Posted by Bryan Gutierrez on April 5, 2013 under Previews | 
It might just be about playing for pride now. With another devastating loss in Denver, the Dallas Mavericks (36-39) continue on their four-game road trip with a matchup against the Sacramento Kings (27-48). Depending on where you look, Dallas has no better than a 3 percent chance to make the playoffs. They would certainly need to win the rest of their remaining schedule to at least have a chance.
The game will mark the second night of a back-to-back for the Mavericks. They are 2-13 in the first half of a back-to-back and 6-8 in the second half of a back-to-back this season. Dallas is 4-5 this season on the second night of a road-road set of back-to-backs.
Here are the notes for the game between the Mavericks and the Kings.
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Posted by Kirk Henderson on April 4, 2013 under Recaps |
Box Score — Play-by-Play — Shot Chart — Game Flow
You know the drill. The Difference is a reflection on the game that was, with one bullet for every point in the final margin.
- It’s somewhat fitting that the playoff hopes of the Mavericks were squashed with finality against the Denver Nuggets due to the same exact issues that have plagued Dallas all year: dribble penetration and offensive rebounding. When Kenneth Faried grabs more offensive rebounds (nine) than the entire Maverick team (eight) it’s incredibly hard to win. Dirk Nowitzki ended up with only ten shot attempts again, but Andre Igoudala did his defensive work early, making it hard for Dirk to get the ball in his favorite spots. In fact, Dallas was lucky to be in this game at all, let alone ahead for almost the entire second half. The Nuggets shot 39% from the field, well below their season average of 47%. Denver was terrible around the rim against Dallas (see charts below), making just under 22 of 54 attempts, an incredible 17% under their season average of 58%. As much as I’d like to credit the Dallas defense, the Nuggets missed a lot of easy shots. However, Denver made up for this shortfall by shooting 20 more free throws than Dallas, a byproduct of their rim attacking style. That former Maverick Corey Brewer, who was traded to Denver for cap space and the possibility of limited playing time, and 37-year-old Andre Miller put up a combined 45 points on Dallas only makes this loss harder to swallow.
Denver Shot Chart vs. Dallas
Denver Shot Chart 2012-2013
Kirk is a member of the Two Man Game family. Follow him on Twitter @KirkSeriousFace for ranting about Dallas basketball, TV, movies, video games, and his dog.
Posted by Bryan Gutierrez on under Previews |
The Dallas Mavericks (36-38) are clinging to life as they take on the Denver Nuggets (51-24). The Mavericks are in need of a Mile-High miracle as they’re 2.5 games out of the 8th spot with eight games left. With the tiebreakers going against the Mavericks, they’re essentially three games back of making the playoffs. It won’t be easy for Dallas as they face the Denver in Denver (33-3 at home this season). Look at that again. The Nuggets have 33 wins at home this season. The Mavericks have 36 wins total for the year.
Denver got an impressive victory last night against the Utah Jazz despite being without Ty Lawson for the fourth time in five games as he’s sidelined indefinitely with a plantar fascia tear. Dallas will be hoping to hop on a potentially fatigued Denver squad. The Nuggets are 7-8 on the second night of a back-to-back this season. The game will feature two of the better teams since the All-Star break. Dallas has the third best winning percentage improvement Pre vs Post All-Star (+.149). Denver is first (+.249), Los Angeles Lakers are second (+.204).
It’s now or never for the Mavericks.
Here are the notes for the game between the Mavericks and the Nuggets.
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Posted by Travis Wimberly on under Commentary, Recaps |
Thermodynamics (n.) – the science concerned with the relations between heat and mechanical energy
That’s all she wrote. While not mathematically eliminated from playoff contention, the Mavs’ hopes of making the dance are all but dead. They came into this week with a discernible chance, but a 1-2 run against a slate of tough opponents changed all that. A loss to the top-flight Indiana Pacers put the Mavs on life support; another loss to the mediocre Los Angeles Lakers was the death blow.
To no one’s surprise, this will be the most downtrodden installment of Thermodynamics this season. But don’t fret. The Mavs won’t stay down forever.
