if they did stop the drive, all four guys on the perimeter were open. If the driver kicked the ball out to one of them, all of the Mavericks’ defenders had their momentum moving toward the lane, so there was no chance to get back out and pressure the shooter. If they did run at the shooter, he could just make a simple head fake and then dribble in for an uncontested 15-footer. This happened almost every time down the court.

This is the nba, which means that most any guard or small forward can go around his defender off the dribble in a one-on-one matchup. Certainly the Warrriors have three or four players who can do it. Dallas let the Warriors get them in that position every time the Warriors had the ball.

Look at the box score: Dallas was barely behind in rebounding, they had just a couple more turnovers than Golden State, both teams hit the same number of free thows, and both teams shot atrociously from the 3-point line. The difference was points in the paint, and from watching the game it was obvious that on defense, Dallas never had anyone in the paint.

For the Warriors, the court was wide open; for the Mavericks it wasn’t. Good luck winning a game that way.

Mavs-Warriors Game 3

2007-04-27T21:03:00.000-05:00

Blogging tonight’s game. I'll keep an eye on comments, so feel free to jump in.

10:46 PM ET: Heat-Bulls game is still on. Wade worked hard and got the Heat back in the game, and then Antoine Walker happened. He commited an offensive charge at one end of the court with about 40 seconds left, then committed a flagrant foul at the other end of the court to personally hand the game back to the Bulls. You have to love Antoine virtually giving away the Heat’s season with Wade on the court.

10:53 PM ET: Dirk’s playing aggressive on defense. Great to see.

10:54 PM ET: Josh Howard is getting to the middle of the lane whenever he wants. He just had a nice spin move for a bucket.

11:00 PM ET: Howard is a beast. He just got a steal, then an offensive rebound of his own shot and a bucket in the span of 10 seconds.

11:01 PM ET: Diop is not getting the job done defending the basket.

11:17 PM ET: I haven’t been watching that closely (talking to my brother on the phone), but It’s getting ugly.

11:21 PM ET: That was a crazy play.

Dirk Still MVP

2007-04-26T23:34:00.000-05:00

Jeremy might totally disagree with me on this, but I say Dirk is still MVP, even though in Wednesday’s game he managed about the kind of performance you’d expect from Kurt Thomas on a good night. And even though on Sunday he managed about what you’d expect of Kurt Thomas on a bad night (at least scoring––he did have 12 rebounds, 4 assists, 3 blocks, and 2 steals.)

And the simple, often-repeated, reason is obvious: if Dallas gets through this series with the Warriors, they’re going to play Houston or Utah in the second round instead of San Antonio or Phoenix. And they took the first seed over a hot Phoenix team largely because Dirk was really good often enough to get it for them.

All that said, for the playoffs I love the attitude that Howard and Terry bring to the court. And wow––Devin Harris showed some guts on Wednesday too. Whatever the first two games looked like, this team is really, really good, and it’s going to be tough for any team to beat them.

Game 2, second half

2007-04-25T21:56:00.000-05:00

I’m starting a new post for the second half of Mavs-Warriors game 2. You can see my first half comments below.

10:53 PM ET: Mavs fans have rarely hoped more earnestly that Barkley is right about something: he just said (at the half) that Dallas will take the series 4–1.

11:14 PM ET: Warriors back up by 2, three possessions into the second half. It might not get any better than this…

11:16 PM ET: One point that will hopefully look up for the second half: Dallas shot 0/8 three-pointers in the first half; it’s unlikely they’ll match that for the rest of the game.

11:19 PM ET: I think Dirk must be weaker than Stephen Jackson; that’s the only possible explanation for why he isn’t posting him up.

11:22 PM ET: Dirk has no idea what to do on offense right now. He looks like I do during a pickup game––setting a pick here, blocking out my man there, but not really having any impact on the game at all, except hopefully to force the other team to guard someone.

11:29 PM ET: Dirk just shot an out-of-rhythm 2-pointer with both feet on the 3-point line. Inexplicable.

11:33 PM ET: Well, there wasn't a flagrant foul by the mid-point of the second quarter, but there was almost a fight at the mid-point of the third quarter.

11:35 PM ET: I don’t know what Devin Harris is thinking to make a tough bounce pass to Diop in the lane. (It got fumbled away.)

11:36 PM ET: At least Dirk hits his free throws. I think he has more points off of technical free throws and junk fouls than he does off of actual offense.

11:43 PM ET: Now the Warriors are jawing at the refs. I like it.

11:49 PM ET: Wow. Baron Davis just whacked both of Jerry Stackhouse’s arms at the elbow on a lay-up, and then complained about the call until he got tossed. He should have watched the game where Duncan got tossed a couple of weeks back.

12:16 PM ET: The crowd just started chanting ‘MVP’ with Dirk shooting free throws. I wonder if that makes him feel better or worse. Actually, I’m betting Dirk is just glad Dallas won, both because he wants the win, and because it’ll take a little bit of heat off him.

12:26 PM ET: And, the Mavericks have ended a 6-game playoff losing streak. Now, if they can just imitate the beginning of the regular season and win 12 in a row again, they’ll be in the finals…

Better So Far

2007-04-25T20:48:00.000-05:00

Game-blogging:

8:48 PM ET: Have to love the first minute and a half: Terry and Harris both have a steal, and Howard and Nowitzki have both knocked someone to the ground––without a foul call.

9:52 PM ET: Well, Devin Harris wants to win, anyway.

9:58 PM ET: Dick Stockton again has no idea what’s going on. He just got the teams mixed up, and earlier he said the Warriors “could take the lead here” when they were already up.

10:01 PM ET: I wonder if the Mavericks will guard Stephen Jackson some possession this game…

10:06 PM ET: The refs are really letting them play. I’d predict we’ll have a flagrant foul by the 6 minute mark of the second quarter.

10:12 PM ET: The Mavericks have no idea what they’re doing on defense. Everytime the Warriors come down the court, there’s someone on the perrimeter unguarded.

10:21 PM ET: Josh Howard needs to drop it about this foul call. You’re not going to lose the game because of one turnover; you’re going to lose because you're losing focus.

10:23 PM ET: I think the 7th player of the game just got knocked to the floor.

10:24 PM ET: The Mavericks are taking everything to the rim, which is a good thing. They’re also leaving Dirk on the bench, which is an interesting move. Frankly, these Mavericks are good enough to beat Golden State without Dirk, so if the way the Warriors guard him is going to disrupt the whole game, who know?

10:28 PM ET: Going back to Howard disputing the foul call: the biggest problem for Dallas right now is that the Warriors have no respect for them, and it lets them just abuse Dallas physically. Complaining about foul calls is not going to earn that respect back.

10:30 PM ET: Howard and Dirk have both missed a free throw already. What, do they think this is the regular season? Do they think they’re playing Memphis again?

10:31 PM ET: Dirk with a block. (Stockton attributed it to Diop.)

10:32 PM ET: The Mavericks have this play where one of their offensive players has the ball on the wing, and they pass it to DeSagana Diop at the top of the key, almost as if he could do something with it there. It always just stalls the offense and lets the Warriors get their defense reset. I wonder why Avery has them do that so often?

10:33 PM ET: Dallas just took a 5-point lead. I’ll try to remember this feeling so that I won’t fell like I wasted my time watching if the Mavericks lose.

10:38 PM ET: Make that 9 guys who have been knocked to the floor.

10:40 PM ET: Mavericks up 4. I have no idea how they’re winning right now.

10:48 PM ET: I honestly think Dick Stockton is starting to lose his mind.

The Small Game

2007-04-25T01:02:00.000-05:00

Call this the corollary to my post called The Big Game, in which I defend Dirk (in comparison with Tim Duncan) on how he shows up for deciding games of playoff series. Dirk’s Mavericks are 4-0 in game 7’s, 5-0 if you count a game 5 back when the opening rounds were shorter. Duncan’s Spurs are only 1-1 in such series.

Now for the catch: there’s a good reason Duncan’s Spurs have only played two game 7’s, and it’s that they quickly put away the teams they’re supposed to beat. The only game 7 Duncan lost was against last year’s Mavericks. The game 7 he won was a couple of years ago against the Pistons, to win the championship. Then consider that San Antonio has only ever lost 4 playoff series that Duncan was playing in: last year’s Mavericks, Shaq and Kobe’s Lakers (twice), and Stockton and Malone’s Jazz; all four of those squads went on to the finals.

The point is, in all of their other series, when they were playing inferior teams, San Antonio won quickly; they never let inferior teams get past 6 games.

Contrast that with Dirk’s Mavericks, who in past years have taken seven games to beat both the 7th-seeded Blazers, and the 5th-seeded (but 7 games behind Dallas in the standings) Rockets.

Once the Mavericks are facing elimination, they’re a pretty solid 9–6 (60.0%). However, in playoff games where they aren’t facing elimination, Dirk’s Mavericks are an anemic 30–35 (46.2%). And in the first games of playoff series, they’re an embarrassing 5–9 (35.7%); 2003 is the only year they’ve won more than half of their series-opening games.

All of this explains how Dirk’s Mavericks have a winning record (8–6) for playoff series but a losing record (39–40 entering this season) in playoff games.

The good news is, these Mavericks have never lost a series after losing game 1 at home. Before Sunday night’s embarrassment, they had blown their home court advantage in the first game of a series three times: to Sacramento in 2003, to Houston in 2005, and to Phoenix last year. In the Houston series, Dallas lost their first two in a row at home. But Dallas went on to win all three of those series. In fact, the only playoff series Dirk’s Mavericks have lost with homecourt advantage is last year’s finals.

All that is to say, these guys don’t exactly put people away. Dirk’s numbers in game 1’s are solid (25.5 points, 44.9% FG, 12.2 rebounds), but his teams seem to lack fire in those games. And what’s worse, in recent years teams have found that Dirk is easy to fluster. However, he’s also very good at making adjustments. (See “Dirk's best bounce-back games” on this site.) And by the end of the series, when gimmicks have run out and ability is what remains, Dirk usually turns out fine.

There are no guarantees (cf. last year’s finals), but we should confidently expect that Dirk will be a different player in Wednesday night’s game. Expect him to be better prepared to pass out of double teams, and expect Terry and Howard to scorch the Warriors with open jumpers all night.

I’m not saying I’m really looking forward to watching the game, but I find consolation in knowing that history at least means something.

I’m really not enjoying this

2007-04-22T23:27:00.000-05:00

Some thoughts on the first half of Mavericks-Warriors game 1:

What an ugly, unpleasant first half to watch. Golden State at 33% FG, the Mavericks at 29%. Dirk was only 3 of 11, but no one on the team hit half their shots. And it’s not as if the Mavericks were just missing jump shots. Layup after layup rimmed out.
A lot of it seemed to be because the Warriors played rough on them, but there were several shots Dallas had no reason not to hit.
Dirk especially suffered from the rough defense, as he has occasionally. He’s not bulky enough to outmuscle people, and he’s not quick enough to just run around someone who guards him too tight.
Barkley criticized the Mavericks for changing their lineup to match Golden State. According to sportscaster orthodoxy, you should always impose your will on the other team, and Barkley thought a team that won 67 games shouldn’t change their lineup because of the 8th seed. There’s some truth to that, of course, but if I remember correctly, Avery Johnson adjusted the starting lineups during the season in order to win 67 games. Still, I’d rather see Dampier on the court.
I think the Warriors blocked 3 Mavericks jump shots in the first half. Ugly.
What an awful, awful announcing pair. Fratello isn’t great, and I think there was something wrong with Dick Stockton tonight. Coming into the second half there was a video glitch, and then it sounded like his mind just started to wander.
As annoying as it is to see Dirk play badly, I really don’t mind if the Mavericks have to sit him to win. The Warriors are a gimmicky team, so I say do whatever beats them and move on with the post-season.

