[HexNBA]

Hollinger's Team Forecast: Dallas Mavericks

By John Hollinger
ESPN Insider
Archive

It was the year that almost was for the Mavericks. They finally broke through as Western Conference champion after years of knocking on the door, only to lose to Miami in the Finals in heartbreaking fashion. Three of the four defeats went down to the last possession, and the Game 5 overtime defeat in particular left a sting due to the controversial whistles.

Despite the disappointing ending, this was unquestionably the best season in franchise history. The team won 60 games and knocked off its Southwest Division nemesis, San Antonio, in a riveting seven-game series in the second round. Avery Johnson won the Coach of the Year Award, while Dirk Nowitzki had the league's highest PER (player efficiency rating). Dallas won big despite numerous injuries, as Keith Van Horn, Josh Howard, Marquis Daniels, Jerry Stackhouse and Devin Harris all missed long stretches. All told, the Mavs' top eight players played only 13 games together all season.

Dallas made up for it by being resourceful. Plan A at shooting guard, Doug Christie, was sidelined two weeks into the season due to ankle problems. But the Mavs pulled Adrian Griffin off his couch, and he became a valuable rotation player because of his defense and passing. The Mavs had their best interior play in years thanks to little-noticed offseason pickup DeSagana Diop, who showed up in the best shape of his career and took over the starting center job. Harris and Howard both had breakout years on the perimeter, while Nowitzki finished third in the MVP voting for a second straight season.

Dallas could withstand all the injuries due to its incredible depth. Eight different Mavs played at least 1,000 minutes and had PERs above 13; no other team had more than seven, and several clubs had only three or four. All 10 Mavs who played 1,000 minutes or more rated an 11 PER or better (only Indiana and Portland could match that, and neither of those teams had Nowitzki).

Much has been made of Johnson's making the Mavs a more defense-minded team in his first full season as head coach, and certainly they played better D than under Don Nelson. The Mavs ranked 11th in defensive efficiency, with much of that indirectly attributable to the upgrade at center.

Dirk Nowitzki
Andrew D. Bernstein/Getty Images
Nowitzki's PER helps keep the Mavs' looking up.

Between Diop, 2005 pickup Erick Dampier, and the improved defense at power forward from Nowitzki, the Mavs were no longer in a position where they had to constantly double-team post players. That reflected in their low rate of 3-point attempts allowed (17.6 percent of overall attempts, the fourth-best rate in the league) and helped keep opponents' true shooting percentage below par. The other half of the equation was shot-blocking. Dallas rejected 7.72 percent of opponents' deliveries, the second-best rate in the league behind Utah. Diop, Dampier and Nowitzki all blocked more than one shot per game.

However, the focus on Dallas' defense glossed over the fact that Dallas remains an offensive team. The Mavs ranked second in offensive efficiency, but this went little noticed because of their slow pace. The Mavs dropped to 27th in the league in pace factor, exaggerating the decline in opponents' points per game and making them look much more defense-oriented than they really were.

And forget about all those stereotypes about this being a soft jump-shooting team. The Mavs had one of the league's highest rates of free throws per field-goal attempt, and one of the lowest rates of 3-pointers.

They also had another trick in their bag, and again the centers played a major role: Dallas was the best offensive rebounding team in basketball. The Mavs pulled down 31.8 percent of their missed shots, which is stunning because the Mavs were below the league average a year earlier and didn't make major personnel changes in the offseason.

Nonetheless, the few changes they did make produced big dividends on the glass. Diop added two offensive rebounds per game that weren't there a year earlier, while Griffin was able to average one every 16.6 minutes from the shooting guard spot. Meanwhile, Dampier was his usual monstrous self, leading the NBA in offensive rebound rate.

OFFSEASON MOVES

Disappointed by the team's lack of cojones in the Finals against Miami and the club's inability to attack the Heat's zone defense, the Mavs went shopping for shooters and veteran role players. They went a little overboard actually, lusting after 30-year-old career backups to the exclusion of players who probably had more upside. Nonetheless, the upshot of the moves is that the bench should be roughly as strong as last year's edition:

• Traded Marquis Daniels to the Pacers for Austin Croshere; let Van Horn leave. Dallas didn't want to pay extra luxury tax to sign a replacement for the free agent Van Horn to back up Nowitzki for 10 minutes a night, so they instead picked up Croshere as a one-year rental and avoided the tax hit by ditching the final four years of Daniels' contract.

I'm still not wild about the deal because of the talent differential. While Daniels seems to get hurt every time he wins a rotation spot, if you look at production rather than reputation it's difficult to see why the Mavs favored Stackhouse so much. He's still young enough to get better too, and losing him unquestionably diminishes the Mavs' bench on the wings -- especially for the 27 games that Stackhouse will miss with hamstring problems.

That said, Croshere will be a slight improvement over Van Horn, and his underrated ability to get to the line off the bounce makes him a good fit for this system. I just don't get why they paid such a high price to get him.

