Namely, that I think biggest flaw of his system (and one he readily acknowledged, as I noted last time), the lack of recognition and adjustment for significant roster changes, significantly damages his predictive analysis beyond simply the power rankings.

It’s just a difference in opinion, really, and I completely understand that not everyone who watches, thinks, reads, and writes about the game is going to share my appraisal of this Mavericks team. But in justifying his latest power rankings (which have Dallas ranked at 13th), Hollinger takes the data a bit too far. He blurbs each of the top 12 teams to analyze which factors place them ahead of the Mavs and whether or not Dallas could beat said team in a seven-game series at a neutral site. The former is definitely an analysis that needed to be done, and I think should help clarify the Mavs’ low ranking in the same way that I attempted to. But the latter…well…yeah. By Hollinger’s measure, the only teams in the top 12 that Dallas would best would be the San Antonio Spurs and the Boston Celtics. He says that a match-up between the Mavs and Hawks would be a toss-up. But apart from those three teams, the remaining nine — the Magic, Jazz, Cavs, Lakers, Suns, Nuggets, Thunder, Blazers, and Bucks — would top Dallas in seven games.

Some of those selections you live with; the Lakers are the class of the West, Denver is on-par with Dallas in my mind, the Magic are the hottest team in basketball (yes, even hotter than the Mavs), and the Cavaliers could be the best team in the league when healthy. I frown at the idea that Utah would beat Dallas, but we can’t all agree. Oklahoma City, Portland, and Milwaukee, though…come on, John.

I understand that the regular season match-ups play a significant role here, and they should. Dallas hasn’t played particularly well against any of those teams this season, and wouldn’t deserve to be an overwhelming favorite. But they’d still be the favorite. A playoff series between the Mavs and the Thunder would be a ton of fun and incredibly competitive. But Dallas has improved defensively since the trade, and they already boasted one of the best defenders of the Durantula in Shawn Marion. Plus, how does Butler’s impact offensively not help Dallas substantially against OKC’s defense?

No disrespect to the Blazers, who punked the Mavs with Andre Miller and Juwan Howard, or the Bucks, who are on a hell of a tear right now, but it’s the same story against each of those three opponents: Butler and Haywood make a huge difference. Not only in terms of the production that they provide, but how they bolster the Mavs’ depth and shift the match-ups as well. The team’s disposition has changed, and their season’s outlook should change accordingly.

I fully understand that Hollinger and his ratings have been completely under fire from Mavs Nation during the win streak, and the natural reaction is to stand behind the findings of the system. Perhaps John has done that and then some, overcompensating for the fervor of Maverick fans by swimming further and further towards the deep end. Maybe that’s exactly what this conversation needed. But statistical system or not, that opinion will never be popular when isolated on its own, provided the Mavs continue to win games.

But for now, there’s no reason to really argue who might beat who to any unreasonable extent. The playoffs are still a lifetime away, and none of this will really matter until then. I mean, a month ago, no one would have objected to the Mavs being ranked 13th in the league; Dallas was coming off an embarrassingly huge loss to Denver and had dropped a game against the Timberwolves a few days prior. So before we squabble too much about rankings and match-ups, let’s let the games play out, see how the Mavs improve (or don’t), and base our discussion on something a bit more tangible.

Box Score — Play-By-Play — Shot Chart — GameFlow

“If you are out of trouble, watch for danger.”
-Sophocles

And for the Mavs’ next trick, they’ll surrender a big early lead to a sub-par team, explode to build a significant lead of their own sometime in the third quarter, and then forfeit that lead to even things out and end everything with a bang.

Don’t get me wrong, it certainly makes for some pretty entertaining basketball. But the script is getting a little predictable by this point, don’tcha think?

We should definitely be celebrating Dallas’ wins; not every victory is going to be pretty, and the fact last night’s game was less than ideal isn’t all that damaging on the basis of a singular game. It’s the same philosophy I’ve embraced about the Mavs’ barely-wins over Minnesota, over Miami, over Charlotte, over Indiana, over New Orleans, over Charlotte, over Sacramento, and over Chicago. Those games weren’t as easy as they could have or should have been, but if you’re evaluating each contest in a vacuum, it’s hard to argue with a positive result.

