You know the drill. The Difference is a reflection on the game that was, with one bullet for every point in the final margin.
Rodrigue Beaubois (22 points, 9-15 FG, 3-5 3FG, seven assists, six rebounds, four blocks, two turnovers) is such a fascinating player to watch that Rick Carlisle, unprompted, crafted a persona for Beaubois as entertainer. Even with that in mind, this particular performance may be the promising guard’s finest work — as a competitor, as an entertainer, or in virtually any other role you would seek to assign him. It wasn’t Beaubois’ most prolific game nor his most significant, but never has Beaubois created such a profound impact without caveat. There are no “buts” or asterisks; Beaubois was tremendous, as he flashed every angle of his high-scoring potential with impressive drives, cuts, and jumpers. With so many elements of his game tuned to precision, Beaubois finally found his way. Mais il arriva que le petit prince, ayant longtemps marché à travers les sables, les rocs et les neiges, découvrit enfin une route. Et les routes vont toutes chez les hommes. “Bonjour, dit-il.” C’était un jardin fleuri de roses.
If I may gush further: Beaubois’ full-speed reads on pick and rolls were a thing of absolute beauty. He previously would approach such sequences as strictly a two-man game, but with experience, Beaubois’ scope has widened. He sees the baseline cutter and the open spot-up shooter — the men that, in the flurry of addressing their compromise in coverage, the defense has forgotten. Beaubois may always be a scorer first and foremost, but this was a fantastic passing display on a night when it was sorely needed.
This game completely exploded in the fourth quarter. Dallas had managed to protect a meager lead prior to the final frame, but Utah was still very much within range of a win due to their effectiveness on the interior. Then, the Mavs snatched the possibility of a Jazz win away without much notice or remorse, and what had once been a very reasonable affair grew into a walk-off victory for Dallas in a matter of minutes. It’s good to see the Mavs close out a game so dominantly, but it’s even better to see a previously struggling offense put together four consecutive quarters of 28 points or more.
If you’re not an apiarist or natural health fanatic, chances are you haven’t crossed paths with royal jelly, a truly incredible substance. Wikipedia explains:
The honey bee queens and workers represent one of the most striking examples of environmentally controlled phenotypicpolymorphism. In spite of their identical clonal nature at the DNA level, they are strongly differentiated across a wide range of characteristics including anatomical and physiological differences, longevity of the queen, and reproductive capacity.[6]Queens constitute the sexual caste and have large active ovaries, whereas workers have only rudimental inactive ovaries and are functionally sterile. The queen/worker developmental divide is controlled epigenetically by differential feeding with royal jelly; this appears to be due specifically to the protein royalactin.
The middle school biology explanation is that bees are identical at the DNA level. The differences between the worker bee and the queen, including the enormous size differential and the ability to lay hundreds of eggs, come entirely from eating the substance known as royal jelly. Player development expert and ESPN analyst, David Thorpe, uses this as a metaphor for the his system of positive reinforcment.
“Playing time is the first part,” says Thorpe. “A coach’s support is another thing — it helps you grow as a player if you know you’re not going to get yanked the first time you miss a shot. That gives you the confidence to be creative and expand your game. And then the final aspect of the ideal set-up is coaching you up on the new things you’re adding to your game. A great recent example of this was Trevor Ariza with the Lakers last season. In the spring, everyone was wondering why they’d let him shoot all those 3s. It wasn’t productive. But they needed him to be able to do that, they let him do that, they didn’t yank him for doing that, and they coached him how to do that better. And in the playoffs he was amazing at that and helped them win a championship.” - Courtesy of Henry Abbot and TrueHoop
Usually this term comes into play when we are talking about a young player who is still developing an identity and carving out their niche in professional basketball. The royal jelly is minutes, opportunities and teachable moments, all of which are lavished on said player. But this idea of positive scaffolding doesn’t have to be reserved for fresh-faced youngsters. The journeymen, those who’ve moved from team to team never quite finding the right sequence of steps with which to unlock their full potential — can they not benefit from repeated doses of the same treatment?
The addition of Delonte West was among last and least heralded of the Mavericks’ off-season acquisitions. His second tour in Boston did not go the way he, or the Celtics, hoped it would. Since his first season in Cleveland, basketball success has seemed to be creeping inexorably away from him. At one point, his issues off the court made his grip on an NBA career seem tenuous at best.
