Thermodynamics: Week 4

Posted by Travis Wimberly on November 23, 2012 under Commentary, Recaps | Be the First to Comment

Thermodynamics (n.) – the science concerned with the relations between heat and mechanical energy

A day late (blame the tryptophan-induced coma), but never a dollar short. It’s time for our weekly breakdown of the Mavs’ three hottest and three coldest performances.

This was an interesting week for the Mavs. They were blown out by the Indiana Pacers, but then bounced back the next night in Cleveland against a bad (though young and spry) Cavaliers squad. After a fairly woeful home loss to the Golden State Warriors, the Mavs proceeded to take down the league-leading New York Knicks on the strength of a (mostly) impressive second-half comeback.

So who was hot? And who was not? I’m glad you asked….

Week 4 (@Pacers, @Cavaliers, Warriors, Knicks)

FIRE

1) OJ Mayo

Make it three in a row on the hot list for Mayo. Once again, the Mavs’ starting shooting guard was excellent offensively. He shot 32-of-60 (53%) on the week, including 10-of-21 (48%) from long range. He led the Mavs in scoring all four games, dropping 19 points in each of the first two games and 27 points in each of the latter two. His assist numbers weren’t great (3.5 per game), but they didn’t need to be. With Dirk Nowitzki still on the mend, Mayo’s primary responsibility is to score. He’s doing just that, and he’s doing so quite efficiently. Mayo is currently 8th in the NBA in scoring (22.2 PPG), and among the top 10 scorers in the league, he has the lowest usage rate (25.3%) and the the highest effective field-goal percentage (61%). In other words, Mayo isn’t racking up points by dominating the ball. He’s being judicious, taking mostly good shots, and making them at a very impressive (though likely unsustainable) clip.

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Quoteboard: Dallas 114, New York 111

Posted by Bryan Gutierrez on November 22, 2012 under Interviews | Read the First Comment

The Dallas Mavericks refuse fall below .500 on the season. They used a 29-10 run from the 5:27 mark of the third quarter through the 9:16 mark of the fourth period to turn an eight-point deficit, 72-64, into an 11-point advantage, 93-82. That was the run that allowed the Mavericks to secure an impressive 114-111 victory over the hot Knicks squad. With the win, the Mavericks handed the Knicks just their second loss of the season (New York moved to 8-2 on the year).

O.J. Mayo led all scorers with nine points in the first quarter against the Knicks on Wednesday. Mayo finished with a game-high 27 points in 36 minutes against the Knicks. Vince Carter appeared in his 999^thcareer regular-season game against New York on Wednesday and tallied a season-high 25 points in 23 minutes off the bench. His previous high scoring game this year was 19 at Charlotte (11/10). The most points Carter scored in a game in 2011-12 was 23 (vs. Houston 4/18/12). In a bounce-back performance, Darren Collison went 7-for-11 from the field and tallied 19 points and a team-high seven assists in 34 minutes against the Knicks. After recording his first DNP-CD (Did Not Play – Coach’s Decision) of the year, Jae Crowder recorded 12 points and four rebounds in 21 minutes off the bench against New York. He matched his season high for points and rebounds.

Here is the quoteboard for the win against the Knicks.

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The Difference: Dallas Mavericks 114, New York Knicks 111

Posted by Connor Huchton on under Recaps | Be the First to Comment

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.