But the fact that the Mavs’ wins have come by such a slim margin so often, well, you know what it can mean. Maybe Dallas isn’t as dominant as we think. Maybe this team will try this same act against a great team with some momentum in the playoffs — a Denver, a Los Angeles — and validate all of these worries. The Mavs can pull this off against the Nets because they’re a better team and, when focused, their execution level is pretty insane. But every game isn’t going to come against this level of competition, and so the problem isn’t that the Mavs are barely beating the Nets, but that they won’t be able to barely beat other teams using the same practices.

Letting New Jersey score 31 points in the first quarter definitely qualifies as bad practice. Letting the Nets build an 18-point lead by the second quarter definitely qualifies as bad practice. It flies now and the Mavs get the win, and we should be proud of them for that. It’s not easy to bring a hot team back down to Earth (NJ shot .526 from the field in the first half and ended up shooting .410) and it’s certainly not easy to overcome such a glaring deficit on the scoreboard. But keep in mind that these same habits and practices that we’re celebrating now, in the midst of an epic win streak, may be the same habits we’re deriding come playoff time. Despite their winning ways, the Mavs need a change. They need to figure out how to start the game with the concentration level that has become a fourth quarter staple. Dallas makes love to pressure and that’s awesome. But in order to be one of the league’s truly elite teams, they need to make love to the opening six minutes of the game, too. Every game doesn’t have to be a test of wills and endurance; it’s okay to have the starters get some early rest, and let Matt Carroll ride out the endgame.

We know that the Mavs know how to win close games, and that’s incredibly important. But we still haven’t seen this team show that they’re capable of managing a game. They give up too many easy buckets early, they surrender too many leads late, and though it’s almost difficult to flash back to a time where the Mavs were doing anything other than winning, you’d like to see something more.

That’s a lot of negativity for about 18 minutes of bad basketball. But it’s something that needs to be said after a win like this one, even in spite of some of the positives on the Dallas side.

Dirk Nowitzki was not one of them, which makes the win even more surprising. Nowitzki finished with 12 points on 3-of-16 shooting with five turnovers. That’s about as bad as it gets for Dirk. He’ll get points because he’s still worth the attempts (how many times have we seen him shake off an early rut to drop 25?) and because he gets to the free throw line, but I’m not sure that any measure could qualify Nowitzki’s game as a success.

That means the points had to come from somewhere. With Jason Terry out of the lineup, the Mavs turned to Caron Butler (18 points, 7-14 FG). As the focal point of the offense, Butler dropped 10 points in the fourth quarter, and was responsible for 12 of the Mavs’ final 15 points. Caron isn’t prolific or efficient enough offensively to warrant this kind of treatment on a regular basis. That’s why the Mavs have Dirk. But having Butler around to not only attract defensive attention but completely take games over if need be is a luxury that the post-trade Mavs are truly enjoying. Add Jason Terry back into the lineup and this team is just rearing to go offensively. Being able to attack any potential defense from a number of attack points is a huge advantage.

But for all of Butler’s fourth quarter contributions, he wasn’t even the Mavs’ leading scorer. That distinction, on this rarest of occasions, goes to Jason Kidd (20 points, 5-8 3FG,  nine assists, four steals). If Kidd hadn’t become such a prolific three-point shooter, it’s entirely possible that the balance of the Kidd-Harris trade would still be tipped in favor of New Jersey. But even the trade’s biggest critics are recanting some of their comments due to Kidd’s inspired play. Play which has benefited greatly from his emergence as a three-point threat. I don’t want to know what dark power Kidd had to consult to add the three ball to his repertoire this late in his career, but as a follower of the team, I’m just immensely thankful that he did.

Just as impactful as Kidd’s scoring was his defense and playmaking. It wasn’t a high-volume assist night, but the Mavs’ resurgence after the dog days of the first quarter is at least in part due to the open looks Kidd generated for his teammates. He could very easily have fed Brendan Haywood in the post, but instead he lobbed it over the head of the defender and led Haywood to the basket. He could have very easily waited to attract the defense before kicking the ball to a cutting Shawn Marion, but his instincts told him not to hesitate. He could have hit Caron Butler a second late as he curled around the screen, but he timed the ball perfectly and gave Butler a wide open jumper. It’s always the little things with Kidd, and the reason he deserves to be a Hall of Famer isn’t because of the 17-assist nights where he runs the break to perfection, but nights like this where he completely controls a game.