Week 23 (Pacers, Bulls, @Lakers)
FIRE
1) Dirk Nowitzki (well, mostly)
In the first two games this week, Dirk was stellar. He scored 21 points on 10-of-20 (50%) shooting against the Pacers, and was essentially the sole reason a 25-point blowout wasn’t even worse. Two days later, in the Saturday matinee against the Bulls, Dirk turned in his best performance of the season: 35 points, an absolutely preposterous 14-of-17 (82%) from the floor, and a personal 8-1 run to end the game. That afternoon in Dallas, Dirk did what only a handful of players in the league can do — he single-handedly pulled a victory out of otherwise certain defeat, and he did so against a quality team. Nowitzki’s week didn’t end well, as he shot a poor 4-of-13 (31%) and was generally ineffective against the Lakers. Some will blame the team’s inability to consistently get him shots — “Well, of course he can’t shoot well if he only gets X shots in first half,” they’ll say. Although that complaint is indisputably valid as a general matter, as applied to Dirk’s shooting poorly in a particular game, it falls flat as an excuse. Nowitzki is capable of shooting well on very few shots — in fact, he does it all the time. Exactly 125 times in his career, Dirk has shot better than 50% on fewer than 12 attempts. His poor shooting against the Lakers certainly didn’t cost the Mavs the game, though it most certainly didn’t help. Still, his week on the whole was vintage. The Bulls game alone has a firm spot in Dirk’s pantheon of greatness.
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Posted by Bryan Gutierrez on under Commentary, News |
ESPNDallas.com’s Tim MacMahon reported prior to the game against the Los Angeles Lakers that Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban would be willing to give Baylor women’s superstar Brittney Griner the opportunity to have a chance to play in the NBA.
“If she is the best on the board, I will take her,” Cuban said. “I’ve thought about it. I’ve thought about it already. Would I do it? Right now, I’d lean toward yes, just to see if she can do it. You never know unless you give somebody a chance, and it’s not like the likelihood of any late-50s draft pick has a good chance of making it.”
Griner replied with a positive response to the possibility. “I would hold my own! Lets do it.” she wrote on Twitter on Tuesday night in response to Cuban.
Brittney Griner finished her spectacular career second all-time in scoring, and her 748 blocks are the most in men’s or women’s college basketball. With 3,283 career points, Griner finished with the second-highest point total in Women’s NCAA Division I history (Jackie Stiles – 3,393 points). In his initial comment about Griner, Cuban said that if they don’t plan on using a second round draft pick on Griner, the Mavericks certainly wouldn’t be opposed to giving her an opportunity to join the team’s Las Vegas summer league roster.
The idea or notion of Griner being affiliated with the NBA was met with some obvious resistance, on multiple levels. Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma called Cuban a financial genius, but “his genius would take a huge hit if he drafted Brittney Griner.”
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Posted by Brian Rubaie on April 3, 2013 under Commentary |
After boarding the last Orange Line train at Victory Station, my voice still hoarse and heart still heavy from a lopsided loss to the Indiana Pacers, reality slowly sank in in. With the season quickly winding to a close, this particular loss represented a critical lost opportunity for Dallas to gain ground in the race for the eighth seed in the Western Conference.
The pain of the moment was visible in the long faces of several of the passengers in the packed train car. After a few moments, a couple’s conversation broke the silence. The husband, a white-haired man in a blue-haired wig, turned to his wife while searching for the right words to describe the game we had all just witnessed.
“Well, that was … heartbreaking, huh? Hard to think of a worse way to lose a more important game…”
The wife simply shook her head in disbelief as her husband’s sentence trailed off. Before she could speak, another passenger softly interjected by muttering a single word: “Pitiful.”
The wife again nodded, breaking her stunned silence by noting that “This just isn’t Dallas Mavericks basketball.”
While I certainly shared their disappointment in the outcome, I found it difficult to share their sense of disappointment in this Mavericks team. Dallas fans have rightly developed high expectations, the product of owning the NBA’s longest active playoff streak, and those expectations make it easy to view the possibility of a season without a playoff finish as a failure. If success is defined solely in terms of wins and losses then 2012-2013 was indeed just that.
Focusing solely on wins and losses, however, is a flawed way of measuring what makes a season successful. John Wooden, the legendary coach of ten NCAA champions at UCLA over a twelve-year period, defined success in different terms. In his book Wooden on Leadership, Wooden defined success as “Peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.” Wooden loved to win as much as anyone else, but cautioned those who treat winning alone as success that “there is a standard higher than winning the race; effort is the ultimate measure of your success.” By Wooden’s standards, the Mavericks’ 2012-2013 season has been highly successful.
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Posted by Connor Huchton on under Recaps |
Box Score — Play-By-Play – Shot Chart — Game Flow
You know the drill. The Difference is a reflection on the game that was, with one bullet for every point in the final margin.
