[SeriousSummer]

I doubt it will have much impact on the game--not like Avery's going to put in a whole new set of plays before tomorrow.

The basics of a San Antonio/Dallas match up (they get it to Duncan, we get it to Dirk) have been set for a number of years now.

If anything, Avery may handle the rotation and the matchups a little differently in the game and he might change the play calling a little (but, truth to tell, it looks to me like Dirk is calling most of the Mavericks's plays--he sure looks like he's telling the guys where to go, and I think that's good).

The beauty of this is that Avery (assuming he's known about this for some time) will have had a bunch of extra preparation time, he'll bring every bit of concentration he has for this first test, the players (assuming, as I do, that they like Avery) will make an extra effort to make him look good, it'll irritate Pops, Nellie's still there if Avery needs him or forgets something, and afterwards Avery will have time to study what he did, what he might have done and how it all worked.

I think it's creative (no doubt why Nellie likes it), is as likely to help as hurt during the game, and gives Avery a real chance to learn. Anybody who's ever trained someone for the same job as they have knows that at some point you have to give the person a chance--even if you think you could still do it better. The NBA method of throwing in a new coach without any real at meaningful game preparation is basically silly. I predict that what Nellie does here will be standard practice in a few years.

Teams won't want to hire an assistant as their new head coach unless he's done this and top assistants will want a promise of coaching a few games before taking a job. Actually, thinking about it, this sounds like a combination of Nellie's creativity and Cuban's forward looking business approach.