Closing thoughts:

• The name of the game offensively for Dallas was, again, balance. Six Mavs hit double figures in a game with just 91 possessions. Rodrigue Beaubois (16 points, 6-12 FG, three assists, one turnover) wasn’t hitting on his mid-range jumper, but was able to get to the rim at will. Shawn Marion (14 points, 5-10 FG, 13 rebounds, three blocks) notched his second straight double-double, and continues to fill the gaps for the Mavs in every conceivable way. Brendan Haywood double-doubled in his return as well, finishing with 11 points (4-6 FG), 10 rebounds, and two blocks.
• The Mavs tied the Cavs’ season-high winning streak at 13 games, which means they’ll have a shot at the longest winning streak league-wide when they face the Knicks on Saturday. Dallas beat New York earlier this season by 50 points. I’m just sayin’.
• The third quarter is where the Mavs really improved defensively. After giving the Nets an assortment of layups and dunks in the first half, the Dallas held New Jersey to 5-of-26 shooting with just four free throw attempts. Devin Harris (21 points, seven assists, six turnovers) and Brook Lopez (10 points, 5-16 FG, six rebounds), who had been the stars of the first half, combined to shoot 1-for-11 in the third. That’s significant defensive improvement
• The Mavs trapped Devin Harris off of every pick with mixed success. He slipped a few times against the pressure, but for the most part he was able to find an open teammate or at least an outlet to avoid a turnover. What really kept Harris in check was the zone, which has become a staple for the Mavs defensively. Dallas may execute the zone better than any other team in the league, and while it still has weaknesses in giving up offensive rebounds and allowing three-point shooters to fire away (a fact which only Jarvis Hayes was able to take advantage of), it’s become much more than just a situational strategy.
• Terrence Williams (18 points, 7-12 FG, 13 rebounds, three assists) was everywhere. I’m very impressed with his ability to move without the ball, which I thought could have been a problem coming out of a position in Louisville where he had the ball in his hands an overwhelming amount of the time. But Williams isn’t a point forward anymore, and though he still exhibits some of those playmaking skills that made him an effective college player, he’s clearly capable of playing off the ball as a more traditional wing.
• Erick Dampier also made his return for the Mavs, but only logged four minutes of playing time. One step closer to a healthy center rotation, and one step closer to improving the defense.
• Is there anyone in Maverick Nation who isn’t in a constant state of excitement over Rodrigue Beaubois? He’s not perfect and he’s still not playing much point guard, but he’s averaging 18 points on 54.7% shooting with 3.4 assists to just one turnover in March. He’s still responding well to opportunities and playing time, which is one thing for a rookie to do in November and another for them to do in March.
• Any possession that ends with a Trenton Hassell jump shot is a win for the defense.
• The Mavs played Kris Humphries on Hump Day and I completely dropped the ball. Sigh.
• The Nets are a much better team than 7-57. Much better. They don’t have much in the way of depth, but even a quick up and down of the roster reveals a bunch of individual talent capable of doing plenty of good things on a basketball court. It obviously doesn’t come together in any kind of cohesive whole and the rotation members are woefully lacking in experience, but still far better than 7-57.

Dirk Nowitzki is…otherworldly.

I’ve received a handful of emails and comments over the last week or so asking me to chime in on the Mavs’ surprisingly low standing in John Hollinger’s power rankings. For the most part I’ve stayed away from it, and for two reasons:

1. They’re power rankings. No offense to John or Marc Stein or anyone else who compiles power rankings anywhere on the internet, but they just don’t interest me. They’re arbitrary descriptors of how teams have done over the last week or so with emphasis on ranking rather than analysis. There’s just not much you can do with a short blurb that’s going to shed much light on a team’s success. If you dig power rankings, then by all means. I just don’t like getting too caught up in which team is put where.
2. Unlike other power rankings, Hollinger’s are completely transparent. He spells out his methods explicitly, even giving you the exact formula by which his rankings are calculated, and the reasoning behind the weighting of each of the factors. He also explains why he chose specific measures over others, and the whole process is based on plugging numerical data into Hollinger’s equation.