- The Mavericks’ season, for all playoffs-related purposes, ended on Tuesday night, and now we’re left to consider what this lukewarm, odd journey meant.
- As a Dirk Nowitzki three-pointer failed to reach its intended destination late in the fourth quarter, I realized it would fall to me to essentially eulogize a tumultuous season of Mavericks’ basketball.
- I thought about O.J. Mayo in the fall, Shawn Marion in the winter, and Dirk Nowitzki in the spring. I thought about the guarded hope of Brandan Wright’s line-drive hook shot, and I thought about the eager play of Bernard James. I thought about the managerial sense of Mike James, and the ever-hopeful exuberance of a Darren Collison drive. I thought about Vince Carter’s return to respect and the journey he and all of us are on, and I thought about the stoic stare of Elton Brand. I thought about all of this, and I sighed and considered all the different reasons that this sum of hope would now amount to nothing in a competitive sense. But a season is not nothing, no matter the result. It’s an emotional journey for those who (perhaps foolishly) choose to invest in its path. That path will lead longtime Mavericks’ fan somewhere unexpected this year – to a place apart from the playoffs. But disappointment does not erase the uniqueness of the journey, and another season and another path awaits in the not-so-distant future.
- What I will write about tonight is the summation of a grimly typical occurence - a harsh regression to realistic shooting performances, and a firm departure from the exalted three-point bubble of glory that’s gracefully covered all of this team’s faults for the last month or so.
- “In other words: If the jumpers stop falling, the Mavs could be in trouble.”
- Zach Lowe wrote that sentence less than a week ago, and it’s prescience quickly came to fruition.
- The Mavericks’ reliance on mid-range success was perhaps the most tenuous aspect of the team’s recent form, and tonight the team failed in that area entirely.
- The only Maverick who succeeded regularly on offense was Chris Kaman (7-10 FG, 14 points, six rebounds), who turned in one of his better performances of the season.
- Dirk has always defied defensive hopes with his dominance of the left-sided mid-range game, but that defiance counted for little against a hard-charging Lakers’ defense.
- He shot and missed all four of his shots from 10-23 feet in that left region, and misses like these always ring loudly with foreboding for even the greatest of mid-range shooters.
- And like so many nights this season, any hope for a defensive save collapsed after an especially rough second quarter.
- Earl Clark (7-14 FG, 17 points, 12 rebounds, five blocks), once widely considered a draft bust and NBA failure, played a far more complete and Maverick-destructive game than anyone once would have guessed possible not long ago.
- But it did happen, as Clark scored from any region possible and defended Dirk with all the aplomb of a young James Worthy.
- Even more decimating was the play of one Kobe Bryant (8-18 FG, 23 points, 11 rebounds, 11 assists).
- In the absence of Steve Nash, Bryant and the other Laker guards found Pau Gasol and Dwight Howard (10-20 FT) in the post all night, to the tune of a combined 38 points on 25 field goals (and 22 rebounds) from the pair.
- I’d guess this kind of complete performance is what the overbearing contingency of Lakers’ fans always imagined when this team was first constructed – solid post play, tough interior defense, and a confident Kobe controlling tempo from the perimeter.
- But such a performance couldn’t have come at a worse time for the Mavericks, who simply appeared unable to generate a significant counter to the Lakers’ play.
- The cornerstones of these Mavericks, mid-range and three-point shooting, dissipated with the rapidity of a changing wind, and an inability to capitalize at the rim (6-12 FT) closed the door definitively on any sort of courageous final comeback.
- I have no doubt that the Mavericks, not yet mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, will go on fighting with the heart of a battling, worn down champion, as they have all season. This team does not lack for heart – it simply lacks for well-fitting parts.
- Along with all the pain and struggle of an uneven season, the 2012-2013 Mavericks heaved forward, one three-pointer at a time, until the proverbial well ran dry and there was nothing left to do but keep fighting against a dooming reality. Playoffs may go, but beards are forever.
Tags: Bernard James, Brandan Wright, Chris Kaman, Darren Collison, Dirk Nowitzki, Dwight Howard, Earl Clark, Elton Brand, Jae Crowder, Kobe Bryant, Mike James, Pau Gasol, Shawn Marion
Posted by Bryan Gutierrez on April 2, 2013 under Previews |
With only nine games, the Dallas Mavericks (36-37) are looking at their last real chance to make up ground to try to extend their 12-year postseason streak with this four-game road trip, starting against the Los Angeles Lakers (38-36).