• Traded Darrell Armstrong, Rawle Marshall and Josh Powell to Indiana for Anthony Johnson. At first glance this looks like a home run for the Mavs, because they took three players who were useless and converted them into a solid point guard who can play the wing in a pinch. However, to do it the Mavs had to re-sign Armstrong first, and the other two guys have nonguaranteed contracts. So if you look at it that way, they effectively got Johnson as a free agent.

He's still a bargain at $2.5 million per year for the next two years, but it's not quite the laugher the trade appears to be at first. Johnson's addition seems to portend a Devin Harris-Jason Terry starting backcourt; otherwise there'd be no reason to pick up a third-string point guard who was this costly.

• Signed Greg Buckner, let Griffin leave. Buckner is a better player than Griffin, and in particular a better outside shooter, which is important since the Mavs don't have a lot of long-range bombers (am I the only one who feels weird saying this about a team with Nowitzki on it?). However, the deal is ridiculously extravagant -- five years and $29.5 million, or about what they were paying the vastly more talented Daniels. Optimists will point out that only the first three years are guaranteed, and certainly Buckner will help as a glue guy off the bench. However, paying the full midlevel exception for a 30-year-old who has never averaged more than 6.7 points per game is excessive even by owner Mark Cuban's standards.

• Signed Devean George. Hey, another veteran role player! Who'd have thunk it? I think we should just dub the Mavs "Team VRP" this year. Has any team had more guys like this on one roster? What do you suppose the odds are that Antonio Davis, Bo Outlaw, Kevin Ollie and Shandon Anderson end up here before the year is out?

• Drafted Maurice Ager. Ager will have a tough time earning a rotation spot on a team with so many veteran wing players, but his shooting ability could come in handy in spots.

BIGGEST STRENGTH

The bench. One reason Dallas was able to continually frustrate San Antonio and Phoenix in the playoffs was that they could match up so many different ways. Don Nelson was awesome at this, and thankfully Johnson has retained most of his mentor's tricks in this regard.

The Mavs can go small with a backcourt of Harris and Terry, like they did to run San Antonio ragged. They can put Croshere and Nowitzki in the frontcourt together and force opposing big men out to the 3-point line. They can play Buckner and Howard on the wings if they need defense, or Ager and Terry in the backcourt if they need shooting, or Nowitzki at center with Howard and Stackhouse as the forwards if they really want to run people ragged.

As for opponents' matchup tricks, Dallas is covered against virtually anything. Most teams have all kinds of problems matching up against the Suns because of their bizarre personnel, but the Mavs didn't have much trouble at all. In a roundabout way, that was why Miami left Dallas so befuddled -- the Heat were a fairly by-the-book team in terms of their lineup and matchups, so there weren't as many wrinkles the Mavs could use to knock them off balance.

BIGGEST WEAKNESS

Passing. I mentioned above that the Mavs had the league's second-best offense. What I didn't mention was what a weird offense it was. The Mavs were a purist's nightmare, running what was unquestionably the most one-on-one oriented system in basketball.

2005-06 Lowest Team Assist Rates
Team Assisted FG%
Dallas 50.0
Washington 51.2
Orlando 51.4
New York 52.0
Toronto 52.9
NBA Avg. 57.5

Most of their plays either began or ended with a clear-out, whether for Nowitzki at the top of the circle, Stackhouse or Howard off the wings, or a screen-and-roll play for Terry which, in practice, was more like "screen and shoot." Dallas had the lowest rate of assist baskets in the NBA, teaming up on just 50 percent of the team's field goals. That was even less than me-first teams like the Knicks and Wizards.

While the system was a big factor, it's hard to come up with even one Mav you'd describe as a good passer. Terry is a shoot-first point guard, and Harris and Johnson tend to play that way as well. The wings are mostly looking to fire away, especially Stackhouse. Nowitzki is a decent distributor but has a fairly low assist ratio considering how many double-teams he draws. In fact, the best passer from last year's roster was probably Daniels -- whom they just traded.


2006-07 OUTLOOK

The Mavs got so close to the title they could taste it, so there's a temptation to think they just need to take that final step this year. That logic overlooks one little problem: The Western Conference. Dallas barely made it alive out of its dogfight with San Antonio in the playoffs and will have to dial it up again to get past the Spurs this year (though, thankfully, that matchup would now happen as the conference championship, since the league changed its idiotic seeding system). Phoenix and Houston won't be doormats either, especially if their star players are at full capacity come playoff time.

That said, Dallas will be among the league's elite. Nowitzki is one of a handful of players with a realistic shot at winning the MVP award, while Harris could be a breakout player and the deep bench should let the team shrug off any bumps in the road during the regular season. The team's age is a bit of a concern, but again the depth should alleviate any problems. All in all, they have to be considered one of the two or three teams with the best shot at winning a championship. But if I had to put my chips on one side in the West, it would be the Spurs, not Dallas.