Given those two things, I’m not exactly sure what all of the fuss is about. The Mavs have been winning games, but not all of the wins have been convincing. Nail-biters over teams like the Wolves and the Heat are not going to boost the Mavs’ standing in a data-centric ranking system, unless it’s completely dependent on win-loss record. Hollinger’s rankings are not, and he tells us as such in his explanation.

Instead, he looks to point differential, which just about any source will tell you is a better indicator of future success than overall win-loss record. Although talent and performance are definitely factors, close games are more likely to be influenced by luck; a bounce of the ball here or there can completely shift the balance, and though it’s certainly impressive that the Mavs are able to execute in high-pressure situations, it’s not necessarily all that indicative of the Mavs being a dominant team. Cue Kevin Pelton of Basketball Prospectus:

Better teams definitely tend to win more close games than weak ones, but the relationship is hardly perfect. The correlation is just .454 (a correlation of 1 or -1 means two variables are perfectly in sync, while a correlation of 0 means no relationship whatsoever). There are two extreme schools of thought on close games–those that believe they are primarily decided by luck and those that feel they are primarily decided by teams and demonstrate their true ability. Neither position is supported by the data.

Instead, what the results tend to show is that the difference between good teams and bad teams is mitigated in close games. Look at the best-fit regression line on the chart. The slope is nowhere near 1, and the difference between the expected record in close games for the very best teams (about .600) and the very worst teams (about .400) is much smaller than the difference between them in games that are not decided down the stretch.

When you think about it, this makes perfect sense. Say you were coaching (or cheering on, if you prefer) an underdog team playing a powerful opponent. If I gave you the opportunity to advance directly to the final five minutes of a close game, even if you were trailing by a couple of points, you would take that scenario because anything could happen over the shorter period. The same logic can be applied to explain why we see more upsets in the one-and-done NCAA Tournament than in the NBA’s best-of-seven postseason. The smaller sample draws all teams toward .500.

The data just doesn’t support the idea that better teams perform better in close games in any kind of conclusive fashion, for exactly the reasons that Pelton describes. It’s still bloody impressive that the Mavs have been able to win 12 games in a row, but it would obviously be more impressive if every win came by way of a double-digit margin.

As you well know, they haven’t. Most have been competitive well into the fourth quarter if not until the very end, and that certainly doesn’t reflect well on the Mavs.

Even given their recent tear, the Mavs’ point differential isn’t receiving any kind of considerable bump. Wins are obviously more helpful than losses in that regard, but it’s not as if a six-point win over the Bulls or a five-point win over the Bobcats is going to make some kind of profound impact on their overall standing. Dallas has overtaken Denver and is headed towards L.A. in terms of win-loss, but they very nearly snatched the record for consecutive wins by an unimpressive margin.

That may be enough to score brownie points with the likes of you, I, and Stein, but the numbers aren’t so kind. Hollinger warns us of that very thing in the explanation of his methods:

Since this is an entirely automated ranking, you’ll notice certain “human” factors missing. It doesn’t know which players are about to come back from injury or which teams have been playing without their best players for the past 10 games. Along the same lines, it doesn’t take into account injuries, trades, controversial calls or any other variables — just the scores, please. Nonetheless, it can be very useful because it allows us to see what the landscape looks like when we remove our usual filters. [Ed. note: Emphasis mine]

It’s not accounting for the fact that Erick Dampier has been out of the lineup, that Brendan Haywood has missed games due to injury, that Jason Terry underwent facial surgery, and that all the while, Caron Butler and Haywood are still integrating themselves into the system. Those aren’t critiques of Hollinger or his work, merely the system. They’re limitations he doesn’t try to hide or obscure in any way, just things that can’t really be taken into account mathematically.