The Big Game

2007-04-20T22:30:00.000-05:00

Those who have been reading along know that I’m a staunch Dirk defender, even though he doesn’t often hit the big shot at the buzzer, and even though (or maybe especially because) it’s been so maddening to follow his teams over the years.

But I was curious about whether he really does fail to show in big games, like people claim, and I thought the best thing I could do is compare him with Tim Duncan, widely considered the greatest power forward in the history of the game. And since we want big games, I decided to only look at how the two players have performed in the playoffs.

A couple of admissions up front:

There’s no denying that Duncan is a lot better at winning than Dirk is. Duncan has three rings (and an 18-5 series record) in eight playoff seasons, and Dirk has no ring in six seasons, with an 8-5 series record. (The wcf series in 2003, where Dirk sat out the last three games with a bum knee, counts for Duncan but not against Dirk.)
Duncan has far outplayed Dirk defensively over the years, and he also has a lot more assists. In fact, in two of the games I look at below, Duncan had a triple-double, something Dirk has never done in any nba game.
On the other hand, I think Dirk’s undefeated record in game 7’s (5-0 if you count the game 5 win against Utah in 2001) is pretty impressive. (Duncan’s is 1-1.)

All that said, here are their career playoff averages:

Dirk: 76 games, 42.4 minutes, 25.7 points (44.9% FG), 11.1 rebounds, 2.4 assists.
Duncan: 118 games, 40.7 minutes, 24.1 points (50.5% FG), 12.7 rebounds, 3.6 assists.

There’s nothing startling in those numbers. Dirk scores more, but with a lower field goal percentage, and Duncan gets more rebounds and assists. For both players, their playoff numbers are higher than their regular season numbers for minutes, points, and rebounds, but lower in field goal percentage. Duncan’s assists and blocks also increase in the playoffs.

But what about the really big games? I decided to do a box score comparison of the deciding games for the playoff series that Dirk and Duncan have played in. These are, almost by definition, the biggest games––the ones where a team won or lost their playoff series.

And just to be fair, since Dirk didn’t play any playoff games his first two seasons (i.e., when he was still inexperienced), I’ll exempt Duncan’s first two seasons (which would have hurt his cause slightly) from the numbers I’m going to crunch. What we end up with is all the series-clinching games Dirk and Duncan have played in since the 2001 playoffs.

Here are Dirk’s lines (FG made/attempted for points/rebounds):

2001: Mavs (3) over Jazz (2); Dirk 3/11 for 18/4
2001: Spurs (4) over Mavs (1); Dirk 14/24 for 42/18
2002: Mavs (3) over Wolves (0); Dirk 11/17 for 39/17
2002: Kings (4) over Mavs (1); Dirk 13/25 for 32/12
2003: Mavs (4) over Blazers (3); Dirk 12/21 for 31/11
2003: Mavs (4) over Kings (3); Dirk 12/20 for 30/19
2003: Spurs (4) over Mavs (2); Dirk didn't play last 3 games
2004: Kings (4) over Mavs (1); Dirk 11/23 for 31/14
2005: Mavs (4) over Rockets (3); Dirk 5/14 for 14/14
2005: Suns (4) over Mavs (2); Dirk 9/25 for 28/13
2006: Mavs (4) over Grizzlies (0); Dirk 12/21 for 27/7
2006: Mavs (4) over Spurs (3); Dirk 11/20 for 37/15
2006: Mavs (4) over Suns (2); Dirk 8/20 for 24/10
2006: Heat (4) over Mavs (2); Dirk 10/22 for 29/15

Now Duncan’s lines:

2001: Spurs (3) over Wolves (1); Duncan 8/23 for 24/16
2001: Spurs (4) over Mavs (1); Duncan 12/25 for 32/20
2001: Lakers (4) over Spurs (0); Duncan 5/10 for 15/7
2002: Spurs (4) over Sonics (1); Duncan 9/19 for 23/9
2002: Lakers (4) over Spurs (1); Duncan 11/23 for 34/25
2003: Spurs (4) over Suns (2); Duncan 4/12 for 15/20 (+10 ast)
2003: Spurs (4) over Lakers (2); Duncan 16/25 for 37/16
2003: Spurs (4) over Mavs (2); Duncan 8/20 for 18/11
2003: Spurs (4) over Nets (2); Duncan 9/19 for 21/20 (+10 ast)
2004: Spurs (4) over Grizzlies (0); Duncan 10/18 for 22/13
2004: Lakers (4) over Spurs (2); Duncan 7/18 for 20/11
2005: Spurs (4) over Nuggets (1); Duncan 13/23 for 39/14
2005: Spurs (4) over Sonics (2); Duncan 6/21 for 26/9
2005: Spurs (4) over Suns (1); Duncan 14/24 for 31/15
2005: Spurs (4) over Pistons (3); Duncan 10/27 for 25/11
2006: Spurs (4) over Kings (2); Duncan 6/8 for 15/6
2006: Mavs (4) over Spurs (3); Duncan 12/24 for 41/15

That’s a lot of numbers, but now for the averages in these games:

Dirk: 49.8% FG, 29.4 points, 13.0 rebounds
Duncan: 47.2% FG, 25.8 points, 14.0 rebounds

Dirk has Duncan by 3.6 points a game, and Duncan has Dirk by 1 rebound. And even though Duncan’s career playoff FG% is higher than Dirk’s, in the biggest games Dirk’s jumps from 44.9% to 49.8%, while Duncan’s drops from 50.5% to 47.2%.

What killed Dirk’s reputation was the 2005 playoffs, where Dallas almost lost to Houston in the first round, and then lost to Phoenix in the second round amid a team chemistry melt-down. Dirk shot only 34% that game (even though he still managed 28 points on 25 shots), and he’s had trouble living it down.

If you notice, Dirk’s two worst lines of the bunch were in games where Dallas actually won, one of them by forty points. In the five series where Dirk has played in Dallas’ final loss, his worst point total is 28, and his worst rebounding total is 12. Say what you want, but he does not let his team go down without a fight.

Obviously, in the end you’d still rather have Duncan, whose teams have won the championship in 3 of the 8 seasons he’s played in the playoffs.

But for the big games Dallas has played, I think Mavericks fans have good reason to feel good about Dirk and his 29/13 on 50% FG. He still needs to learn how to win it all, but history says he does step up.

History

2007-04-19T01:06:00.000-05:00

OK, here they are, the 9 best regular seasons in NBA history:

’95-’96: Bulls (72-10)

’71-’72: Lakers (69-13)
’96-’97: Bulls (69-13)

’66-’67: 76ers (68-13)
’72-’73: Celtics (68-14)

’85-’86: Celtics (67-15)
’91-’92: Bulls (67-15)
’99-’00: Lakers (67-15)
’06-’07: Mavericks (67-15)

That means the Mavericks just tied the 6th best season ever.

Interesting to consider the stars of the other teams:

Jordan/Pippen
West/Wilt
Wilt
Cowens/Havlicek
Bird/McHale
Shaq/Kobe
Dirk/Howard

Sounds kind of funny, doesn’t it? Let’s hope it doesn’t still sound funny five years from now (or, more to the point, two months from now).

Take it, Bill

2007-04-18T13:39:00.000-05:00

I hate to punt like this, but Bill Simmons hasn’t written much about the NBA in awhile, and his LVP to MVP columns are the best reading out there this week:

Part One
Part Two

A warning: he’s not exactly pro-Dirk, and I found myself racking my brain toward the end to figure out who his mvp was. His choice is not compelling.

Words can hardly describe

2007-04-15T23:28:00.000-05:00

What a great game.

This one was surreal for me, not least because I watched the whole thing on video tape after getting home from my Sunday afternoon reading group. Fast-forwarding through timeouts and free throws already changes the feel for the game, but on top of everything else, I can honestly say that I’ve never experienced an end of a game like I did this one.

I should say at the outset that I’ll stand by my claim that this game didn't tell us anything in particular about the Mavericks. I love the win, and 66 wins puts the Mavericks in a different historical category than 65 (now they’re top 10 all-time), so I'm thrilled about that. But even aside from the lack of postseason implications this one had for the Mavericks, Tim Duncan’s absurd ejection late in the third quarter surely gave Dallas a huge advantage.

Duncan got called for his second technical of the game for clapping and laughing at a foul call while sitting on the bench. The showed the whole replay, and he didn’t speak a single word. I'm not sure I've ever seen something like that in my life, and I wonder if it means David Stern phoned in that Dallas needs to win 68 this year.

But even if both teams claimed that the game didn’t mean anything to them, they played as if it did, and I loved it. Some thoughts:

At halftime, Tony Parker called the game a “great practice for the playoffs” and it was still better than every other game played in the NBA this week.
Avery announced before the game that no one would play more than 26 minutes, and then he caved in probably, oh, half-way through the first quarter. Dirk, Howard, Diop, Terry, and Harris played 37, 37, 34, 32, and 31 minutes. My guess is, Avery was expecting a laid-back game, but the players on both sides had something different in mind.
The crowd in Dallas loved it.
The play after the second Duncan technical, Josh Howard completely threw his body into Fabricio Oberto and got the call against Oberto.
Devin Harris got to the rim whenever he wanted to; at one point he also hit a 3, and then took a charge on the next play.
Jerry Stackhouse hit his shot over whoever was guarding him.
There were hard fouls.
ABC showed big chunks of the game with the sliding camera that lets you see how fast the players are really moving; I don’t know if I want it all the time, but it gives the game a great feel.
Guys on both teams hit their open shots.
The Mavericks contested every Spurs shot at the rim.
Both teams played good defense and scored a lot for most of the game.
Dirk has hit 666 field goals this year. He’s exactly one make over 50% for the season.
There was an 8 second violation on Tony Parker on a normal possession with no one guarding him.
Francisco Elson airballed an open 17-footer.
The Spurs have one guy named Francisco, and another guy named Fabricio. They also got 10 minutes from a guy named Jacque.

And then we get to the end, which I especially enjoyed. Dallas had been down by about 3 for most of the fourth quarter. Then Dirk hits a jumper with 1:15 left to tie it for the first time in the fourth quarter. Then Greg Buckner––Greg Buckner!––strips Manu Ginibili and goes coast to coast for the lead with 50 seconds left. A couple of plays later, Jerry Stackhouse misses 1 of 2 free throws (and the one that goes in barely goes in) with 10 seconds left and a chance to take a 4-point lead. (Sound familar to anyone?)

So there’s 10.8 seconds left, with the Mavericks up three, and the Spurs inbound the ball to Michael Finley, and then –– the screen literally fades to black, after which WCVB-TV meteorologist Dick Albert comes on and explains that Boston is going to receive heavy rains and possible flooding tonight. After a commercial breaks that follows, the 6 o’clock news starts.

I kid you not. The Boston ABC affiliate preempted the last 10 seconds of Mavericks–Spurs in order to start the local news broadcast on time.

And I didn’t care. I was frankly thrilled, and got a good laugh out of it, because I hadn’t thought the game could get any stranger.

Just to make one last point: on the pre-game show Jon Barry repeated a little piece of nonsense that I've heard from about 6 different commentators this year. He said that the Manu Ginobili foul on Dirk on the “last play” of game 7 last year is the only reason the Mavericks beat the Spurs.