• On a night of needed triumph for the Mavericks, it’s difficult to decide what should lead The Difference: Vince Carter’s (9-17 FG, 5-10 3PT, 25 points) surprise fourth quarter domination, or another night of overarching and essential offensive efficiency from O.J. Mayo (10-17 FG, 27 points). I’ll choose neither, and mention what a relief it was to see Darren Collison (7-11 FG, 19 points, seven assists) back in early season form. The offense fell into step with Collison’s passing surge, and the Mavericks were able to limit turnovers and capitalize on open three-point opportunities (13-29 from beyond the arc). Even with Dirk injured, three-point shooting is central to the team’s identity and success, especially given how well Mayo, Carter, and Jae Crowder (4-6 FG, 3-5 3PT, 12 points, four rebounds) have shot from beyond the arc this season.
• Speaking of Crowder, it was nice to see him back in the rotation and contributing immediately. His reaction after he made a three early in the game summed up the Mavericks’ night: an important moment of victory in the context of recent failure, and a huge relief in terms of the team’s prospects until Dirk returns. (Side note: Shawn Marion continues to be simultaneously fantastic and underrated on defense. That vital close on Carmelo Anthony’s jumper in the final seconds wasn’t perfect, but it was enough to cause a moment of crucial hesitation.)
• It’s almost jarring how much more relaxed and smooth O.J. Mayo’s game as a whole has become in Dallas – there’s a fluidity and calmness to the way he creates space and pulls up for jumpers that almost never existed in Memphis. Perhaps that’s a product of how his role has largely shifted and expanded, and perhaps it’s due to the natural growth some players find in their mid-20′s. It likely stems from both the natural and situational, and Mayo’s dual evolution as a player couldn’t have come at a more opportune time for the Mavericks. At least in the short-term, he’s the relentless conductor that guides the Mavericks’ offense. That was never more obvious than tonight, as Mayo kept the Mavericks in the game through offensive lulls and quickly found Collison and Carter around the perimeter in key moments.

Replacement Parts

Posted by Zachariah Roberts on November 15, 2012 under Commentary | Read the First Comment

Zachariah Roberts is a basketball connoisseur of sorts and runs AllOutPress in his spare time.  If you wish to see more than just his analytical musings of the game, then feel free to watch him ramble on Twitter @TheZRoberts.

After the 2011 season, the Dallas Mavericks elected to let Tyson Chandler walk. He was a key cog in Dallas’ championship run, but was cut loose for the sake of cost effectiveness. His presence was sorely missed  in the 2012-13 season; Chandler moved to New York and subsequently won the Defensive Player of the Year Award and remained an effective offensive force, all while Dallas struggled to find stability with its own center rotation.

But the Mavs did an excellent job of finding an economical — if incomplete — replacement for Chandler in Brandan Wright. Wright is currently making less than a million dollars for his services for the entire season, yet he ranks fourth in the league in offensive PPP (points per play) at 1.21 on 54 opportunities while shooting an astonishing 64.8 percent from the floor, according to Synergy Sports Technology. And, while this is all drawn from a small sample size, one can point to last year’s production of 1.18 PPP on 293 opportunities as evidence that this isn’t merely a fluke.

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Thermodynamics: Week 3

Posted by Travis Wimberly on under Commentary, Recaps | 2 Comments to Read

Thermodynamics (n.) – the science concerned with the relations between heat and mechanical energy

Last week around this time, the Mavs were flying high. They carried a 4-1 record and possessed what looked to be one of the best offenses in the NBA. But after some poor performances and a 1-3 record this week—including the franchise’s first-ever loss to the Charlotte Bobcats—the Mavs have some work to do. But hey, at least they didn’t fire their coach five games into the season.

Let’s take a look at the Mavs’ hottest and coldest performances from Week 3. (Spoiler alert: Cold wins this week.)

Week 3 (@Knicks, @Bobcats, Timberwolves, Wizards)

FIRE

1) OJ Mayo

With a couple caveats, it was another strong week for the shooting guard affably known as “Juice” (alternate nickname: “That guy who temporarily ruined USC’s basketball program”). Mayo shot 29-of-61 (48%) in the Mavs’ four games this week, including 10-of-20 (50%) from three-point range. He was the Mavs’ most consistent and productive scorer by a considerable margin, averaging exactly 22 PPG. For the season, Mayo’s true shooting percentage (64%) and effective field-goal percentage (60%) both rank in the top fifteen in the league among guards who have played more than negligible minutes. Mayo’s turnovers (3.5 per game this week) and comfort within the offense both remain issues. But if the expectation is for Mayo to be the team’s second scorer behind Dirk Nowitzki, he’s currently showing why that expectation is entirely fair.