Plus, looking to the methods again:

…I weigh a team’s full-season results by two-thirds and its most recent games by another one-third, so the overall ranking gives greater weight to recent games. You’re probably wondering at this point what I mean by “recent.” It varies depending on where we are in the season. For the first 40 games of the season, it means a team’s past 10 games. From that point forward, however, it means the most recent 25 percent of a team’s schedule. The net result is that, after the first 40 games, a team’s most recent 25 percent of its schedule will account for 40 percent of its ranking. [Ed. note: Again, emphasis mine.]

The last 25% of the Mavs’ games are more heavily weighted for the purposes of the rankings, and that’s a big part of the reason why Dallas is ranked so low. You’d think that the winning streak would off-set the rest of that 25% sample, but it just doesn’t. Dallas is 10th in point differential (+3.06) over that stretch, but the real kicker may be their strength of schedule: the winning percentage of the Mavs’ opponents over the last 25% of games is just .467, which ranks 23rd in the league. Given the weakness in Dallas’ point differential (10th) and strength of schedule (12th) overall, what did everyone honestly expect would happen in the midst of a 12-game winning streak in which all but one win have been by 10 points or fewer?

The Mavs are still a work in progress. We don’t yet have an accurate grasp of how the defense will perform with two healthy centers, or what kind of rhythm the offense can get into with all hands on deck. So the fact that Dallas is 9th in offensive efficiency and 12th in defensive efficiency, while hardly heart-warming, doesn’t really distress me. We likely won’t have an accurate macro statistical picture of this team going into the playoffs, because the data from earlier in the season is practically defunct given the roster moves, and the game data available offers a pretty small sample size.

These Mavs are contenders. They’re not on the level of the Lakers and are probably only on equal footing with the Nuggets, but that puts them in a position to do serious damage. I guess that’s where my views really diverge from Hollinger’s…or at least his views from about a week ago. All of the Mavs’ problems haven’t miraculously disappeared nor have all of their weakness morphed into strengths. But I think they’re good enough to beat the Nuggets in a seven game series, and good enough to give the Lakers a run for their money. If that’s not contending in the West, then what is?

Sometimes it’s hard to get coaches, managers, and owners to speak up concerning the current goings-on of the team. Everything is played so close to the chest, and it’s almost like the media and the team stand diametrically opposed at times. Consumers of sports media want to know how things work — what went into making this decision, why this guy and not that guy, etc. — and ask the almighty “Why?” But the members of the team itself are also somewhat reliant on keeping that information internal. After all, you never know who might hear what, and specifics are, in this case at least, a team’s worst enemy.

But I applauded Mark Cuban’s willingness to talk about some of the Mavs’ decisions in the past, if only because it helps those of us on the outside to fill in the gaps. It’s nice to know why this or that was done, even if it’s a year or two later. And then again, sometimes when talking about decisions from the past, guys like Cuban still tip their hand a bit (perhaps intentionally). Read as much into this quote from Cuban as you’d like:

Sometimes [the players] need prompting [to figure out the best play], and the ones who don’t figure it out…I mean it’s true that’s a great point theres a subset of players that don’t figure it out, that cant figure it out, that don’t think. Those are the ones that are so blessed talent-wise that you try to make it work  — like we had Gerald Green. [To the Celtics' Mike Zarren] You guys have had Gerald Green.

I just look at him and think ‘Oh my God!’ There are things that he’ll show you that are just ‘Oh my God!’ and then he just doesn’t understand the game of basketball and hopefully he’ll figure it out someday but you just keep giving him those chances. He ran out of chances (so far) this last time.

On its own, I think he’s just talking about the hyper-athletic Gerald Green and players of his ilk. But this topic was a recurring theme for Cuban in many of his panels: a guy that just can’t figure it out, that doesn’t think on the court, that isn’t a smart basketball player. Now, I could be mistaken here, but I seem to remember a lot of similar criticism being lobbed at a guy who played for the Mavs not too long ago. It would be completely unfair of Mark to take explicit pot shots at Josh Howard through media channels, but would I put it past him to perhaps offer a veiled criticism of Josh’s game? Not at all.