Obviously that foul was huge, and based on the replay (the three minute mark on this youtube clip) Dirk is lucky that he didn’t get called for an offensive foul before he got to the rim. Lots of things needed to go right for the Mavericks to win that game, and there was certainly some luck (not to mention favorable officiating) involved.

But the Ginobili foul happened with 21.6 seconds left. If Dirk makes the layup with no foul call, Dallas is within one, they foul the Spurs on the inbounds, and then even if the Spurs hit both free throws, Dallas gets the ball in the exact same position with 20 seconds left.

I can only assume that none of these commentators ever actually watch the replay before they say these things, but honestly––what are they thinking when they say things like that? Dallas gets within one with 20 seconds left, and you say the only reason they won is because there was a foul on the play? There’s no chance Tony Parker hits 2 free-throws and then Jason Terry hits a clutch 3 for the tie? And as for how the game actually played out: what about Manu Ginobili’s missed layup after Dirk’s free throw? And how about the non-call on the last play when Duncan got the offensive rebound and Dirk got credit for blocking Duncan’s shot even though it looked like a hack?

And for crying out loud, how about overtime, when the Mavericks outscored the Spurs 15–7 on 4/6 FG and 7/8 FT? And professional commentators are still saying the only reason Dallas beat San Antonio was because of the Ginobili foul? I even heard Charles Barkley say it a couple of weeks back.

All I can think of is that after someone said it earlier this season, no one checked the replay to make sure it was an accurate assessment of the game’s end, and then everyone else just repeated it as if it were true and obvious.

It’s just one more piece of the national TV sportscaster orthodoxy that has developed for talking about the Mavericks this year: all they care about now is the title; Avery Johnson has really helped them develop a commitment to defense; Dirk and Nash are in a two-man race for MVP, but Dirk gets the nod because Dallas has the better record; Josh Howard has developed into one of the best two-way players in the game; and my favorite: Mark Jackson said tonight that Devin Harris is “probably one of the quickest guards, with the basketball, in the nba.” Glad to see he’ll go out on a limb with something like that.

Why this argument is nonsense

2007-04-12T22:49:00.000-05:00

Jemele Hill had an article for espn.com this past week that I think is utter nonsense. For starters, she spends almost half of the article assuming that people want to give the MVP to Dirk because Nash has too many, as opposed to, say, because Dirk has led the Mavericks to one of the best seasons in the history of the NBA.

But anyway, although bashing on a bad argument isn’t that great a use of time in and of itself, Hill’s article gives me the chance to raise some questions about Dirk’s shot at MVP. Here she addresses a typical argument for mvp that she says should be reconsidered:

The MVP should go to the best player on the best team. Generally, I believe this. In the last 25 years, the MVPs have come from teams that have won 50 games or more. But you can't use that as absolute criteria. The Pistons had the best regular-season record in the NBA last year, but voters were correct in not awarding Chauncey Billups the MVP. You couldn't look at the Pistons and discern if Billups really was the most important piece, proving that the best player isn't always on the best team.

This year's Mavericks team poses a similar problem. No question Dirk is a superstar, but is he the real reason the Mavericks have shrugged off last year's NBA Finals meltdown? Or does that credit belong to coach Avery Johnson?

How do people get away with writing this stuff? The Pistons were strikingly abnormal in having a great regular-season record without having a particular player who stood out above the others. That’s why the coaches gave them four all-stars last year, to recognize the value of their team play.

Dirk is precisely the opposite of that. While his teammates are excellent, he is clearly the star of the team. He’s 11th in the league in scoring, and 16th in rebounding––not hugely impressive stats––but more important, he’s 6th in the league in ESPN’s player ratings, which measures all a player’s stats put together. Dallas’ next best is Josh Howard, at 45th. And in Hollinger’s PER rating system, Dirk is even better, ranked second for the season, behind only Dwyane Wade.

Yeah, Josh Howard is hugely important to the Mavericks, but no one in the past 30 years has won 65+ with just a bunch of Josh Howards. And Avery Johnson is something very special, but a coach can’t win 65 games by himself: Phil Jackson didn’t do it except when he had Jordan or Shaq, and Pat Riley didn’t do except when he had Magic. No, to win 65, you have to have a Dirk––he’s clearly the best player on his team, and one of the very best in the league.

What’s more, Dallas isn’t just barely the best team in the NBA. By record, they’re head-and-shoulders above everyone else for the season. San Antonio is playing great, but for the season as a whole they haven’t been anywhere close to Dallas. Phoenix has played extraordinarily well too, but then they lost all those games when Nash was out.

Which brings me to my next point. The poor play of Phoenix when Nash was injured should hurt Nash’s MVP chances, not help them. Just to be clear: the MVP is about achievement––the value you did have for your team––not what you would have done for them if only back spasms hadn’t sidelined you for a week here or there. Isn’t the ability to stay healthy part of a player’s value? Or to put it another way: Nash with back spasms isn’t as valuable as Nash without back spasms would be, right? This isn’t saying Nash is any less of a player, just that the MVP is about the entire season, and the results for the entire season are becoming increasingly clear. If Dallas weren’t there, Nash would probably be MVP; but they are, and he’s not.

So at the end of the day, Dallas––for the season as a whole––really is the better team, by virtue of having won a lot more games than Phoenix. And history bears out (see my previous post) that you don’t win 65 games on a fluke. Maybe Phoenix is playing better going into the playoffs, but for the season Dallas outplayed them. The Mavericks put together the performances necessary to win 65 games, and the Suns (who played just as hard) were unable to.

Which brings us back to the principle that Hill suggests Dirk-supporters are following too rigidly: The MVP should go to the best player on the best team. Obviously she’s right that we shouldn’t follow that rule to a fault. But in this case, Dirk is clearly the best player on clearly the best team. In fact, a situation like this with a clear-cut best player on a clear-cut best team is precisely where the rule she’s attacking is most appropriate to follow.

As I’ve said before, this whole thing is nothing but disrespect due to Dirk’s mediocre play in the finals last year. Even though that’s not really supposed to affect MVP ballots, it’s certainly understandable if it does. But those same people have to defend why Nash has never beaten San Antonio in the playoffs like Dirk’s Mavericks did last year, and why the Suns have never been to the NBA finals, even the year they were totally healthy and had the league’s best regular-season record. That, it seems to me, levels the playing field between these two guys and forces us to focus on this season.

And if this season is the only one in question, then no smokescreen of nonsense arguments should be able to obscure that Dirk should be MVP.

Garbage Time

2007-04-11T22:29:00.000-05:00

Dallas left four fifths of a playoff-calibre starting lineup off the floor tonight, and the rest of the roster still managed to blow out the Timberwolves, who were playing without Garnett and who still have a chance to fall behind Sacramento, Portland, New York, and maybe even Charlotte and Seattle for better draft odds, if they can just lose a few more games.

Who do you put in for garbage time (which was most of the second half) when Mo Ager has already played 20+ minutes?

Must have been a painful one to watch, despite the win. Anyone catch it on tv?

In the meantime, Dallas hits 65 wins (see my previous post), a number that has only been matched or topped in the last 30 years by Shaq’s Lakers (once), MJ’s Bulls (three times), Magic’s Lakers (once), Bird’s Celtics (once), and Moses Malone’s Sixers (once). If Dallas wins one more, scratch everyone from that list except the Bulls, Shaq’s Lakers, and the Celtics.

All seven teams won the title that year.

There is nothing left for us here

2007-04-08T00:02:00.000-05:00

Here’s a depressing fact: the last time Dallas beat a top-tier team (50-win pace or better) was at Utah on January 9. That’s not entirely their fault, since they’ve only played two games since then against that level of team with that team’s full lineup on the court (both against Phoenix), but Dallas did lose both. So you could say that, aside from an uncanny consistency in beating mediocre and bad teams, Dallas hasn’t shown us all that much in the past three months.

What’s more, with Dallas winning at Portland tonight, their magic number (Dallas wins plus Phoenix losses) for clinching the west is at one. That means the rest of the season should be true coasting. To put it in concrete terms, Maurice Ager played 25 minutes tonight against Portland; Dirk played 26.

And even if the upcoming games against San Antonio and Utah will matter to those teams, they won’t matter much to Dallas. Look for Dirk, Howard, and Terry to average a handful of minutes, and look for pressure to fade away. If Dallas wins against those teams, it still won’t be because they needed to. Whatever happens from here on out, it isn’t likely to tell us anything about the team.

Watching the way the Mavericks have played lately, with narrow victories over Sacramento, New York, and Milwaukee, plus last night’s loss to the Nuggets––and all of it with Dirk’s stats slipping––it’s hard to know what kind of Dallas team will show up for the playoffs. So as fans who want to take the pulse of our team daily, we pretty much have to wait until April 21 before we get any new data. For me, it’ll be a long two weeks.

It seems to me, the playoffs are going to be an entirely new season for this team. Momentum, unless they win their last 8 in a row, probably isn’t going to be a factor, which suggests Dallas will have to play themselves back into team form during their first-series round, hopefully against the Clippers rather than the Warriors.

The goods news is, this is the same personnel that are now 63–13, so if you’re looking for a group capable of getting their act together, this is the one. They’re still angry about last years playoffs, they’re still the group (most of them) that won game 7 on the road against the Spurs in last year’s playoffs, and they’ve still got Dirk and his career playoff averages of 25.7 points (currently on the top-10 all-time list) and 11.1 rebounds.

Negativity

2007-04-06T01:09:00.000-05:00

Just to mix things up, instead of saying positive things about the Mavericks, tonight I’m going to say a bunch of negative things (none of them particularly new or original) about the next best two teams in the league––who played each other in San Antonio tonight (the Spurs won 92–85).

Truehoop had a post today about how any real nba fan likes to watch the Suns play. My money says no one enjoyed watching them play the Spurs tonight. Halfway through the fourth, Bowen got a technical after Nash clubbed him and drew blood but Bowen got called for the foul. Steve Kerr commented, “That might have been the most exciting play of the game.”

The Spurs whine more than any team in the league. Bruce Bowen and Manu Ginobili sandwiched James Jones and threw him to the ground on a loose ball, after which both of them did the bit where they hold their hands out and look at the ref in disbelief when they heard the whistle.

Steve Nash pushes off all the time when he’s dribbling.

When Bowen guards a player face-to-face on the perimeter, he puts his entire body up against theirs with his arms outstretched around them; if everyone was allowed to do that, the game couldn’t be played.

Boris Diaw is my least favorite player in the nba. To my mind, he's the stereotypical frenchman with the perpetual sneer and utter contempt for everyone else on the court. Not that all french people are like that; Tony Parker, from what I can tell, is one of the classier players in the league.

Michael Finley has exactly one move. You know the one.

Raja Bell is a jerk.

With about four minutes left in the game, the Spurs’ offensive execution disappeared, and the Suns looked scary for the first time all game.

With two minutes left and the Spurs with the ball, Phoenix intentionally fouled Duncan to put him on the line. Duncan missed both, but he got a huge block against Barbosa the next time down the court.

With 55 seconds left in the game and the Suns trailing by five, Nash tried an awkward bounce pass between the legs of Tim Duncan. The ball made it through cleanly, but it completely surprised Amare Stoudemire, who turned just in time to watch it go out of bounds. The next time down the court, trailing by seven with 30 seconds left, Nash missed a wide-open 3-pointer. In addition to the late turnover, followed by the missed shot, Nash finished the game 6 of 14 for 20 points, just 7 assists, 4 rebounds, and 6 turnovers.

So by the standards Dirk is typically held up to, Nash can’t win the mvp now, since he had a mediocre overall performance and choked at the end of a big game. And it was a big game: the Suns’ lead over San Antonio is down to two games, and the Spurs have the tie-breaker.

