Who did you write the article for?
Very, very nice job of collecting the information and making informed observations about it. I don't have any quibbles at all with your basketball observations. Mostly, I think you hit the nail square on the head.
If you are looking for another sort of critique, though, the Daniels paragraph was sloppy. In the interest of consistency, I'd have preferred to read this all the way through with you referring to the Mavericks as "they" instead of "we." This isn't the only instance where you spoke of the Mavs in the first person, but it was the first, and it was jarring. Up till then, I was appreciating your objective eye. But that rattled my ear.
There are a couple other minor things in that paragraph that could stand a closer look. I wouldn't mention it except for the (seemingly evident) fact that you are a strong writer and you pay attention to detail. I think you would benefit from editing this one. It's not near as good as the rest of it is.
But on the whole, this is really good stuff. It's a careful consideration of everything that has happened thus far, with an imaginative slant toward what the repercussions may be. I highly enjoyed reading it.
One thing I wondered about, though, was whether you were accurate in the first paragraph when you suggested that this may be the most active off-season ever for a WCF champ. What the Mavs have done is little more than churn the bottom of their roster. (At least so far.) Off the top of my head I cannot recall what others have done in similar situations--though one could probably make the case that a WCF champ that loses is not quite the same as a WCF champ that wins in the Finals--but I believe I remember the Spurs, at least, doing some roster churning even so. Some fact-checking would be in order, at least from my perspective.
|