I’m not sure if Cuban was looking to send a message or just got stuck on a particular topic at multiple panels. But that doesn’t stop Green’s story from being any less of a condensed caricature of Howard’s career. I wouldn’t dare play team psychologist here, but from where I’m sitting, Howard’s troubles always seemed to be more mental than physical. It’s undeniable that he faced a lot in rehabbing and returning from various injuries, but the game within the game has always been to keep Josh on the same page as everyone else. He was fed shot attempts early in the first quarter, and there’s absolutely no doubt that he was treated differently than other players. That’s what it took to keep him functioning as a member of the team, and so its what the Mavericks did.

They hoped he would figure it out someday but they just kept giving him those chances. Josh just ran out of chances this last time.

Before this season began, I had the pleasure of chatting a bit with the Mavericks’ newly-christened stat head, Roland Beech. We haven’t had the opportunity to check in with him since, but Mark Cuban provided us with an update at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. Marc Stein asked Cuban about Beech specifically during the keynote basketball panel, entitled “Basketball Analytics,” and here was Cuban’s response:

If we were going to get to the point where we were able to collect more data and integrate the coaching staff more fully into using it, as opposed to just getting daily reports that we could sit down and review with the coaching staff, I wanted to have somebody there…on site that they could talk to at any time. Even during the game.

He talks to the players, don’t get me wrong — Dirk will give [Roland] as much of a hard time about his haircut as he gives anyone else. But that’s the type of thing where you don’t want too many voices. So we work back through the coaches.

Beech is officially a member of the Mavericks’ coaching staff, and he sits near the bench, often alongside Cuban, during the games. But even more important than the capacity in which Beech is working with the team is the note that Cubes touched on at the end, and one that was prevalent throughout the entire conference. Having the right statistics is one thing, and finding the right way to utilize them is something else entirely. You can’t just hammer raw data into a player’s head through their ear, it needs to be broken down. It needs to be analyzed.

Mike Zarren, Assistant GM and Team Counsel for the Celtics, hammered that point home perfectly:

I don’t know what it would mean to a player to tell him that “Some guy’s adjusted plus-minus is plus four.” I mean, how does that change what he does on a particular night? It doesn’t mean anything.

The most important thing to remember with advanced stats in basketball is that everything is contextual. That’s where the power lies. It’s the decoder that translates measures of all kinds into something usable, something real. It’s what separates those with an understanding of how to use the data — those who classify statistics as tools and never assume any metric to be omnipotent — from those who do not. The measures provided are simply descriptors of what we’ve seen on the floor. There are assigned values, calculations, and analysis that go along with those measures, but that’s simply another way to make sense of the information available.

But somewhere between that “adjusted plus-minus [of] plus four,” and the players on the court is a process. It involves the aforementioned decoding, it involves lineup analysis, and it involves evaluation of situational effectiveness. And it certainly involves Beech, the man working behind the scenes to ensure that the Mavs don’t miss a beat in the statistical revolution. Dallas is among the first franchises to not only embrace analytical research, but to have a full-time advisor on hand. Take pride, Mavs fans, because while franchises around the league are cavemen that run in fear of fire, your team, and more specifically your owner, realizes the value and application of it.

That level of analysis is the future of professional basketball. As teams accumulate more and more data, the advantages will become even clearer. There’s just so much that a coach can do when they know what Rick Carlisle knows. If basketball really is a game of match-ups, then the Mavs’ brain trust gives them a huge match-up advantage almost every night out; few teams are as  progressive as your Dallas Mavericks, and that’s something to hang your hat on.

Box Score — Play-By-Play — Shot Chart — GameFlow

“Safety is something that happens between your ears, not something you hold in your hands.”
-Jeff Cooper

See, it doesn’t have to be so difficult.

The Timberwolves have inexplicably matched up quite well with the Mavericks this season, taking one of their two prior meetings this season (in Dallas, no less) and nearly taking another despite not having Al Jefferson in the lineup. That’s more than a bit odd considering each team’s relative standing, particularly the fact that despite the fact that Minny has twice the wins of the New Jersey Nets, they could very well be the worst team in the league. The Wolves’ talent is far less balanced and cohesive than what the Nets have to work with, and though Jefferson and Kevin Love are terrific players, their individual brilliance is often diminished by the odd collection of talent David Kahn has assembled.