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 Mavs have certainly wasted no time this season in rattling off some truly awful losses. The opening night thud against the Miami Heat was practically expected, even if the magnitude of the beatdown the Mavs suffered was a tad surprising. Hitting a terrific Denver Nuggets team on the next night was a recipe for disaster as well, and the fact that Dallas ran out of gas — especially after struggling in their track meet against Miami in the opener — was fairly predictable. And most recently: though the Mavs were lucky enough to play a Spurs team without Manu Ginobili, they’re struggling against a brutal schedule that practically demands inferior basketball at some points. That doesn’t excuse the loss — much less the blowout — but it does meet a game like this one with a bit of a shrug. Requisite patience, yadda yadda yadda, but the clock is only kind for so long, Mavs.
Jason Kidd left in the first quarter with a lower back injury, and did not return for the rest of the game. Though the offense certainly could’ve used his help, that’s not necessarily a bad thing; Kidd started the game by leaving Gary Neal (12 points, 4-7 3FG, five rebounds, two steals) — one of the league’s most prolific outside shooters — open on virtually every possession. That’s never sound policy, and Neal’s quick start was a big reason why the Spurs were able to decimate the Mavs in the first half.
Now, if Kidd’s injury becomes a lingering problem and forces him to either miss court time or play through considerable pain, that’s a huge setback. Send him your well wishes, painkillers, and ice packs if you have any interest in the Mavs playing well this season.
The excruciating introduction to the regular season is finally over: the defending NBA champs are set to take the court again in short order, both for their own benefit and our considerable entertainment. If nothing else, this year promises all kinds of intrigue; the Mavs have lost some notable players, but in their place have added a star, some capable veterans, and a few interesting projects. Donnie Nelson has infused his team with youth and flexibility while maintaining a promising financial outlook, and though Rick Carlisle will have a seemingly infinite number of possibilities and lineups to sort through and fully comprehend, we have the pleasure of watching an expert chemist at work.
The Mavs a truly bizarre roster, but if anyone can optimize the rotation, it’s Carlisle. We may not know exactly what Rick has in mind in terms of terms of minutes distribution or even the starting lineup, but he’ll tinker throughout the season and adjust according to fit and performance. Then, the playoffs will come and he’ll continue to tweak and alter the rotation as he sees fit. There will never be a depth chart with fully dried ink, but the regular season should give us all a fairly good idea of the roles in which Carlisle prefers to see certain players, and the frequency with which certain lineups. It’s all fluid, but the freedom of matchup movement is the very mechanism that has elevated Carlisle close to the top of his profession. He finds and exploits mismatches, and this roster may give him more mismatch potential than any he’s ever coached.
This year’s preseason campaign may be more important than the lead-in exhibitions of a standard season, but there’s still only so much that can be digested from a mere prologue. Still, we can glean hints of the year to come, even in the context of games that don’t matter. With that, here are eight observations from the Mavs’ two preseason games against the Oklahoma City Thunder, laced with a nice balance of optimism and gloom:
Look, I don’t want to be tossing these wistful ideas around, and if you’re dawdling around these parts, odds are that you don’t much like reading them. Yet we must depart from the usual realism to discuss one specific rumor, from Marc Stein and Chris Broussard of ESPN.com:
There is also a small handful of teams that has informed the Hornets they are prepared to trade for Paul with no assurance that they can keep him beyond this season. That list, sources say, includes the Rockets, Boston Celtics and defending champion Dallas Mavericks.
Each of those teams would be gambling that Paul would be won over by his new surroundings and either elect to play out the final season of his current contract (valued at $17.8 million in 2012-13) or opt out of his contract on July 1, 2012, and sign a new deal. Paul’s 2011-12 salary is listed at $16.4 million.
How wonderful. Obviously Chris Paul would be an incredible get for the Mavs, but like so many other franchises reportedly vying to obtain him via trade, Dallas is low on assets. Just so we’re all on the same page, let’s run down the slim list of Maverick pieces that would be attractive to a team like the Hornets:
I was honored to join Rahat Huq (of Red 94) and Tim Varner (of 48 Minutes of Hell) for what we’re hoping will be a bit of a recurring feature: a three-man panel dealing with pertinent, Texas-centric NBA questions. Like it or not, the competitive dynamic between fans of the three Texas teams is very real. The rivalry between the Mavs and Spurs is undeniable, and though the Rockets haven’t butted heads with the Mavs in any kind of formal fashion since 2005, geography alone makes competitive run-ins — among fans and among the two teams — a frequent occurrence.