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Setting the Table: New York Knicks (Game 6)

Posted by Bryan Gutierrez on November 9, 2012 under Previews | Be the First to Comment

The Dallas Mavericks (4-1) head up to the big apple to take on the New York Knicks (3-0). Though only playing three games, the Knicks remain the league’s lone undefeated team. New York has not played a game since their victory on Monday against the Phildaelphia 76ers. The realist is saying that they will be well-rested and well-scouted for their game against the Mavericks. The optimist is saying that they will be rusty for the matchup against the Mavericks.

In an update of who is in and who is out: Elton Brand rejoined the team after not being with the team for their game with Toronto so he could be with his wife for the birth of his second child. Roddy Beaubois will once again be a gametime decision due to a sprained left ankle.

Here are some notes for the matchup against the Knicks.

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Homeostatic

Posted by Ian Levy on October 22, 2012 under Commentary | 2 Comments to Read

I’m not sure if it comes through in my condescending tone or consistently judgmental world-view, but I support my basketball blogging habit working as an elementary school teacher. Both pursuits are challenging, rewarding and intellectually stimulating, but the nature of each means there is generally very little crossover. Over the past year however, I’ve been looking for ways to bring my hobby and professional life closer together. The latest iteration of that pursuit is a project I helped start this summer at Hickory-High called the K-12 Analytic Challenge. This project aims to get students engaged with scientific reasoning and mathematical argumentation through basketball analytics. Every few weeks we’ve been posting a basketball question and asking students to submit answers supported by statistics.

I’m sharing this project, not (entirely) for shameless self-promotion, but because in preparing the latest challenge I stumbled across a Dallas Mavericks story I had missed from last season. The most recent challenge asked students “Who will win the NBA’s Most Improved Player Award for the 2012-2013 season?” Each challenge also comes with a set of scaffolded hints designed to make the project accessible to students with all levels of statistical sophistication. In putting together one of those hints I pointed out that one group of players who often win the Most Improved Player Award are those who have been very effective in limited minutes the season before, and are then given a big bump in minutes the next season. These players don’t really improve, so much as they are given more opportunities to show off their skills — think Ryan Anderson last season or Kevin Love the season before.

In guiding students to use this line of thinking in the challenge, I used a search from Basketball-Reference’s Play Index to generate an example list of players who fit that set of circumstances for this season. I was looking for players who had been very productive in limited minutes last season, and who might have the opportunity to play a larger role this year. I set the criteria for my search as players 25 and under, who had played more than 500 minutes and less than 1200 minutes with a minute per game average below 25.0. If you sort the results by PER you find a Brandan Wright second from the top.

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Snake Eyes

Posted by Rob Mahoney on July 3, 2012 under Commentary | 19 Comments to Read

Successful navigation of free agency typically requires foresight, planning, and creative financing, but ultimately falls to the mercy of chance. All of the managerial savvy in the world can only make a compelling case, and in the process leave the fate of a franchise in the hands of an individual with many, complicated interests.

So it was with the Mavs’ failed pursuit of Deron Williams, which officially came to an end with Williams’ announcement of his intention to re-sign with the Brooklyn Nets. Donnie Nelson and Mark Cuban avoided long-term investments and wiggled their way into the cap room necessary to lure the DFW native, but the payoff for their efforts was always a gamble at best, and it’s not exactly surprising that their little wager against the incumbent Nets didn’t pay off. That said, the outcome also doesn’t make the decision to break up a championship core any less correct than it was a year ago; tough as it was for the champs to forego their title defense before the season even began, Williams and Dwight Howard were prizes worth chasing, particularly in the face of otherwise over-investing in a fading core.

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The Difference: Oklahoma City Thunder 95, Dallas Mavericks 79

Posted by Rob Mahoney on May 4, 2012 under Recaps | 5 Comments to Read

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.