In short: the Wolves aren’t very good. The Mavs will inevitably struggle against some inferior teams. That doesn’t mean that Minnesota should be capable of challenging Dallas on a regular basis, particularly because on paper, the Wolves don’t seem to have any clear match-up advantages ripe for exploitation. Jefferson and Love against the Mavs’ bigs isn’t exactly Dwyane Wade v. Adrian Griffin.

So in a fit of irony, the one occasion in which Minnesota would appear to have a clear advantage (with the absence of Erick Dampier and Brendan Haywood due to injury) comes on the same night as the Mavs’ first double-digit win since February 19th and the Mavs’ most convincing win against the Wolves (hey, small victories are still victories, right?) this season.

For once, Dallas wasn’t battling Minnesota to the game’s final seconds. Not that Jefferson (36 points, 15-21 FG, 13 rebounds) didn’t fight the good fight, but Love (six points, 1-7 FG, six rebounds, three turnovers) could do little more than rebound in his 12 minutes on the floor…which was a pretty poor showing from both Love (despite the prodigious rebounding rate) and Kurt Rambis. Darko Milicic played more minutes. Sasha Pavlovic played more minutes. Ryan Hollins played over double the minutes. I don’t care how badly Kevin Love is playing, there really isn’t an excuse to run that kind of rotation barring Love snapping his femur in half. No one on the Timberwolves (save Al) is good enough to displace Love, which tells me one of two things:

1. Kurt Rambis has gone completely batty.
2. Kurt Rambis has visions of ping pong balls dancing in his head.

At this point, neither would surprise me.

But Jefferson went wild, the Wolves put up 112 points. Not bad, except that in such a fast-paced game, the Mavs put up a whopping 125 on 50% shooting. Without anything resembling a traditional center (Dirk and Eddie Najera filled in at the 5 for the Mavs), the Mavs pushed the ball with abandon…and still only turned the ball over eight times. That’s Jason Kidd (12 points, 10 assists, three turnovers, three steals) doing his job and doing it well. That’s J.J. Barea (nine points, nine assists, two turnovers) and Rodrigue Beaubois (11 points, five rebounds, four assists) taking care of the ball and not trying to do too much. That’s just tremendous efficiency in the passing game for the Mavs’ guards, and the team-wide ball protection (Dirk Nowitzki, Shawn Marion, and Caron Butler, the Mavs’ leaders in FGAs, combined for just one turnover) was just phenomenal. Dallas played reasonable defense considering the circumstances, but they earned the W on the offensive end last night.

That’s where Shawn Marion (29 points, 14 rebounds, three steals) had an unexpected explosion. Dirk Nowitzki (24 points, 8-15 FG, six rebounds, three assists) picked up his second foul just a minute and a half into the game. That would seem incredibly troublesome, especially when considering that Jason Terry is still out recovering from surgery. But Marion and Caron Butler (23 points, 9-19 FG, three rebounds, three assists) keyed a tide-turning 19-2 run for Dallas that flipped an eight-point deficit and then some and secured a lead that the Mavs would never relinquish. Hot starts have been pivotal for the Wolves in their last two games against the Mavs, and the first five minutes were no different. But once Marion, Caron, and surprisingly, Jason Kidd started piling on the points, it was all downhill from there.

You’ve heard me say it a dozen times about just as many spectacular performances this season: don’t expect it every night. Marion is capable of scoring in volume if given the chance, and he can do more with the ball than he’s been able to this season (include hit the mid-range J, which he wasn’t as reluctant to pull the trigger on yesterday), but that’s not his role on this team. Nowitzki, Terry, and Butler are going to get the shots. Marion knows that, and he’s comfortable with it. But don’t think for a second that he didn’t like showing off for a night, and don’t think for a second that he didn’t enjoy every one of those 25 field goal attempts.