The Lakers will be without Steve Nash due to a right hamstring strain and a hip injury. Metta World Peace will miss the rest of the regular season after undergoing knee surgery. O.J. Mayo is dealing with a left shoulder injury, but plans on continuing to be the Mavs’ iron man and not miss the game against the Lakers.
Tuesday’s game will have an added flair as it’s a nationally televised game. It also will feature Shaquille O’Neal’s jersey retirement ceremony at Staples Center. With all of that and being the road team, Dallas will have to do everything in their power to play the role of spoiler for Los Angeles. It’s the biggest game of the year…until the next biggest game of the year. Time is running out for Dallas. They need to let it all hang out and see where the chips fall in this showdown against the Lakers.
Here are the notes for the game between the Mavericks and the Lakers.
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Posted by David Hopkins on under Commentary |
“Greetings, men of Earth, I have been awaiting you.” — Galactus, Devourer of Worlds
Let’s start with a philosophical question: What’s the most important position on the court? Like all philosophical questions, it’s more of a thought experiment than something to directly answer—similar to “if a tree falls in a forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” Obviously, in regards to the “most important position,” the answer is that it depends. It depends on the players the team has, the type of offense and defense the team runs, and the opponents they face. The discussion is more significant than the conclusion, because it reveals fundamental thoughts on how basketball operates as a team sport. I would suggest that the debate narrows down to the positions of point guard and center. The point guard is often the “floor general,” the person who controls the ball up the court, and sets the offense. The point guard has his hands on the ball, facilitating, more than any other player. The center is closest to the basket. In theory, he has the high percentage shot. He is also the defensive anchor, the last resistance for anyone driving to the basket. His very presence can alter the offense’s decision on whether or not to dare any closer to the rim.
This season for the Mavs, the point guard and center positions have been the most inconsistent and continually in flux.
At point guard, the departure of Jason Kidd may have hurt the Mavs more than they are willing to admit. Then there was the mysterious departure of Delonte West. Darren Collison hasn’t been able to make his case as the starting point guard or even deserving more minutes when coming off the bench. He has had moments of offensive production. But for someone so fast, he hasn’t been able to move particular well—especially on defense. I shudder every time I see Collison attempt a full-court press against another point guard. As he backpedals, playing his opponent close, I can count down the seconds, 5… 4… 3… 2… until a foul is called against Collison. To fill in the gaps of Collison’s gaffs, the Mavs have used Derek Fischer, Dominique Jones, Rodrigue Beaubois, and finally settled on Mike James. James, while not a perfect or even long-term fix, has surpassed expectations. Collison may eventually grow into his role as a starting point guard, but I’ll leave that discussion for another time.
At center, the Mavs have four players all vying for the same spot: Elton Brand, Chris Kaman, Bernard James, and Brandan Wright. Each of them have, at times, disappointed. Bernard James, although older than Brandan Wright, is a rookie. He’s the only one who gets a pass. Anything James can produce this season is a boon for the team. However, Brand, Kaman, and Wright are all free agents next season, and they need to be evaluated with more scrutiny.
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Posted by Bryan Gutierrez on under Commentary |
It’s time for another round of Bloom and Doom.
In an effort to keep the discussion going, I sought out ESPNDallas.com’s Tim MacMahon for his opinion on pressing issues for the Dallas Mavericks. You can view MacMahon’s coverage of the Mavericks at ESPNDallas.com. You can also follow him on Twitter @espn_macmahon. Periodically, we have touched base and discussed topics with our own unique point of view. It’s been a while, so it was necessary for us to reconnect and agree and disagree on a few subjects.
MacMahon likes to call it like he sees it. That perspective can hover on the other end of the spectrum from my optimistic viewpoint on things. You could say it’s a classic case of good cop, bad cop. Our different perspectives should make for an interesting conversation on hot topics revolving around the Mavs.
This round of bloom and doom analyzes if Rick Carlisle is having the coaching performance of his career, which 2011 departure would fit best this year and other topics.
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Tags: Brandan Wright, Chris Kaman, Dallas Mavericks, Darren Collison, DeShawn Stevenson, Dirk Nowitzki, Ian Mahinmi, J.J. Barea, Jason Terry, NBA, O.J Mayo, Peja Stojakovic, Rick Carlisle, Tyson Chandler