After the game, Charles Barkley declared the Spurs the best team in the league, because they play the best defense and also rebound, but Kenny Smith made a nice point in response: he said that the Spurs match up well against Phoenix, the Suns match up well against Dallas, and the Mavericks match up well against San Antonio. So it depends who you play.

That’s a little bit of an exaggeration, but it works in the Mavericks’ favor for what it’s worth: Phoenix will probably get knocked off by the Spurs in the second round, which would put the preferable opponent of the two (the Spurs) in the Mavericks’ playoff path. I think Jeremy’s going to say I’m crazy to prefer playing San Anotonio over Phoenix, but we’ll see.

The most important thing about tonight’s game: Dallas is now 6.5 games ahead of Phoenix with a magic number of two.

Have the Mavericks already peaked?

2007-04-03T00:10:00.000-05:00

As depressing as Sunday's loss was, I feel justified in pointing out that Dallas has still won 9 of their last 10 (90%), 26 of their last 29 (89.7%), 34 of their last 38 (89.5%), and 47 of their last 52 (90.4%).

The idea of peaking too early is obviously still scary after Detroit's meltdown in last year's playoffs following their 64 regular-season wins. But these numbers suggest that if Dallas already peaked, their drop-off has been exceedingly slight. And, of course, the slight drop-off is when compared to the best run in the history of professional sports. So we shouldn't worry too much about Dallas yet. (Worry about Amare, perhaps, but don't worry about Dallas.)

To come at it from another angle, it's true that Dallas wasn't able to match their undefeated February with an undefeated March. (See my earlier post for their month-by-month record.) However, they did finish out March at a healthy 13-2 (86.7%), which means you could say that for the past two months they averaged one loss per month.

To move to another point, if the best thing that's happened to the Mavericks in the past month is the distance they've gained on Phoenix in the standings, the second best thing that's happened is the distance the Spurs have placed between themselves and the Jazz. The thought that San Antonio could take care of Phoenix in the playoffs without Dallas ever having to see them is extremely appealing to me. If you'd hate to get beat by the Spurs in the playoffs, you'd really hate to get beat by the Suns.

Getting angry

2007-04-01T16:48:00.000-05:00

5:48pm ET
Remember last season in the playoffs when Tim Thomas blew Dirk a kiss, and Dirk went off for 50 points? Well, he just got undercut by Shawn Marion on a jump-shot, and he looks pretty angry. My money says, with Dallas down 10 and seven minutes left, here’s where we’ll find out what he’s made of––if he gets back in the game.

6:39pm ET
And...Dirk did, basically, absolutely nothing. A couple of offensive rebounds, a couple of missed shots, and a little bit of hobbling around the court. His sprained ankle was a nice complement to Josh Howard’s busted forehead, as the Suns literally added injury to insult.

And whatever you think of Dirk’s awful shooting game (21 points on 6/18 with 6 rebounds and 6 assists), Dallas has a far scarier statistic to reckon with: in their past two games, Stoudemire and Marion have combined to shoot 41 of 54 (75.9%) against the Mavericks.

Last game, Dallas made up for their porous defense and mediocre shooting with 27 offensive rebounds, miraculously taking the game down to the wire in overtime despite a huge deficit in field goal percentage. Today the rebounding was even, and Dallas didn’t have a prayer.

Just for kicks, here are the Suns’ player-by-player field goals today, from best to worst:

Marion: 8/10 (80%)
Stoudemire: 10/13 (76.9%)
Diaw: 6/9 (66.7%)
Nash: 7/11 (63.6%)
Barbosa: 10/17 (58.8%)
Jones: 2/4 (50%)
Bell: 3/7 (42.9%)

So seven different Suns shot, and only Raja Bell hit fewer than 50%. And Bell’s makes were all 3-pointers, which means he still managed 9 points on just 7 shot attempts.

You can’t really even say that any of the Suns was particularly dominant; everyone on the team scored more or less whenever they wanted. And it wasn’t just off assists from Nash (who had a less-than-gaudy 11); Amare and Diaw posted up one-on-one and regularly got layups.

Dallas put up some nice numbers themselves for most of the game to stayed competetive, but it’s obviously a rare night that anyone can beat the Suns without getting stops.

The only consolation I can see is that Dampier, who had 11 offensive rebounds the last time these teams played, was out of the lineup. That left Dallas with only DeSagana Diop, which meant they played 22 minutes without a true center in the lineup. A lot of the easy buckets Amare and Diaw got were on mismatches agains the likes of Jason Terry. But they also scored easily enough when Diop was in, so that hardly explains away the problem.

Here’s my thought: maybe if the two teams meet in the playoffs, Kevin Willis––who has the biggest biceps in the history of the NBA––will break Amare’s arm going for a block; if Dallas doesn’t figure something out defensive––or else utterly dominate the offensive boards––that might be their best shot at beating these guys.

One Crazy Recap

2007-03-30T17:00:00.000-05:00

A few signs suggest that the Mavericks-Suns matchup this Sunday might not be as exciting as we would have hoped. The first is that Avery is considering benching both Dirk and Howard with ankle sprains tonight against New York, and based on the way he's talking, we might not be surprised if he sits them against Phoenix as well. After all, Dallas’ seven-game lead over the Suns with 11 left to play appears safe enough that Avery can avoid giving Phoenix a chance to gain any psychological momentum over the Mavericks with a hard-fought win this weekend.

On top of that, the recap of the Suns’ loss to Golden State last night might suggest that they aren’t sweating the rest of the season either.

Three points in the story caught my attention.

First, the article picked on Phoenix for their porous defense: “And with every open shot the Phoenix Suns allowed, the Pacific Division champions exposed what's probably their biggest flaw heading into the postseason.”

While that may be true (especially since they showed the same problem in losing to Sacramento the other night), this is essentially the same kind of thing people were thinking about the Mavericks after their loss to the Warriors. It was a bad night for Phoenix, but Golden State is one of those teams that gets hot once in awhile. No sense in blowing this loss out of proportion.

Second, I love this quote and comment about Don Nelson: “ ‘It doesn't matter that we almost blew a lead,’ said Nelson, who used his league-high 36th different starting lineup. ‘The only thing that is important is that we got a win that we needed against a good team.’ ” Huge offensive bursts? (the Warriors scored 45 in the first quarter.) Blown leads? 36 starting lineups in one season? Does any of this sound familiar to any Mavericks fans?

A third point may just bust the balloon of what could have shaped up to be a great game this weekend. D'Antoni watched his bench overcome almost all of a 25-point second-half deficit, but even as it got close in the final minutes, he didn’t bother to put Nash, Marion, or Stoudemire back in. His quote after the game was patronizing and telling:

We've got to be a little careful," Suns coach Mike D'Antoni said. "They're fighting for the eighth spot, and we're not. Sure, we're trying to stay ahead of San Antonio, but when they come out like that and have that juice, and the crowd is behind them, it would have been hard for anybody."

For a coach who had just conceded a late-season loss to a bad team, I take the comment as an admission that the Suns aren't sweating the rest off the season. This seems odd since home-court advantage against the Spurs is at stake (with the Suns up only two games), but otherwise it’s hard to explain leaving Nash on the bench after calling a time-out with a minute left and his team trailing by only six.

The really depressing thing about this is that the Suns are the only reason Dallas has for, well, trying the rest of the season. Granted, Avery wants to keep the team in good playing form, but sitting key players in a game or two might be in his plans for preparing for playoff action.

If this is the case, 70 wins is looking like a remote possibility. Which means that all we have to look forward to are the playoffs. I feel nervous already.

What two-game losing streak?

2007-03-25T19:31:00.000-05:00

The Hawks game today wasn’t televised in Boston, so here’s my box score analysis. It doesn’t look like the Mavericks made it very easy on themselves, completely blowing a 20-point lead before getting the win. A few gaudy stats from the game:

Dirk, Howard, and Terry combined for 83 points (28/28/27) on 29/46 (63%) FG. Of the three, Dirk had the worst shooting performance, hitting only 10 of 17. Unfortunately, however, the Mavericks’ top three logged 41, 39, and 39 minutes, a heavy workload for the fifth game of a six-game road trip and a game against a bad team.
The Hawks shot 49 free throws (making 40) on 32 Mavericks fouls. That’s an average of 3.6 fouls for each of the 9 Mavericks who played at least a full minute.
Jason Terry had 3 steals but 8 turnovers.
Devin Harris, after big offensive showings in three of the last four games (22/17/18), only managed 6 points today; however, he still managed to fill his share of the box score with 6 assists, 4 steals, 3 rebounds, only 1 turnover…and 6 fouls.

Perhaps the biggest news today for the Mavericks is that Phoenix lost to the Kings this afternoon. Mike Bibby scored 35 and hit 9/12 three-pointers, including two in the last couple of minutes to seal the win. Phoenix dropped to 52–17, which sets them on a pace to win a modest (for them) 60.8 games.

More importantly, Phoenix is now six full games behind Dallas with 13 to go for both teams. That means Dallas (58–11) only needs an 8–5 record to guarantee the top seed in the west. If Dallas can win their next three against the Hornets, Bucks, and Knicks (combined 86–120 record), then a win at Phoenix on April 1 could make for their fourth separate double-digit win streak this season. Plus, it would clinch the tie-breaker for Dallas over Phoenix and reduce the Mavericks’ magic number for clinching the west over Phoenix to 2.

So now, riding a 6-game win streak, the Mavericks’ win streaks for the season are 17, 13, 12, 8, 6, 1, and 1. Since Dec. 13 they have won 44 of 48 (91.67%), or 11 of every 12 games for the past 101 days. Since Nov. 9 their rate is not much worse, having won 58 of 65 (89.2%). Current pace overall is 68.96 wins.

Staring into the Void

2007-03-25T01:16:00.000-05:00

Going to the Mavericks–Celtics game Friday night at the Banknorth Garden (how badly do I wish the Celtics still played at the original Garden?), it was interesting to see someone wearing a Celtics Jersey with “Durant” on the back. It really showed how sad things have gotten for Boston, that the best thing for Celtics fans to get excited about is losing games so they can get a top draft pick for the future.

It also highlights something remarkable about this year’s Mavericks: not only are they not thinking about future draft picks, but when the whole lineup is healthy, it’s difficult to even point to a place where they would want to improve. Sure Austin Croshere has his problems, but then how good do you need your tenth man to be?

All this leads to the awful predicament that the Mavericks find themselves in.

Let me start with an interview Bill Simmons did a few months back with Malcolm Gladwell, a bestselling author who is especially interested in why people do what they do. One of the questions he takes on is, “Why don't people work hard when it's in their best interest to do so?”

The (short) answer is that it's really risky to work hard, because then if you fail you can no longer say that you failed because you didn't work hard. It's a form of self-protection. I swear that's why [pro golfer Phil] Mickelson has that almost absurdly calm demeanor. If he loses, he can always say: Well, I could have practiced more, and maybe next year I will and I'll win then. When Tiger loses, what does he tell himself? He worked as hard as he possibly could. He prepared like no one else in the game and he still lost. That has to be devastating, and dealing with that kind of conclusion takes a very special and rare kind of resilience.

Even though, as the commercials say, there’s always next year, looking at this season’s Mavericks suggests that next year can’t get a whole lot better. As an organization this season, it seems that the Mavericks have literally done their best, putting together an almost perfect season with a well-balanced team that has already tied or set records for most wins in a 45-game span and in a 55-game span. It’s hard to imagine them preparing more thoroughly or performing more successfully.

