[G-Man]

With the playoffs still a week away, I'm dying for some interesting chat, so how about a debate on the relative merits of this team vs last? Now lets be honest. This time last year, the Mavs closed out the season 4-4. Roddy, after a disappointing 2nd half, went down with an injury and every team in the West thought we were the weakest team in the playoffs. Then the magic started. DSteve and JJB played with consistency none of us had seen before or since. Peja and Jet 3 bombed the Lakers out of the gym. Corey Brewer stepped up and won a game and the Custodian crushed Wade and made shots. We can't expect magic to strike twice. But be that as it may, are we anywhere close to as good as a year ago? Man for man, I argue, we are surprisingly close.

Start with the Core: Better with age or worse from the wear? Carlisle kept the minutes short for Dirk and Kidd, so we can hope they will be close to as good this year compared to last. Terry and Marion look as good as ever. So advantage to the champs based on wear and tear. But the core is still solid compared to last year.

So, what about the rest?

Is Delonte better than DSteve? In my mind, absolutely. He is just as tough a defender, although not as well suited to take on Kobe and Wade sized 2's. But his offense is much better. In fact, I think he is a better backup PG than JJB. So Delonte is a definate upgrade.


Are Haywood, Mahimi and Wright better than Chandler,Haywood, Mahimi? Advantage: Champs. . While on paper, the stats from this year are impressive, there is no stat to show the leadership and toughness that Chandler brought. However, this year's defense is pretty damned good, and the growth from Mahimi has helped. More impressive still is Wright, who seems to get better night after night. The kid has great hands, and is the most talented scorer of them all. Hope he puts on some pounds in the off season, but even at 220, he has made the Mavs a threat to score at center, so the advantage to last year would be lessened. One key factor...Chandler stepped up his play big time for the championship run. I don't think Haywood has that in him. Mahimi and Wright have the desire but lack the physical ability to dominate the middle. This we will miss, no matter what the stats say.

Was JJB Better that the Roddy B-Delonte West combo? Barea was, for me, the shock of the playoff run. He had been horribly inconsistent his entire career and suddenly chose last May to get it together, helped a great deal by the fact that, in the entire playoff run, we only faced 1 team with a quick PG...OKC. His destruction of LA made the Finals trip possible. Roddy today is just as inconsistent as JJB was until the Finals. I am not expecting lightning to strike twice, so big advantage here would go to the champs. However I expect West to get most of the minutes at back-up point guard. Plus, he and Roddy are both better defenders than JJB. So for most of the things you need from that spot, we are better. But we miss JJB's ability to break down defenses. On a normal night, 2012 is better. But JJB played better in the playoffs than this years combo has in the regular season. Untilt they show they can step it up, Advantage: Champs.

Carter is better than Peja: Advantage 2012. This was a not true until Odom left. Now, Carter is getting more minutes and is starting to show some consistency. Peja was one dimensional. But put him out on the 3 point line and teams had to send a body out to guard him. Carter is a threat out there, but he's not likely to get hot and hit 5 in a row and win a game from beyond the arc. Carter, on the other hand, can do more than shoot 3's. When he is mixing it up, and taking care of the ball, and making his shots, he's better than Peja. My hope is that, being in a locker room with all those old pro's who came together to win some jewelry last year will inspire him to old heights. The real question is, can his body do what his mind wishes? Peja pushed his body until it just plain gave out. Mavs fans owe him big time for that. If Carter can do the same, while still playing within himself, he could be a huge help. But until he proves he can do it in April and May, extra points go to Peja, because we've already seen him come through in playoff crunch time. Two weeks ago, the advantage would have gone the other way.

Intangibles: Advantage Champs. Last year, everything just fell together. It was a tour de force of team basketball...passing, sharing, trusting. Its hard to tell how much of that this year's team has. I think it was hard to build trust with that Laker time bomb in the locker room. But that is, in many ways, similar to last April... in both seasons, they stopped counting on a player who had failed to deliver on his huge potential. Last year, they got better without Roddy. This year, they got better without Lamar. At this point in both years, we had no idea how good they could get. In the last week of the season, this year's team looks about as good as last year's squad did. What remains consistent is the heart of our champions. Do they have enough to do it again?

The easy thing is to say there is no way this year's team is close to as good as last....I'll concede that. But how good do you think this team could be?