Stalled Bandwagon

by Craig Kwasniewski

With all the Dallas Mavericks posts here on "The Association" it's easy to think we're just two huge Dallas fans. Not really. It's just that with their fast start, who they were beating and how the were winning, the Mavs got our attention. Tonight Dallas was reminded that titles aren't won in November and that they are still a few steps from being in the elite group with Detroit, Indiana and San Antonio.

San Antonio brought enough to the table tonight and won at Dallas 92-90. Let's focus on Dallas, because I believe San Antonio didn't win the game but rather Dallas lost the game. Inside two minutes left in the game, the Mavs last six offensive possessions went like this: 1-2 free-throws by Marquis Daniels, 1-2 free-throws by Nowitzki (his only miss from the stripe), a Keith Van Horn pass to the scorers table, Nowitzki missed jumper inside the free-throw line, Devin Harris misses a 12 foot jumper inside the right elbow and Nowitzki misses a basline post-up. That's six possessions resulting in two points in crunch time.

Any name missing in those possessions? What happened to Jason Terry? What is second year guard Devin Harris doing taking a key shot out of a timeout? As seen a few days ago in the win over Toronto, Jason Terry is slowly becoming the go to guy for Dallas. Yet in a nationally televised game against the defending champs Dallas forgot to set up anything for Terry.

Like the crew at TNT said, Dallas still lacks rebounding and defensive stops. In the meantime they need to define their clutch players AND GO TO THEM! With teams like Detroit (Chauncey Billups), Miami (Dwyane Wade) and the Lakers (Kobe), each team clearly has the go to guy who not only takes the key shots, but he also makes them. They haven't had a clutch shooter since 2002-03 with Nick Van Exel.

If Dirk Nowitzki ever wishes to claim that role with Dallas, he needs to step up against the good teams. 14 points on 3-13 from the field? It's not like Dirk is the type of player that picks up his game in other areas. He is with Dallas for one reason only, to score points. You can't be the clutch player and sit third on the team in shot attemps (behind Marquis Daniels???? and Jason Terry). I know Bruce Bowen played Dirk really well tonight, then why not post him up. Dirk has several inches on Bowen (see the picture) and could at least get to the foul line.

Now Dallas is improving defensively this year. But they need to work on defending the drives to the basket. Tony Longoria had way to many lay-ups in this game. Knock him on his ass. The guy is a Euro, with contact he'll give up and go to the fade-away jumper.

And finally, what the hell was Avery Johnson doing calling the Hack-a-Bowen? Did Don Nelson call in a play from his death bed? With 2:30 left in the game, Dallas fouled Bowen in a tie game....Hack-a-Bowen...and Bruce Bowen hit both free-throws. So Dallas is going 2003 Kansas City Chiefs on the Spurs and kicking an onside after a touchdown because the coach has no faith in the D? If you want to teach your team how to play defense, you have to scrap the Don Nelson card tricks.

Comments

[rem]

the game has proven if nothing else that Dallas (without JoHo) is still primarily a jump shooting team and jumpers lead to streaks -both hot and cold-(hopefully not a nude streaking drunk Nowitzki). I mean look at their last few games...

Their last win was in Miami (because a 2 point victory in Toronto just does not count) and we know how all those games finished
(predictable jumpers)

Their more than decent start to the season has shown us that that they are not far from competing with the upper echelon teams of the league and are missing only a player or two at the most.

[Brett Edwards]

Couple of quick takes. Dallas was up 3 with the ball, with like 40 seconds left, when Van Horn literally threw the ball out of bounds. That was basically it, Tony L. got his 27th layup on the following possession, and the rest was documented here.

This was not a particularly well-played game, both stars (Duncan and Dirk) had off games, both teams had horrible turnovers, and both teams missed a lot of free throws. The only ones that played well were Bowen (cheater) and Tony L. (showing off for his woman).