That’s why Dirk loses sleep when the Mavericks lose to Phoenix. He can’t say the rest of his team wasn’t good enough, like Lebron might say after a loss if he were really honest; Dirk probably has both the best teammates and the best coach in the league. And he can’t say that he just needs to work more on his game, because he practices harder than most and has improved year after year; at 28, he’s at the age where most players hit their prime, and it’s hard to see his individual game improving much in the coming seasons. Dirk can’t say that his team lacks experience, because last year’s run through to the finals (through San Antonio and Phoenix) shows otherwise. And if he’s tempted to tell himself that the team just needs more time together, the Mavericks’ gaudy 57–11 record ironically suggests instead that they are at their ceiling.

Or Dirk might be tempted, if Dallas loses in the playoffs to Phoenix or San Antonio, to say simply that the competition was even more extraordinary, and that losing to them is no real disgrace. But as good as the Suns and Spurs are, both teams are flawed––San Antonio with its aging lineup and Phoenix with its poor defense. Dallas is younger than the one and better balanced than the other.

All of which means, if the Mavericks lose this season, both Dirk as an individual and the team as a group have no real excuse except that their best wasn’t good enough. As Gladwell points out, that is truly a terrifying prospect, and there aren’t many people who have the nerve to face it.

Coming up Roses

2007-03-22T10:10:00.000-05:00

You know, at the Garden. Get it?

Sweet! (only) Sixteen . . .

2007-03-20T23:19:00.000-05:00

Notes and thoughts after the win over NY:

The Cavs lost to the Bobcats tonight, which you have to figure Lebron isn’t going to be very happy about. He managed 37 points, but he only shot 12/31 (38.7%), which (to put it in perspective) is just barely better than Adam Morrison’s percentage for the season. So we should probably expect James to explode against Dallas.

On the other hand, let’s remember that Cleveland just lost to the Bobcats.

As the season winds down, JKnott sent me an email recently about the Mavericks’ seasons series against different teams, and I thought I'd check on where they stand now. Since Dallas beat Detroit and New York this week, Utah and the Clippers are the only teams remaining with a chance to join Golden State in winning the season series against Dallas this year. Those two teams, along with the Spurs and Suns, are the only teams who still might join the Warriors in beating Dallas twice.

It’s hard to deny that Dallas has had some very good luck related to other teams’ injuries. In addition to Phoenix losing 3 games in a row when Nash sat out with a bad back, here are the breaks Dallas has caught in just their past 14 games: they played Houston before they got Yao back, Miami just after Wade got injured, Cleveland without Larry Hughes, the Lakers just before they got Odom back, Detroit without Chauncey Billups, and now New York missing half of their best six players (who total an average of 42.1 points, 21.2 rebounds, and 8.5 assists).

What’s really important is that Dallas kept its focus and won all of those games (unlike, say, Phoenix who lost to Detroit even after Billups went down). But still, those six games were presumably all a lot easier than they would have been otherwise.

If the Nuggets would suddenly go on, say, a ten-game losing streak, then Dallas would have a chance to go the whole season without losing a single game to a non-playoff team in either conference. I wonder if any team has ever actually done that before?

Current pace: 68.3 wins.
To clinch the west: 12–4.
To win 65: 10–6.
To win 61 (new franchise record): 6-10.

And 70 wins, though improbable, could still happen.

Sizing up the Competition

2007-03-18T01:11:00.001-05:00

After a week of drama and worrying, we're back where we started. San Antonio and Phoenix each had a two-game losing streak to match Dallas’ (see my comments on the Suns’ losses), and the Mavericks’ lead in the standings appears safe again. So what does Dallas need to do to win the first seed?

Well first of all, since Phoenix is five games back in the loss column, Dallas obviously could clench by losing four or fewer games, meaning they would go 14-4 at worst for the rest of the season. If Dallas beat Phoenix April 1, then the Mavericks would gain a game in the standings and win the tie-breaker against Phoenix, which means they would only need to go 11-6 in the rest of their games (finishing at worst 65-17) to win the first seed.

But like Dallas, Phoenix can win lots of games in a hurry. And if they did––and if Dallas struggled for some reason––things could get tight, and tie-breakers could matter.

If Phoenix beat Dallas April 1, then the season series would be tied, and the tie-breaker would shift to the team with the best record against the western conference. So far Dallas is 33-8 against the west, Phoenix 25-11. Because Phoenix has a lot more games left against the western conference (in fact all 16 of their remaining games are against the west), it's a big stretch to predict how this tie-break would turn out. Assuming a loss to Phoenix on April 1, Dallas would have to win 9 of the other 10 games against the west to guarantee the tiebreak. But if Dallas played that well they'd almost certainly win the conference outright anyway (remember, they only need to go 14-4 overall), so it probably doesn't matter.

The next tie-break (if Dallas and Phoenix finish with the same record against the west) is record against western conference playoff teams; right now Dallas is 14-7, Phoenix 10-8. But those numbers could change depending on whether Golden State holds on to the eighth playoff seed, so they're also not worth worrying too much about.

Looking at the rest of the games for both teams:

Overall Dallas has 18 games left with 12 on the road, and Phoenix has 16 games with 8 on the road. Phoenix plays all 16 against the west, while Dallas plays 11 against the west, 7 against the east.

However, Dallas does get Utah and San Antonio at home, whereas Phoenix has to play both of them on the road. Dallas, however, has to play at Phoenix, as well as at Detroit and Cleveland as a part of a 6-game road trip, and then at Denver. So Dallas appears to have six tough games left: Spurs, at Suns, Jazz, at Nuggets, at Pistons, and at Cavs. Phoenix’s top opponents are perhaps just barely tougher: Mavericks, at Spurs, at Jazz, at Rockets, Denver, Lakers, and at Lakers.

Just to keep things in perspective, Dallas could lose every game remaining against a current playoff team, and if they won the rest they'd still finish 64-18. In that case, Phoenix would have to finish 15-1 to take the top seed.

So if Dallas loses the top seed, it will be the least of their worries. Basically, the only thing that could stop the Mavericks from finishing the season with the league's best record would be a free-fall into medocrity that would appear to dash our title hopes anyway.

Incidentally, right now nba.com has the Spurs listed as the 4 seed behind Utah, even though the Spurs have the better record. I thought they were supposed to fix that this year, so that it can't be in Houston's best interest to drop from the fifth to the sixth seed so they can draw a team with a worse record in the first round. It also would mean, of course, that Dallas would have the best record but still have to play the #2 and the #3 team to get to the finals. Anyone know what's going on there?

Take a deep breath

2007-03-16T23:08:00.000-05:00

It's true it was only the Celtics, but still it’s nice to see Dirk take what was shaping up to be a disastrous performance and turn it into 30/12/4 on 50% shooting. In about 13 minutes of playing time starting with 3:41 left in the third, Dirk went for 26 points and 7 rebounds on 8/10 FG and 10/11 FT. His 13-footer sealed the win by giving Dallas a 5-point lead with 4.8 seconds left.

As to the other night, I don't find it that hard to forgive the missed free throws and the missed jump shots at the buzzer––those things just happen sometimes, and Dirk hits the big free throws at the ends of games far more than he misses them. (Buzzer-beating field goals are another matter.) Besides, Dirk came up with huge defensive plays and rebounds at the end of both overtimes that kept Dallas in the game. And for all his heroics, Nash missed a shot in the last 40 seconds of each overtime (the first blocked by Dirk!) that would have practically sealed the win for his team. Turns out no one's perfect.

What scares me about Dirk is the late tech, which means not only that he gave Phoenix an extra point with two minutes left in double OT, but also that he was running down the court yelling at a ref when he should have been getting back to play defense.

In appropriately symbolic fashion, Dirk’s 11/28 shooting against Phoenix dipped him just under (as in, 2 FGM under) 50% shooting for the season. My hunch is, if it’s back above 50% after Detroit, Dallas will have won that game.

The latest numbers on what is still a dream season:

Current winning pace is 68 games, a total Phoenix (since they lost tonight to the Pistons) can’t get to even if they finish out undefeated.
Dallas has still won 39 of 43 (90.7%).
Not counting the current one-game streak (no way to know how long it will go), Dallas’ average win streak for the season is an astonishing 8.8 games.
Dallas can top their best record in franchise history by finishing just 8–10.

Clearly, Sunday’s game at Detroit will be an(other) important test.

Three games back in the loss column

2007-03-14T23:21:00.000-05:00

Email from my brother: “Your post tomorrow needs to emphasize Dirk's laying an egg in 4th quarter and overtime. Forget the pick and roll. Suns shouldn't be in this game.”

Dirk's line looked pretty nice tonight, but I'm not going to repeat it here, because timing is everything –– as in late-game missed free throws, a stupid foul, a stupider tech, and back-to-back misses of shots to tie/win.

Mark April 1 on the calendar. Home-court in the playoffs might be on the line.

What “defines” a basketball player?

2007-03-14T00:00:00.000-05:00

Seeing as how we're all thinking about Phoenix today, I want to raise a point of dispute with Eric Neel that I didn't really touch on the other day. My response to what he wrote involves, among other things, the best game Dallas has ever played against the Suns. Forgive me for getting melodramatic, but I loved last year's playoffs.

Specifically, Neel says that Dirk still doesn't have a “defining moment.”

There's no way to know exactly what Neel means, but I can think of at least two moments from last season's playoffs that emphatically define Dirk for Mavericks fans: one involved Manu Ginobili, the other Tim Thomas.

Dirk's Game 7 Layup

The first moment was Dirk's game 7 layup. The fact that every Dallas fan (and really, every genuine nba fan) who just read that sentence knows exactly what I'm referring to ought to be enough to label it a defining moment. Dallas, playing at San Antonio, had just blown a big fourth-quarter advantage, Ginibili's 3-pointer had just given the Spurs their first lead of the game with 32 seconds left, and Dirk was being guarded by Bowen, who has always given him trouble. Also consider that Dirk's Mavericks had never once bested San Antonio in regular-season record or gotten farther than them in the playoffs.

Dirk's drive was strong, and after he lay the shot on the rim the world stopped for about three quarters of a second while the ball spun there before it dropped in. (You can see the replay at about the 3-minute mark of this youtube clip.) For every fan who had watched Dallas lose to San Antonio again and again, and who had watched Dirk struggle to come up with the big shot, that was about as good as it gets. Dirk hit the and-one free throw, and then as Dallas routed the Spurs in the overtime period, we all knew a new era was beginning for our team.

Fifty at Phoenix

But even though Dirk's layup turned in his team's favor what may have been the best second-round playoff series ever, it was only the second round. But that's ok––Dirk probably topped it the next series, beginning with a confrontation with Tim Thomas.

With 3:27 left in the third quarter of game 5 (series tied 2-2), Thomas hit his 6th 3-pointer of the game to give Phoenix a seven-point lead. Dirk was looking at just 21 points (6/16 FG) and 4 rebounds, and Dallas was looking at another crushing playoff loss: if they had lost game 5 at home, the Mavericks would have gone to Phoenix facing elimination in game 6.

But late in the quarter (right after that 3-pointer, if memory serves), Thomas glared at Dirk during a dead ball, mouthed the word “p***y,” and then blew him a kiss. The scene was simultaneously hilarious and utterly infuriating for a Mavericks fan. No self-respecting player can take something like that from an opponent.

So what was Dirk's response? First, he scored 7 points in the next two minutes as part of a 10-0 Dallas run that helped the Mavericks close the quarter with a one-point lead. And then, with the game (and likely the series) on the line to start the fourth, Dirk went for 22 fourth-quarter points (to Phoenix's 20) and turned the game into a rout.

