[MavsFanFinley]

UberMan Optimism
Fired-Up Nowitzki: 'We Can Be Special'

By David Lord -- DallasBasketball.com
Notes from Tuesday at the American Airlines Center, starting with Dirk Nowitzki’s infectious optimism regarding his Mavs:
"We certainly have the potential, when we're healthy,’’ said Dirk of Dallas’ chances, “with Damp being a beast down there, and the rookie (Mbenga) looking unbelievable - both of them actually. I think we got the right pieces, we just gotta get healthy, and play together, and I think it's gonna be a special year."
More from Dirk as we walk you through Tuesday night. …

MUNDANE LOSS: It was a fairly mundane and meaningless preseason loss by the Mavs Tuesday, to the visiting San Antonio Spurs. There were a few highlights (a 1st quarter pick-roll-and-dunk from Dirk to Dampier, and a 4th quarter in-your-face posterizing dunk attempt on a break by Devin Harris over a defender) and some lowlights (including Mbenga fouling out in only 10 minutes of action, and a ticky-tack offensive foul call on Josh Howard in crunch time that assured the win for the Spurs).

TOO FEW SWINGMEN: Hate to say we told you so, but. …

The list of healthy swingmen has gotten very short. Now that we’ve added Josh Howard, the last healthy survivor from the regular corps at those positions, to the injured list, the swingmen list is awfully thin.

Heading into camp, it was obvious that the Mavs were loaded at the swing positions (small forward and shooting guard), with four starting-caliber players available (Finley, Daniels, Howard, Stackhouse) to split the available minutes at the two positions. Fans were worried about a glut, and speculation was common that the Mavs might want to make a trade to lessen the squeeze for minutes.

Well, the glut is gone. Is it ever!

With opening day less than a week away, and with Howard now ailing, there are zero (yes, zero!) healthy swingmen for the Mavs.

How bad is the injury toll? Dickau told us that at times they have been practicing with as few as 10 players, due to injuries. With the preseason winding down, it won't be long til at least 3 of those 10 will be gone and the Mavs will no longer be able to slide by with those training-camp-only players (Sasser, Hood, and Lopez) providing fill-in duty during games.

So what can the Mavs do with such an emergency shortage confronting them?

Jason Terry (who also was out of action tonight, with dental issues) can play some at shooting guard (the 2) when he isn't playing point guard (the 1). With Terry sidelined tonight, Harris/Dickau combined down the stretch to man the guard positions in combo fashion, splitting the duties at the 1 and 2. At some point, it is feasible that Avery Johnson could even get pressed into service at the 1, to allow the others to slide over to the 2. Obviously, the situation is less than ideal.

It should be noted that such a crisis could increase Dickau's odds of making the final roster (over Tariq Abdul-Wahad), since Dickau can provide some fill-in flexibility at the 2 in case the shortages continue.

What about fill-in's at the small forward, then? Tonight the Mavs were so short on bodies that they slid Dirk into that position for a while. That is a position they have said they didn't want him to have to play this year - and he is already being forced to do so.

Calvin Booth, who provided a spark off the bench (good defense, 5 rebs, and a couple of uncredited blocks, in only 19 minutes) in the 2nd half tonight, told us that things have been so bad that he played some minutes at the 3 in New York. When asked if he thought he played it well, he laughed and said, "Nah, not really."

But bodies are being moved around everywhere, trying to fill the minutes and get by, til those super swingmen heal.

DIRK'S INSIDE INFO - HELP IS ON THE WAY

But before we got too far into the gloom-and-doom world, we heard some surprising and positive words about this team from their superstar, Dirk Nowitzki - words that put things back into perspective. And Dirk began by tossing out some surprising news on the injury front.
What about the injury situation? "We're trying to get a couple guys healthy, you know. It's kind of hard to find our rhythm out there, with the .lineups we throw out there, people not playing their [regular] positions, playing everywhere. So it's kinda hard."
Then he added this news flash: "Hopefully this week we'll get them all back. Mike's looking a lot better, Stack's doing a lot better. … Marquis actually worked out today. It's gonna be big for us, when we get a couple of small guys back."

MORE FROM DIRK

The defense so far?

"I think actually defensively, we're not looking that bad in the set defense. We're rotating well and helping each other, so that's not too bad! We've gotta get better on transition defense a little bit."
He noted that transition defense was sloppy tonight with 4 players sometimes carelessly crashing the offensive boards at the same time, leaving the team vulnerable to fast breaks the other direction. "I'm sure we'll do a couple drills tomorrow on transition defense," he noted.
Defensive rotations? "Actually we've been working on it every day. We meet in the morning, we have shootarounds, we're taping the shootarounds and go pretty hard in that.
"Our pick and roll rotation today [against the Spurs] was pretty good, going out there agressively on the big guys, and double teaming. Actually its looking pretty good.
"We can do a lot of good things defensively this year. Offense will always come and go - there will be nights when the jump shot's not going, but those are the kind of games where you've gotta win with defense and play a halfcourt game. That's gonna be a big key this year, and that way we can win a lot more games than we did [with offense only]."

The offense?

"I'm not worried about offense at all! Once we get everybody back, we'll be fine!"

How about the on-court chemistry?Are you worried about the lack of time together in the preseason so far, for the starters?

"Not really. I haven’t been shooting the ball well at all, but I know it's gonna come.
"Then once we get all the scorers back, we have so many shooters and good one-on-one players out there that we'll be fine on offense. But on defense, we gotta keep on working. And keep on getting better as the season progresses."

With the injuries keeping the starters from all getting time together in training camp, will it be hard to play well during the early season?

"Yeah, " he replied, then added, ""But the focus is not on early in the season. Of course it will be good if we get a nice little start, get some confidence going, but we wanna be a sharp and healthy team when it comes down the stretch in April and May.
"We certainly got the potential, when we're healthy, with Damp being a beast down there, and the rookie (Mbenga) is looking unbelievable - both of them actually. I think we got the right pieces, we just gotta get healthy, and play together, and I think it's gonna be a special year."
"I'm looking forward to the start (of the season). Hopefully we can everybody back this week and get a good start."

What do you think of the changes to the roster, now that you've had time to see everyone in camp?

"I like the changes we made. I like the team. I like the center. The two rookies we got, actually they surprise me. Of course it's just the preseason, but they've really been playing well. Stack coming off the bench is gonna be nice, with his scoring, making things happen off the dribble and breaking people down and getting to the foul line. We just gotta get everyone healthy and I think its gonna be a good year."

You took different shots tonight than you typically do. Was that the way the game flowed, or by design?

"It was the way the game went. I'm still trying to find my rhythm myself. I didn’t touch a ball last week for 4 days (due to traveling to Europe for his grandmother’s funeral), so I'm trying to get back into the rhythm and just try to be aggressive."

Are you working on new things? You showed your new hook shot tonight.

"Yeah. I actually used it the other night in New York too. It's not going the way I want it to yet, but I'm gonna keep working on it and hopefully a couple times this year I'm gonna break it out and it'll be good. Im still improving and still got a lot to learn, and thats a shot that in a couple years I wanna be good at."

MORE ENCOURAGING NEWS

Oh, and one other important injury item, that we can add as a footnote: as we left the locker room, we asked Erick Dampier how that strained hamstring is coming. He replied, "It's getting there." Then he added a confident aside, with a smile, "It's feeling a LOT better. It'll be 100% by the time the season starts."