To have a little fun on that theme, Huq, Varner and myself voiced our picks for the best Texas ballplayer of the last 20 years, the most significant event in Texas basketball over that same timeframe, and the Texas team with the brightest future. Even with the Mavs’ core seemingly on their last legs, the answers to that final question may surprise you:
1. Tim Varner: Dallas. Mark Cuban has the means and the vision to field a competitive team on an annual basis. Cuban is an innovator whose dedication to winning finally brought home a trophy last season. I see that continuing, even after Dirk Nowitzki retires.
2. Rob Mahoney: None of the Texas teams are particularly primed for the long haul, but I’ll go with Dallas. Dirk Nowitzki could contribute in the NBA until he’s 50 if that’s his aim, and the Mavericks have the infrastructure to reboot with relative ease. Mark Cuban, Donnie Nelson, and Rick Carlisle give Dallas the means and savvy to transition quickly, and it doesn’t hurt that the Mavs also have a few young pieces (Rodrigue Beaubois, Dominique Jones, Corey Brewer) to fiddle around with.
3. Rahat Huq: I’ll say Dallas. You have to get really bad to get good as titles are won through the draft. Mark Cuban is the only boss from any of these teams to have made public acknowledgment on this point (stated last year at the Sloan Analytics Conference) so I trust he’ll tank when it’s time. Meanwhile, the Rockets are on a track to pick 14th every year and we’re not sure what the Spurs are planning.
Good intentions between player and team are wonderful and all, but J.J. Barea’s NBA future is entirely fluid. His ability to stilt opposing defenses with his dribble penetration gave Dallas’ playoff offense a valuable dimension; his stock skyrocketed with each high pick-and-roll and every improbable layup. Never has the basketball world thought more of this particular undersized scoring point guard than in the months fresh off of his team’s triumph, and though Barea Fever has dimmed slightly since he sliced through the Lakers’ defense in May, he’s still a valued commodity.
Barea is not just a quaint little player. He’s an NBA champion, and on some unknown timeline, an NBA free agent. He’s available for any team that’s interested, so long as they can convince him that he can find the same success with their club as he did in Dallas. The Mavericks are the handicapped favorites to retain J.J.’s services, but Barea is free to explore his options, and ultimately, to leave the Mavericks without any semblance of creation off the dribble in their regular rotation. Neither Jason Kidd, Jason Terry, nor any of the Mavs’ spot-up shooters did much to overtly attack the defense from the perimeter last season by way of their own creation. Terry and Kidd can run basic two-man action with Dirk Nowitzki or another Maverick big, but neither is a consistent threat to get into the lane and score.
Should Barea go, the Mavs would be at a bit of a loss in terms of replacing his contributions with the players in last season’s rotation. Which isn’t, however, to say that they would be completely without the means to replace such skills and production internally. What Barea offers the Mavs is not terribly unique, even if it may seem so in the context of the Mavericks’ regular 2010-2011 backcourt. Other players are theoretically capable of replacing him, and one such player happens to already be in a Maverick uniform, even if he rarely saw the court during Dallas’ title season.
Before we continue, let’s dispel one notion immediately: Rodrigue Beaubois, in the varied forms we’ve seen thus far, is not such a player. Beaubois may be the Maverick most likely to remind of Barea’s footspeed, but he lacks the basic drive-and-kick sensibilities that would make him immediately suited for such a role. Barea is a scorer first and passer second, but he still has a sense of how to use his own drives to set up his teammates. His vision isn’t remarkable, but Barea’s able to execute the kind of basic offense necessary to overcome his other limitations. The lanes and shots won’t always be there for Barea, but he generally — and there are certainly exceptions — has the good judgment to dig himself out of trouble with a kick to the corner.
Discretion isn’t exactly the backbone of Barea’s game, but he does have enough of it to thrive in his role for the Mavericks. If Beaubois were asked to fulfill a similar one, I worry about his ability to create for others. We know that a healthy Beaubois can hit from outside and drive to the rim. What we haven’t seen from him is a successful evolution of his passing game — even to Barea’s level. Beaubois’ basketball instincts guide the ball through the net, but only with his fingertips acting as the direct vehicle; his playmaking demonstrations have been rough up to this point, and unless he’s spending the off-season by drastically improving his passing and re-crafting his playing sensibilities, Beaubois would remain ill-suited to act as a Barea replacement for the immediate future.