Closing thoughts:

• Aren’t the Mavs on a winning streak or something?
• The reason the Mavs were able to hold down the fort defensively without Haywood or Damp: the zone defense. It absolutely killed the Wolves, who lack consistent outside shooting (they finished 4-of-22 from behind the arc). Once Dallas decided to zone up, the Wolves became tentative, they took bad shots, and the turned the ball over. A ton. But they also finished with 15 offensive rebounds, which is about what you’d expect given the lineup and the defensive scheme. Any strategy change comes with a give and a take, and while the Mavs took away plenty of opportunities by zoning up, they also gave quite a few back.
• Ramon Sessions (11 points, 5-5 FG, two assists, two turnovers) gets an absurd number of crazy and ones against Dallas. What’s more: they’re usually on fouled runners and jumpers. These are shots with some decent range where Sessions absorbs a bit of contact and finishes over Kidd, Barea, or Beaubois some eight or 10 feet from the basket.
• Beaubois had another highlight reel block, although one of the foul-ish variety. Jonny Flynn had what looked to be a breakaway dunk to close the first half, but Roddy stopped him at the cup by swatting the ball and plenty of Flynn’s hand. No blood, no foul, right?
• I was very impressed with Jefferson’s passing. Not a big assist night for him, and he’s not a big assist player, really. But both of his dimes came off perfect, no-look dishes to backdoor cutters. That’s about as sexy as it gets for passing bigs.
• Tough luck: J.J. Barea rolled his ankle in the game’s closing minutes, and he could end up missing some time. He was able to limp off the court, but he looked to be in quite a bit of pain.
• Matt Carroll (four points, 1-2 FG)saw seven and a half minutes of actual playing time, and connected on a shot to boot. Great for him, and it would certainly be nice if, in Tim Thomas’ absence, Carroll could crack the rotation once in awhile.
• Ryan Hollins is always hyped up, and particularly so when he plays against Dallas. That energy helped him to a near double-double with 13 points and nine rebounds, but his tight winding was also the impetus that caused him to hit two Mavs, DeShawn Stevenson and Dirk Nowitzki, in the face. He’s a bit out of control to say the least, and while his smack on DeShawn’s cheek wasn’t even whistled as a foul (though Stevenson was assessed a technical for yelling at a referee about it), the swipe that connected with Dirk’s noggin earned Hollins a flagrant two and an automatic ejection.
• Caron Butler is showing the range. He had made exactly one three in his first nine games with the Mavs, but three in each of the last two games (on an average of five attempts per). Najera got in the act as well, and he’s hit four out of his nine attempts in the last two contests.

I haven’t been shy in singing Brendan Haywood’s praises, particularly since his trade to the Mavs. But as good as Haywood is, and as invaluable he’s been with Erick Dampier sidelined, he’s not without his flaws.

There’s the obvious — the lack of range, not a great ball-handler, certainly not a high-volume scorer — and then there’s the covert. John Huizinga in presenting his paper entitled “The value of a blocked shot in the NBA: From Tim Duncan to Dwight Howard” stumbled upon an interesting piece of such data. According to Huizinga’s analysis, the most valuable blocked shots are — shocker, I know — blocks of non-jumper attempts. If an opposing player is shooting a jump shot, the likelihood of the possession ending in points is significantly lower than, say a layup or a dunk. It seems obvious. But as such, the blocks that make the least impact are blocked jumpers.

A neat stat, to be sure, but even more relevant given the Mavs’ latest man in the middle. Brendan Haywood, according to Huizinga’s data going back to ‘03-’04, has a greater percentage of his total blocks come on jump shots than any other player in the league. Are those blocks still valuable? You’re damn right they are. But does it mean that Haywood’s blocks are on the same level as Tim Duncan’s? Though the natural inclination is to deem it so, a block is not a block.

Duncan was far and away the most effective long-term shot blocker over the course of Huizinga’s study, and while he was trumped easily by Dwight Howard’s incredible shot-blocking volume, Duncan’s overall shot-blocking was more beneficial for his team. In Howard’s case, the downfall was his incredible tendency to goaltend (24% of Dwight’s “block chances” were goaltends. Or put another way, Howard was called for one goaltend for every three blocks). But in Haywood’s, it’s simply totaling most of his blocks on less effective shot attempts. Still beneficial and still effective, but all blocks are not created equal.