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Originally posted by: kingrex
Quote:
Originally posted by: Simon2
Here we are speculating on so many trades.. Fin to Chicago for Curry. Walker for Rasheed. I have come to the realization that no matter who the Mavs get, Nellie will play a strange lineup. Why? Because he can. The plan when the Mavs made the trades was so they could put out 5 all-star caliber players. Have those players played together for an extended period of time yet? Conventional wisdom says to put Fin at 2 because he's really a SG and he is bigger than most. What does Nellie do? He says, he's really a 3. The Mavs have Fortson and Bradley as their centers. Both have played decently and from what I remember, they have few really negative plays. What does Nellie do? He doesn't play them any significant minutes. We have Jamison. Da Man in GS and a very good player. He's coming off the bench playing 20 minutes? The Mavs said they needed a center. Mutumbo and Stepania were out there and they didn't offer them much. Mutumbo for a mil? Who knows what they offered Stepania. So, speculating on getting the "right" players is just frustrating. Even if we think we have really good players, Nellie will just continue playing tricked up lineups.
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Nellie plays "tricked-up" line ups to make up for their deficiencies in the center position. He didn't want Mutumbo & Stepania for the money they were asking for in relation to what they could add to this team. The Mavs went another route. They strenghthened their offense and unconventionally improved their rebounding.
However, I am sure that if Nellie had a proper center (i.e. Shaq, Duncan PF/C, Yao), then he would play a more conventional line up. As it is, we don't have those guys, so Nellie has to go another way. And, I'm willing to give him time to make it work.
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Since when has money, especially the relatively little that Mutumbo and Stephania were asking, been an issue to this team. And it would be Cubes, not Nellie who would have money problems if any. I can see Nellie not wanting to make a long term or even short term committment to players whose talent that he doubted would really help his team (anybody remember Popeye jones or Evan Eshmeyer?) But I find it hard to believe that money was the primary factor or even a major factor. More likely is that Nellie didn't want to committ the MLE to either one of these guys in hopes of landing Sabonis who he viewed as a better talent.