Altogether, In 14 1/2 minutes of playing time after the blown kiss, Dirk went for 29 points (8/10 FG, 10/10 FT), and 8 rebounds, finishing with 50 points, 12 rebounds, 3 assists, and only 1 turnover. I would bet there are a fair number of all-stars who would be proud to have a game that good at any point in their career, and Dirk did it to bag his franchise's first ever finals appearance.

I think for the time being, it's safe to call that Dirk's defining moment.

So what gives?

Which brings us back to Neel’s article, where I wonder if he's really saying what he means. The implication is that what Dirk did in those two series is effectively annulled by mediocre play in the finals.

Maybe so, but if Neel's real problem with the Mavericks is that they lost, perhaps he should just say so.

By my reckoning, Dirk stepped up on the road to win game 7 of one of the greatest playoff series I'll ever see, and then he scored 50 in what must be one of the best conference finals performances in history. So all I can figure is that Neel basically is saying that Dirk's not allowed to have a defining moment because he doesn't have a ring. But if that's the case, he should just say he doesn't love Dirk and the Mavericks because they didn't win the championship when they had the chance. All this talk about boring style and lack of defining moments, as far as I can tell, is just a red herring.

The irony, of course, is that it's actually Neel himself––not the Mavericks––that has nothing interesting of substance to contribute. Neel doesn't like Dallas, but the only real weakness he can find is that they blew the championship last year. Problem is (as Marc Stein noted yesterday) that everyone––including Dirk––has been saying that constantly for months now. That's hard to write about. So, lacking any real angle on why not to like Dallas, Neel makes one up.

Fortunately, nothing Neel could write really matters for Dallas fans. The NBA is an entertainment industry, and the Mavericks have put on a spectacular show for their fans the past two seasons. If that's not enough for Neel and fans from other towns, then I can't imagine that anything but a set of rings will change the way they feel.

Thanks, Marc

2007-03-13T13:15:00.000-05:00

Marc Stein's daily dime story on Dallas today was great, and refreshing. I especially like the quote from Stackhouse:

"The first four games was the longest part of the season," Mavs swingman Jerry Stackhouse told me recently, referring to Dallas' 0-4 start. "Since then, the season has kind of breezed by."

JKnott and I were discussing yesterday how much longer Dallas can handle the kind of intensity Avery Johnson is holding them under. But I'm not sure we took into consideration what Stein brings up: winning almost every single game, as it turns out, is quite a lot of fun, and I'm sure it makes Avery's yelling a lot easier to take.

L.

2007-03-12T22:06:00.000-05:00

This is the espn shot chart for the first half of the third quarter of tonight's game. See all those little blue circles around the basket on the right side? Those are shots the Warriors made. See all those x's? (Well, ok, I guess there's three of them.) Those are their misses.

Incidentally, a really bizarre stat: the Mavericks utterly and thoroughly dominated the Warriors on the boards tonight, 50-28. For the game, Dallas pulled down almost as many rebounds of their own shots (20) as the Warriors did (23), and on the Warriors' end Dallas outrebounded them 30-5. That was about the only thing Dallas did well tonight.

See the comments for the chat a couple of us had during the game.

Outmatched

2007-03-11T21:59:00.000-05:00

9:59pm (ET)

Kobe Bryant's biannual quest to embarrass the Mavericks in LA seems to have ended with 3:09 left in the first quarter. Kobe had already scored 13 while Dallas was missing its jump-shots, and the Lakers had jumped to a 20-13 lead. Dallas fans were taking a collective deep breath.

From that point, though, Kobe missed 4 straight shots and Dallas outscored LA 28-10 up to 5:50 left in the second. Then Smush Parker (the Lakers' second best player in uniform!) got tossed at 9:28. And then, 19 seconds later, Kwame Brown (second best of those remaining?) airballed a free throw.

I don't think it's a stretch to predict that this will turn ugly.

I love that the Mavericks' post defenders aren't afraid to use their fouls this game. The Lakers have gotten the ball near the basket a number of times, and the Dallas defenders have almost without exception forced them to shoot free throws.

Here's hoping this post doesn't need a revision before the night's done.

The Mavs versus What Sports Fans Want

2007-03-10T00:28:00.000-05:00

Oh boy. Eric Neel, if you were hoping to stir up a hornets’ nest of desperately defensive Mavericks fans, this was indeed the way to do it.

While I love my team, it's true that Dirk's not a Jordan or a Bird or a Dr. J. Dirk's game has far more substance than style, not unlike Duncan's (though surely Dirk has a little more style), whereas Jordan and Erving shared a captivating combination of athleticism and grace, and Jordan and Bird had an edge to their attitude. Dirk, on the other hand, comes across as simply hard-working and kind of normal.

It seems to me, though, that style isn't the real reason people like Neel don't care about the Mavericks. After all, Dirk's shot is beautiful, Terry plays with a kind of infectious glee, Howard explodes for big plays often enough to keep you guessing, and Stackhouse had enough attitude to knock Shaquille O'Neal into the stands during last year's finals.

I think, instead, that people don't care because they don't see in Dirk (and thus in the team) what they would call Greatness.

My impression is that there are two totally different reasons for caring about a team, depending on whether it's the home team or another city's team. For home-town fans, the point is participation in the process of growth and development of excellence; home-town fans revel in their team's rise from mediocrity to success, and emotional energy they invest early on leads to a great payoff when their team finally wins it all. This is why Dallas fans are ecstatic, if a little guarded, this season.

But if fans from another city are going to embrace a team, they're not interested in development or perserverance. If a fan looks outside of his own city for a team to love, he's looking for an association not with excellence, but with Greatness.

Neel actually uses the word great to describe the Mavericks, but I think he's really talking about what I would call excellence. Excellence is about success, but Greatness attains a kind of transcendence. Excellence is something you work for over time via trial and error, but Greatness is an eternal quality you either have or don't have. Fans want not just a winner, but a Winner.

There are some stipulations, of course. It's ok if your (lack of) team prevents you from winning a title (Lebron, early MJ), as long as you get one eventually. And it's ok to lose occasionally in the face of another instance of Greatness –– so for example, neither Magic nor Bird could win every title during the 80's, but that was ok because each was facing an equally unstoppable opponent.

And if Dirk had gone for 30/10 every game of the finals last year and had lost a close series (without the opening 2 7/8 game lead), my money says people outside of Dallas would see the Mavericks differently this year.

But to play like a mortal, as Dirk did, is virtually unforgiveable in the minds of most NBA fans. He had his chance to win the hearts of the nation, and he didn't do it. If Dirk (and Dallas) were Great, people assume, they would have won –– or at least not have blown a huge advantage to cough up the series. And if they aren't Great, then most people have other places they'd rather direct their devotion.

The notion of Greatness is why Wade is the darling of the NBA, because his finals performance had a sort of super-human quality that people want to grasp hold of. The notion of Greatness is also why Peyton Manning was so despised before he won the Super Bowl –– and I'll wager a degree of scorn will linger among many for the times he failed.

That leaves the Mavericks with a daunting task, if their fans are ever going to enjoy the adoration of the NBA. Last year's failure will not be quickly forgotten, even if Dallas takes the title this year. Having a chip on their shoulder might be a good way to win, but as long as people remember their failure, there's no mystique to capture the imagination, as Neel puts it. My guess is it will take at least back-to-back titles, maybe even three in five years for the stigma to pass.

In the NBA, it seems, Greatness is an all-or-nothing prospect, and apathy from fans is worth about the same as contempt.

Just in case you missed it . . .

2007-03-07T15:11:00.000-05:00

Espn.com cites the Elias Sports Bureau:

The Mavericks made history on Tuesday night -- not just team history, not just NBA history, but major North American pro sports history. With their 102-89 victory over the Nets, the Mavericks became the first team in NBA history to earn 51 wins in a 56-game span within a single season.

No team in the NHL or in Major League Baseball has done such a thing, either. (And in the NFL, no team has ever amassed 51 wins over any multiple-season stretch of 56 regular-season games.)

Just to be fair, that kind of a stretch isn't really realistic in baseball, where the best regular season team usually wins 100-105 games (61.7%–64.8%), whereas the NBA almost always has at least one team win 60 (73.2%). And in the NHL the top record of any given 82-game season is usually closer to 50 than to 60, largely because most teams end up with 10+ ties as well.

What remains, though, is something that's never been done, and that's pretty impressive even if it's only judged within NBA history.

All of which leads into Sunday's game at LA.

With the Mavericks playing so absurdly well, I can't help but think of Dec. 6, 2002, when Dallas showed up at LA with a 17-1 record and went into the fourth quarter with a 27-point lead before getting outscored 44-15 and losing by 2. LA hit 16 of 18 shots that quarter, and Dallas looked like they had forgotten how to play. It was something like the 24th straight loss at the Lakers for Dallas. In what had looked like a dream season, from that game on, I knew deep down that Dallas wasn't good enough to win the title.

It also reminds me of Dec. 20, 2005 at LA, when Kobe personally outscored dallas 62–61 in the first three quarters before sitting out the fourth quarter of the Lakers' blowout win. Dallas was 18-6 (75%) going into that game, and although it wasn't as crushing as the loss in 2002, it was still a rough one to sit through.

The Mavericks' title hopes don't quite hinge on a victory Sunday. However, I have a feeling Kobe (playing at home and televised nationally) is planning to make a statement, so maybe this would be a good time for Dallas to beat him to the punch.

GM for the Ages

2007-03-06T18:45:00.000-05:00

Maybe y'all saw the story about how Kevin McHale was ranked the #1 general manager in professional sports this week by Forbes magazine, who rated GMs according to improvement in their teams' records and certain payroll factors.

Problem is, Kevin McHale is widely recognized as one of the worst GMs in the league, particularly in light of an under-the-table deal he tried to make a few years ago that got his franchise penalized three consecutive first-round picks, a move which certainly hasn't helped the Timberwolves put new talent on the court to take advantage of Kevin Garnett's prime.

Folks in the sports media are understandably having quite a laugh at this one.

So let's contrast McHale with, say, Donnie Nelson (#40 out of 98 on the Forbes list), who has worked in various roles for Dallas since 1998 including the past four years as President of Basketball Operations. Under his watch (here I'll oversimplify several complex trades), Dallas got Dirk for Robert Traylor, got Jason Terry for Raef LaFrentz, got Jerry Stackhouse and Devin Harris for an aging Nick Van Exel, drafted Josh Howard with the 29th pick, and signed Desagana Diop and Erick Dampier as free agents.

Add to that the fact that they got Van Exel and LaFrentz for Juwan Howard and Tim Hardaway (who almost immediately retired), and that means Nelson (if I've got my facts correct) helped Dallas acquire their top 7 players from (basically) Robert Traylor, Juwan Howard, and a late-first-round draft pick.

So Forbes picked a set of numbers and allowed them to overrule common sense. I wonder what Hollinger would say about that?

(By the way, db.com took that same gibe at Hollinger today too, but since I wrote this post yesterday before I read db, I'm not plagiarizing anyone.)

Can't crack the rankings

2007-03-05T11:02:00.000-05:00

I'm kind of bitter this morning, because I submitted a comment that I thought Hollinger would practically have to post on his rankings:

I wouldn't mind so much (after all, lots of people submit these things), except for what he posted instead:

Heather (Austin)
The Mavs can match any teams' style of play. It doesn't matter if it's a solid defensive struggle or a run and gun offensive game. The Mavs can play any style of basketball and still prevail.

It's my impression that pretty much every day they post the most inane, generic comment they can find, usually having nothing specific to do with the Mavericks' most recent game.