• With the Mavericks splattered on the Thunder’s windshield, it seems a more appropriate time than ever to reinforce just how limited Dallas’ half-court offense has been this season. This crew has managed to salvage just enough possessions for us to wonder if they’re still capable of more, and yet time and time again these Mavs trip into performances like this one: outings filled with bouts of lame, stagnant offense, designed to flow but caught in the mire. Dirk Nowitzki is a miraculous player, but the team so carefully propelled by its balance last season has very clearly caved in, leaving Nowitzki as the one self-standing tentpole to bear the weight of a drooping roster.
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  It’s all fun and games when the play action comes easy, but the virtues of extra passes and open shots don’t mean all that much when a team lacks the capability to consistently create such opportunities. Rick Carlisle has tried to find substitutes for the likes of J.J. Barea and Tyson Chandler, but ultimately failed to recreate the same perfect mix of ingredients that brought this same core their own slice of basketball immortality last June. Things could never be the same — not after all of the pieces Dallas lost, and after each of the team’s many additions subtly pushed the Mavs in a different direction. It’s no fault of the newcomers specifically, at least any more than it’s a fault of every Maverick; this was an experiment gone wrong, and though by nature of the process most eyes will turn to the experimenter himself in blame, every beaker and burner and unproductive big man played a part in not playing their part.
• I’ve been among Brendan Haywood’s more generous supporters, and even I’ve completely run out of excuses and justifications for his poor performance. Perhaps Haywood still holds value in the right context, but at the moment that context seems far too limited to justify his standing or his salary. He actively holds the team back in the vein of an end-of-the-road Erick Dampier, and though he’s only 32 years old, Haywood seems to have sufficiently worn through much of his NBA utility. Haywood has seen Ian Mahinmi and Brandan Wright — two very imperfect players — take their turn in the spotlight during the regular season, all while he settled in with unimpressive rebounding, far too unreliable defense, and slim offensive relevance. Now he seems to have fully completed his downswing; his play leaves more to be desired than I would have possibly imagined, and he shrivels not in the shadow of Mahinmi, Wright, or even Chandler, but in the context of useful basketball players in the most general sense.

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The Difference: New York Knicks 104, Dallas Mavericks 97

Posted by Rob Mahoney on February 20, 2012 under Recaps | 6 Comments to Read

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.

• Let this game be a healthy reminder: Although the Mavs typically perform quite well in crunch time, their closing execution isn’t infallible. Jason Terry (13 points, 5-13 FG, six assists, seven rebounds) can still fall prey to a simple missed jumper. A weird defensive sequence can still result in an uncontested Tyson Chandler (14 points, 5-7 FG, 10 rebounds, three blocks) dunk. A lot goes on in the waning moments of a close game, and though Dallas performs in those situations at a higher level than most, they’re not immune to games like this — games when all the magic flows through the heart and hands of an opponent, leaving none for that final, improbable comeback.
• Two things stuck out to me in this particularly wonderful performance from Jeremy Lin (28 points, 11-20 FG, 3-6 3FG, 14 assists, four rebounds, five steals, seven turnovers): his range and his poise. I, like many others, saw Lin’s occasional three-point makes as an aberration. Lin, after all, is only shooting 32 percent from three-point range to date, even with some alleged outliers inflating his percentage. But there’s something to be said about his confidence beyond the arc, and on this occasion among several others, his impressive accuracy. Maybe he’s a bit streaky from long range at this point in his career, but he’s still emerged from the bench with a reasonably formed jumper, capable of putting pressure on opposing defenses and offering him a crucial tool to play off of Amar’e Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony. But Lin’s poise — in the face of Shawn Marion’s length, in the face of scrambled coverages, in the face of heavy defensive pressure, in the face of a ticking clock — is really and truly remarkable. I don’t think the Mavericks failed as a team defense, largely because Lin didn’t fold under any reasonable amount of defensive pressure. Dallas came in with a strategy, Rick Carlisle altered it on the fly, and it still didn’t pan out. Such can be expected when a team sees a white-hot opponent on the court for (essentially) the first time, and such can certainly be the case with a player as resilient as Lin.
• Also, as a general footnote on Lin: Don’t sweat the turnovers, at least in terms of Lin’s overall development. Those high turnover marks have a habit of popping up for any aggressive young player, particularly when they’re thrust into a dominant offensive role. Pace, position, and ball dominance all play a big role in bringing Lin’s turnover marks to a swell, even though — on a per-possession basis — his overall turnover marks are comparable to that of Rajon Rondo, Ricky Rubio, and Andre Miller. Curbing those turnovers would do a lot for the Knicks’ offense as a whole, but it’s really not much of an issue so long as Lin remains productive overall.

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