Dominique Jones, on the other hand, could be up for the task. Jones’ cameo last season wasn’t exactly a resounding success, but his college career and NBA trial give plenty of reason to have more faith in his ability to create than Beaubois’. Jones would struggle in the NBA as a primary playmaker, but he’s more than capable of executing the same basic reads that made Barea a dual scoring/passing threat. The contrast would come in style more than substance; rather than darting around or between defenders, Jones combines bursts of speed with a solid frame and great positional strength. Not only can he finish after contact (or, could he finish after contact — the NBA learning curve made completing his drives a bit more difficult than it should have been last season, a flaw I anticipate will be corrected), but also effectively bull through defenders and draw in the entire defense’s attention. Jones would definitely bring a different approach to the same role, and unlike Beaubois, currently has all of the tools to pull it off.
This isn’t to say that Jones’ integration would be easy; retaining Barea provides the simplest way to preserve this type of overt offensive weapon, and throwing a second-year player into the fire so soon — particularly after playing so little during his rookie season — always comes with implicit risk. But should Barea leave, Jones would be the most natural internal replacement, and possibly even the most sensible one when cast alongside potentially pricey free agent alternatives.
The Dallas Mavericks have an odd history with the draft, largely due to their needs as a team failing to coincide with their position in the first round. That’s the price paid for being a perennial playoff team always on the brink of contention; Dallas has been very competitive over the last decade or so, but in exchange for that success, they’ve only selected a player earlier than the 21st pick (or acquired a player selected on draft night with a pick higher than No. 21) one time since 2000. It’s tough to find immediate help late in the first round, and though it can certainly be done (Josh Howard and Rodrigue Beaubois are two convenient in-house examples), those success stories will always be the exceptions to the norm.
Beyond the inherent difficulties in finding contributors late in the draft, Dallas has also long been a team without easily rectifiable weaknesses. The Mavericks have never been perfect, but their problems were more complex than mere positional defect; picks in the 20s (or even the late lottery) weren’t likely to produce players better than Devin Harris, Jason Kidd, Jason Terry, Josh Howard, Jerry Stackhouse, Erick Dampier, or DeSagana Diop with the immediacy needed. The lineup was set, it just hadn’t been quite good enough.
That much has changed with the whole winning the championship thing, but the Mavs, as is the case with any defending champion, still need to find ways to improve. This particular draft is not a sufficient means to achieve that improvement. There are some serviceable players in the bunch (along with a pinch of debatable star power up top), but the 26th pick won’t give Dallas a piece that will amount to anything within the context of their current rotation. So long as free agency isn’t an abject disaster, this 26th pick will be temporarily irrelevant; the Mavs have a chance to draft a player to stash away overseas or to bring along slowly, but the potential for an immediately capable contributor so late in this draft is virtually nonexistent.
Yet Dallas, possibly more than any other champion in NBA history, is ready to improve regardless of any additions to the team. Caron Butler’s return to the court — provided that he re-signs to the Mavs as is expected — is a big reason why; Dallas won the title without their second best scorer and one of their top perimeter defenders playing a single playoff minute, and plugging in his production in place of that of DeShawn Stevenson/Peja Stojakovic should result in a rather significant gain. Beyond Butler, though, Dallas has three capable young players who watched the Mavs’ unbelievable playoff run unfold from their courtside seats. Rodrigue Beaubois remains a prominent piece in the franchise’s future, even if he never could quite find the right gear during his sophomore campaign. Dominique Jones is an effective slasher, a capable ball-handler, and a physical on-ball defender. Corey Brewer is a bundle of energy that simply cannot be contained, and his defensive effort has a funny way of making good things happen for his team, even if his jumper is still a work in progress.
It certainly wouldn’t hurt if Dallas were picking earlier in the draft, but Brewer and Beaubois are studs compared to the talent in this year’s class, while Jones would likely figure in as a late lottery pick. That’s an astounding amount of talent waiting at the kids table, and more versatile as a group than any one particular prospect from this year’s lottery would be.
There’s a lot to celebrate in the wake of winning the NBA title, but Mavs fans have the luxury of not only living in the moment. Sip on that champagne. Rewatch Game 6. Scoop up all of the commemorative memorabilia that your arms can carry. But know that even without the draft, these Dallas Mavericks are in a position to be even better than the team that won the title in 2011.
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