I don't get it.

Also pretty silly was the comment they posted for the Spurs today:

Jerry (Phoenix)
The Spurs are playing their best ball and will only continue to improve as they head into the playoffs. Watch out Mavs the Spurs aren't ready to concede the best team in Texas title yet.

It's true, of course, that the playoffs are a whole new game, and no self-respecting former championship team is going to give up on championship hopes. But considering that the Mavericks are (1) toying with becoming one of the two or three best teams in NBA history and (2) showing signs only of improvement, I don't think the Spurs are in a position to concede or not concede much of anything just because they've finally strung together a decent winning streak and a had few blow-outs.

Peaking early and middle . . . how about late?

2007-03-03T16:05:00.000-05:00

Kind of quaint: glancing through an SI from January 29, they had this to say in their "Who's Hot" feature about Phoenix's play at the time:

“The sizzling Suns had won 29 of 31 –– that's 29 of 31––after thrashing the T-Wolves with a 46-point third quarter on Sunday.”

In case anyone has lost count, Dallas has now won 35 of 37.

Also, TNT pointed out something that's pretty encouraging during the Cavs game Thursday night. Here is Dallas' record by month so far this season:

November: 11–4 (7l.l%)
December: 13–3 (81.3%)
January: 14–2 (87.5%)
February: 10–0 (100%)

That means Dallas has improved every successive month of the season, with their monthly losses numbering 4, 3, 2, and then 0. Now, unfortunately Dallas can't keep improving in terms of percentage, although maybe if they lose to Orlando tonight we can count it as a February game (since it was a short month and had the all-star break) to make the pattern more consistent and give them something to shoot for.

Or they could just not lose any more games at all, in which case I don't guess anyone would care about the pattern all that much.

Either way, the constantly improving record bodes very well –– and suggests that people who worried about peaking too soon didn't anticipate how good the Mavericks could get. Of course, there's plenty of season left, and Dallas has some tough games in the next couple of weeks.

All in all, though, the constant improvement suggests that this year will be different than the Mavericks' break-out season in 2002-03. That year, they started out with a team-record 14 straight wins and had a gaudy record for most of the year. I don't have the exact figures, but in early March of 2003, I sent an email to a friend (JKnott) noting that Dallas' road winning percentage was 70%, which was equal to the next best team's (San Antonio's) overall winning percentage. (For what it's worth, right now Dallas' road winning percentage is 78%, which is better than any other team's overall record, and only a half game behind the next best home winning percentage [Phoenix's] in the league.)

Unfortunately, despite a great winning percentage––and a great point differential––early on, the '02–'03 team trailed off toward the end of the season and somehow made a team-record 60 wins feel extremely disappointing.

That year no one in the league really had much respect for the (Nash-led) Mavericks, and for good reasons––they were coached by Don Nelson, they were soft (except for Nick Van Exel), they lacked a presence at center (remember Raef LaFrentz?), they relied heavily on jump-shooting, and they didn't defend anyone. Sure, in the playoffs they hung 84 first-half points on Sacramento one game and then took San Antonio to six games in the western conference finals even though Dirk sat out the last two with an injured ankle. But they didn't really seem to have the goods, and we all feared constantly when the bottom would fall out.

This season that's still a possibility, but the feel now is quite different.

Incidentally, the cover story from that January 29 Sports Illustrated was about how Peyton Manning finally got his team to the Super Bowl. After that cover he got them the trophy as well. As it turns out, things change, teams improve, and some superstars just need time to learn how to get the job done.

Neurotic

2007-03-02T18:06:00.000-05:00

Marc Stein said this about the Dallas-Cleveland game, a comment that is too true (at least of me):

James almost single-handedly derailed a juggernaut that freaks out its fans if it doesn't win in a walk.

The game included Lebron making what I would describe as the best game dunk I've ever seen. (My brother thinks I need some perspective, but I'm not sure.)

But don't worry –– Stein still takes Dirk as his MVP.

Wow.

2007-02-26T23:13:00.000-05:00

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.

Rollin’ Along

2007-02-24T23:32:00.000-05:00

I didn't get to watch the Denver game, but on a night when both 'Melo and Iverson had nice lines offensively (34 and 26 points on combined 22/41 shooting), Dallas still won by 20 to log 19 consecutive home wins. And Dirk (31/11/8) toyed with a triple-double again, which is always nice to see. (He had more assists than all the team's guards put together, which isn't so nice to see.)

It'll be interesting to see if Dallas still loses ground in the Hollinger Ranking to San Antonio, who beat Seattle by 31. But I don't think anyone in their right mind would rather be San Antonio than Dallas at this point.

Some updated figures for the Mavericks' season:

Three win streaks of at least 11 games.
Four win streaks of at least 8 games.
Average win streak: 7.7 games.
Average streak after any given game: 4.7 wins. (To put that in perspective, the Spurs' best win streak this year is 5 games.)
If Dallas had lost twice as many games as they have, they would be 37-18, a half game behind San Antonio with the third best record in the NBA.
To match their best record in team history (60-22), Dallas needs to close out the season 14-13.
Current pace: 69-13.

I'm always terrified of presuming anything for the rest of the season, but it's like someone online (can't remember who) wrote recently: this is a dream season, so it's probably worth celebrating when things are this good.

Well, at least he's mentally tough...

2007-02-22T13:32:00.000-05:00

OK, so Wade is legitimately scrapped for tonight's game.

On the one hand, a dislocated shoulder is a legitimate injury, I have to admit. I'm sure he really should be resting tonight.

On the other hand, a *wheelchair*?! The news story says that's how Wade got to the locker room from the bench.

Just to put this in perspective, a middle-aged guy at my church here in Boston dislocated his shoulder while skiing a couple of weeks ago. Not only did he not wait and call for a paramedic, but he popped the shoulder back into socket by himself and kept skiing for the rest of the day. Turns out he was out with a friend he didn't get to see very often, and he wasn't going to let the injury ruin his day.

Now, it was an unwise move by the fellow from my church, and it'll probably slow the healing of his arm, so I'm not sure saying Wade should have kept playing last night. But a wheelchair? I hope Bill Walton's working the game tonight––I want to hear what he has to say about this.

A self-respecting man can leave the court on a stretcher. He can be helped off with his arms around people on either side if he's got a bad leg injury. But no self-respecting man (and world-class athlete at that) can ever go from the bench to the locker room in a wheelchair. Especially not with a shoulder injury.

Resting on Regular-Season Laurels

2007-02-20T20:44:00.000-05:00

Jeremy (my brother) asked me to look up how teams with the best record in the NBA have fared historically in the playoffs, and the results are pretty encouraging for Dallas. I focused on the 26 seasons the Mavericks have been a team. (When two teams tied for the best record, I followed the one that went the farthest in the playoffs.)

Of those 26 teams:

14 won the championship
2 lost in the nba finals
8 lost in the conference finals
1 lost in the second round
And, in the ultimate shame, the '93-'94 Seattle Supersonics finished 63-19 and lost to Denver (42-40) in the first round.

Now, since the best regular-season team only wins the championship a little over half the time, it appears that simply having the best record (relative to the rest of the league) doesn't mean much. However, when you look at how many wins the top team has, there ends up being a pretty strong correlation between regular-season wins and championships.

The Stats:

The top regular-season teams that failed to win the championship ranged from 58 to 64 wins, averaging 62.08 wins. The top teams that went on to win the championship, on the other hand, ranged from 60 to 72 wins, averaging 64.85. Teams that had the best record in the NBA but won 63 or fewer games only went on to win the title in 6 of 17 cases; but no one in the past 26 seasons who has won at least 65 games in the regular season has failed to win the championship.

If you check records all the way back to the founding of the NBA, 10 of the 11 teams to win at least 65 games have won the championship. ('67-'68 was the first season with 82 games, so before that it was pretty tough to win 60.) The only loser was the '72-'73 Celtics, who lost to the Knicks (57-25) in the conference finals.

So while winning more games than everyone else doesn't seem to guarantee anything, winning lots and lots of games appears to mean quite a lot. Apparently you can win 63 on a fluke, but not 65. If Dallas can manage 66-67 wins this year, there's little doubt they should take the championship.

Incidentally, of those seven Mavs-era teams that won at least 65 games, six also had their top player receive the regular-season MVP (and, in each case, the finals MVP as well): Moses Malone for Philly in '82-'83, Bird for Boston in '85-'86, Magic for LA in '86-'87, Jordan for Chicago in '91-'92 and '95-'96, and Shaq for LA in '99-'00. The one exception was '96-'97, when the Bulls won 69 games but Karl Malone was named MVP after averaging 27.4 points on 55% FG, 9.9 rebounds, and 4.5 assists, plus was named to the NBA all-defensive first team while leading Utah to a 64-18 record.

So, if Dallas gets to 66 wins (and beats Phoenix by at least a couple), history also suggests that Dirk takes home the regular-season MVP.

A few other facts about the finals:

The last three teams with the best regular-season record have all lost in the conference finals.
Teams that topped the league at least once without ever winning a championship in the Mavs era include Portland, Phoenix (twice), Seattle, and Indiana. All four of these teams also reached the finals at least once––although curiously, Portland, Seattle, and Indiana each only reached the finals in a different year, when they didn't have the best record.
From 1993-1994 thru 2002-2003 every NBA championship team had either Robert Horry or Steve Kerr on the roster (from Wikipedia).
In the past seven years, the only team to win the NBA championship whose coach hadn't already won an NBA championship was Larry Brown –– and he had won an NCAA championship with Kansas in 1988.
In the past eight years, either Shaq or Duncan has made it to the finals every season. Their respective teams won the championship every time except 2004, when the Pistons beat the Lakers.

All Star Snooze

2007-02-18T23:57:00.000-05:00

Well, usually I try to write something with a little bit of substance (if a sports blog can have substance), but the only thing on this weekend was the All-Star game, so I'll write about that instead.

How about this: Dirk, KG, and Duncan as a starting front line. I would wager that's the best three power forwards to take the court at the same time since Bird, Barkley, and Malone played on the USA Dream Team in 1992 (although Chuck Daly might not have ever played those three simultaneously). And . . . D'Antoni played them 16, 15, and 14 minutes, making them three of the four least-used players on the West squad.

Incidentally, Mike D'Antoni's first substitution? Shawn Marion for Dirk Nowitzki, four minutes into the game. I wonder if Dirk stared D'Antoni down as he walked to the bench. If it was me, I'd have been furious.

Not that any of that's surprising, or even wrong. Neither Dirk nor Duncan is particular well-suited for All-Star games –– they're all substance and no style, and there were plenty of other guys on the court who had both. They showed a clip of Duncan and Parker on the bench, where Parker asked, "Did my alley-oop pass surprise you?" Duncan answered, "No, I just can't jump."

Needless to say, Amare Stoudemire and Shawn Marion thrived in this game, combining for 47 points and 17 rebounds on 23/37 shooting. For all the griping about Phoenix getting more All-Stars than Dallas, Amare and Shawn are the kind of guys that this game's all about. Maybe Howard will be some day. Dirk, though he really has to be put on the team for the sake of the game's credibility, doesn't quite fit in.

Overall, the game was pretty dull for a Mavericks fan, and I'm guessing it will continue to be for a long time. It's unlikely Dirk will ever take an MVP, unless he just happens to hit every shot some year.

Anyone want to weigh in on whether it was an injustice (if there can be such a thing as an "injustice" in an All-Star game) for D'Antoni to give so few minutes to 3 of his starters?

A Wise Man Knows the Difference, Right?

2007-02-15T23:15:00.000-05:00

I wonder if Dirk is still trying to figure out who he is as a player. Tonight in the first quarter, he botched two entry passes to the post, one to Diop and another to Dampier. It was reminiscent of last year's finals, when he got the huge assist to Dampier at the end of game 5 but got a turnover trying the same thing at the end of game 6. I suspect it's no coincidence that this happened the first game after Dirk's 8-assist performance on Tuesday.

Both passes were almost on target, but both were into traffic to players who (1) aren't exactly offensive virtuosos and (2) weren't open. Players like Dirk typically, it seems to me, get their assists (3-4 per game) by passing out of double teams, or off the dribble, to open jump-shooters and slashers. Occasionally a power forward like Larry Bird or Chris Webber can do something a little fancier and thread holes in the lane, but it's my impression that's not ever going to be Dirk's game. Dirk may or may not agree with that.

Tonight's game was weird. With two teams ranked 1 and 4 on Hollinger's list, you'd expect a good matchup. And it started out beautifully –– back and forth, everyone making their open shots. But then it just turned ugly.

By the start of the fourth quarter, it looked like Dallas was headed for about 75 points, but then Dirk kind of went nuts and scored 12 points in the first six minutes of the fourth, capped by back-to-back 3-pointers to give Dallas a 72-69 lead....and then he disappeared offensively for the rest of the game. In the last 6 minutes, the Mavericks managed just 6 free throws and one wide-open jump shot. McGrady hung around a little longer, hitting a 3-pointer with about three minutes left to tally 15 points in the fourth...and then Houston managed one point the rest of the game.

Ring up the win. Nine in a row, 44-9 record, 68-win pace with 29 to go.

Getting Ugly

2007-02-15T00:23:00.000-05:00

Steve Nash continues to do more for his MVP chances by not playing than he possibly could by playing, as the Suns got blown out tonight by Seattle (20-32, second to last in the West). Seattle outscored the Suns in every quarter, which is always a sign of a real drubbing. In reality, the loss doesn't say all that much about Nash, since Boris Diaw and Kurt Thomas were both out as well, but it does expose the well-publicized weakness of the Suns' bench.

I suppose, somewhere, Mark Cuban is laughing, as Jason Terry has missed all of 4 games in the past 2 1/2 seasons since Dallas let Nash walk. Good sportsmanship says we should hope Nash heals up soon so the Suns can give the Mavericks an honest fight for the West, but then it's hard to be a good sport when your team has never won a championship. In any event, the Suns have to live with a 3-game losing streak that puts them 4 games behind Dallas.

Has there ever been a team that was more relieved to see the all-star break arrive?

Going Streaking

2007-02-14T00:19:00.000-05:00

Moving on to other things. A few facts:

The Mavericks have had a tendency toward streaks this year. So far, they've had winning streaks of 13, 12, 8, 7, 1, and 1, which means that once they've won a game, on average they're going to win 7 in a row before they stop. Six times so far, they've won 6 games in a row. If the Mavericks look at the standings after any given game this season, on average they've won 4.3 in a row.

Dallas's overall record is better than any other team's home record. The last home game Dallas lost was Dec. 7; since then, they've only lost 3 games (all on the road, obviously) in almost 10 weeks.

Of Dallas's 9 losses, 7 came in two short stints: 4 losses in a seven-day span from Nov. 2-8, and 3 losses in an eight-day span from Dec. 4-11. Hopefully they won't hit one of those weeks in playoffs again this year.

Of course, as I write, Dallas is trailing Milwaukee (19-32, last place in the Central) by 13 at the half.

For the Record

2007-02-12T00:55:00.000-05:00

The finals last year ended like they did, the team that played better apparently won, and you can certainly make a strong case that the Mavericks didn't deserve to win and that Dwyane Wade did.

However, since Dwyane called Dirk out this week concerning his leadership at the end of the big games, I thought I'd look up the record of what actually happened. (You can look at the game log here, though note the running tally for the score on that page is wrong.) Wade is correct that Dirk didn't play well late in game 6, although I think the loss had a lot more to do with Howard and Terry combining to shoot 12 of 41 (29.3%) from the field for the game. I don't know how many teams can overcome two of their top three scorers performing that poorly, but Dallas almost did. Dirk, incidentally, finished game 6 with 29 points [on 10/22 FG, 8/8 FT] and 15 rebounds.

But whatever you think of his performance there, I would argue that anyone wanting to criticize Dirk for supposedly failing to show up in the finals should remember what happened in the last seven minutes of game 5. The series was tied at 2-2, and the teams were playing the last game in Miami. Dirk didn't have a great game overall, but here's how the end of the game shook out:

Late 4th Quarter

1:39 Wade 17-footer (Heat up 89-88)
1:25 Dirk hits 1 of 2 FT (tie 89)
1:07 Wade 15-footer (Heat up 91-89)
0:49 Dirk 14-footer (tie 91-91)
0:33 Wade misses
0:10 Dampier dunk (Dirk assists) (Mavs up 93-91)
0:02 Wade 9-footer (tie 93-93)
0:00 Terry misses

OK, this was the pivotal (I hate that word, but it's correct here) game of the series, and you get big-time performances from both Nowitzki and Wade late in the fourth quarter. Dirk misses a free throw, Wade misses a jump shot, but other than that it's a classic back-and-forth, and they're both brilliant.

Overtime

The overtime wasn't as spectacular. Wade went 1/3 from the field and 2/2 from the line with 1 rebound, while Dirk went 1/2 from the field with 2 boards. However, the shot Wade made was early in the overtime period, followed by two misses. Dirk missed his first shot, but the shot he made was a fall-away over Shaq with 9 seconds left and his team trailing by one. That was a huge shot, and Dirk nailed it; his team needed him, and he got the bucket. Then, Wade came down and took a bad shot on a drive but got the foul call.

I really can't help pointing out that the foul call was *hugely* questionable, especially since Wade (1) had already pushed off a couple of Mavs players on the play, and (2) was out of control and taking a bad shot when the foul was called. Yeah, these things happen; I'm just saying the drive itself wasn't exactly clutch on Wade's part.

Then, while Josh Howard was busy accidentally wasting Dallas's last time-out, Wade made both free throws (which, of course, was clutch) for the win.

Now, I don't really know about the call; these things can go either way. But what I saw when I watched that game was Dirk making big play after big play for his team. And in light of how game 5 ended, I think Wade should have a little bit of humility, realizing that his team would have lost that game if one official hadn't blown the whistle on that last play.

You Never Know

2007-02-10T17:06:00.000-05:00

Dallas's win over Houston last night (17 straight at home), coupled with Phoenix's home loss to Atalanta, gives Dallas a two-game lead, normally not a big margin in the NBA.

However, over the last 46 games, the Mavericks are 41-5 (89.1%). If they keeping winning at that rate, Phoenix will have to win 18 in a row to catch up. Of course, that would also put Dallas on pace to win 70 games, so maybe I shouldn't get my hopes up just yet.

Still Not Happy

2007-02-10T16:23:00.000-05:00

Dwyane Wade's comments about Dirk the other day have stirred up old feelings for me –– it astonished me that I can still feel anger about the hurt that Wade put on the Mavericks in the Finals last year.

On another blog of mine, I wrote up a bit of a rant that you can read here

I shouldn't bring this up, but I will since Wade publicly called Dirk's "leadership" (apparently interpreted as "ability to win") into question. Here's something I wrote, out of frustration, to my brother last summer:

I know once it's over you're supposed to admit that the best team won, and I know the Mavericks should have been able to pull off a victory in game 6 at home if they were really going to deserve the championship. But the more I think about it, I'm pretty sure that's a bunch of crap. Every time I think about game 5 (which has been a lot –– sadly, it kept me awake last night), I just get angrier and angrier.

Here's the thing. With some endings, you can talk about what might have been. You can say, "oh, maybe if the refs hadn't given Wade so many calls in game 3, they never would have pulled off the comback, or maybe if they hadn't called the totally bogus foul against Dirk which put Wade on the line near the end of game six (where it looked like the only contact was Wade throwing his elbow into Dirk's gut), then *maybe* those games would have turned out differently." I'm willing to admit that's a lousy attitude toward things –– they just happened like they did, and what might have been is useless and kind of pathetic.

But that's just what's not true with game 5: it most decidedly was *not* about what might have been. Dirk actually hit his game-winner, and Wade actually missed his. That's it –– the game should have been over, right there. Wade simply blew it on the last play; he almost got a foul called on himself by shoving Terry, then he drove off balance through the lane, and threw up a bad shot and missed. (I think there's pretty broad agreement out there that it was an atrocious call.) There were three Mavs in the lane, waiting for the rebound with 2 seconds. Game over, say that Wade didn't quite have what it took, or that the Mavs managed a defensive stop, or whatever.

That's what actually *happened*. Sure, he hit the 2 free throws they gave him, but the Mavs aren't allowed to guard those. It was a gift, not a play. When Dirk did have a say at the end of that game, he came up with a huge assist and a huge jumper. But as for the final outcome, the Mavs had no say at all. They won the game, and then the refs gave Wade the chace to take it away, for free. You can't deny the psychological impact that has on teams; I don't see the Heat winning game 6 if they lose game 5. At the very least there would be a game 7 in Dallas tonight. Personally, I think the team that won game 5 was almost guaranteed to win the series.

As well as Wade played, I refuse to say that he consistently came up big, while Dirk choked. In game 5 when it really mattered, it was Dirk who hit the big shot, where Dwyane missed. It's public record; we all watched it. That whistle doesn't blow, Mavs win.

It's just a travesty.

Now, looking back with some perspective, I need to admit something. Wade was amazing in last year's finals. I mean, here's a guy playing on a team that's totally outmatched, down two games to none, and then he just takes over the series. He scored 28 and 23 in the two Heat losses, and then he went for 42, 36, 43, and 36 in their four wins. Dirk's high for the series was 30.

I want to say, though, that as far as leadership goes, I don't like Wade's contention that Dirk's a bad leader because he played poorly (at least when compared with Wade, who put in one of the finest finals performances we'll see) and his team lost. In my opinion, if you want to know what kind of a leader Dirk is, you should watch him this season. He's responded by working incredibly hard and becoming an even better player than he was last season. In fact, in the 8 years following his rookie season, Dirk has improved in 7 of them. This year is only the second time he has failed to increase his scoring average, but overall he's playing the best ball of his career, shooting nearly 50% and finally starting to hit game-winners like he did against Phoenix on December 28.

I really wish he were cold-blooded like a Kobe or a Chauncey, but Mavericks fans should feel fortunate to have what he is instead: an incredibly talented, incredibly driven star who refuses to remain content with what he's done in the past, and who constantly works to improve his game (and his team) regardless of whether people respect him.

Quality Opponents

2007-02-10T16:19:00.000-05:00

The Mavericks have lost 9 games this year, each to a different team. Seven of those losses are to 7 of the 8 other best teams in the league (Dallas hasn't lost to Phoenix). The only 3 losses in the east are against the 3 best teams in the east: Detroit, Washington, and Chicago. In the west, 4 of the losses are against the Spurs, Utah, Houston, and Lakers. The other two losses were against the Clippers (7th seed in the west) and the Warriors (23-27, and always a tough matchup for Dallas).

Granted, you don't want to lose whenever you play the best teams, but no one has beaten Dallas twice yet this season. Against those 7 best teams they've lost to, Dallas is still 8-7 on the season, plus they have the two wins against the Suns. So all in all, Dallas is 10-7 against the other best 8 teams in the NBA and 31-2 (93.9%) against the rest of the league.