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Old 02-16-2011, 04:01 PM   #25
mavErika
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This Zach Lowe article is from Monday, but he did some interesting number crunching in the lower paragraphs, trying to answer the question whether the Mavericks can be seen as contenders this year, so I figured it's still worth being posted somewhere. In addition the basic theme is surprisingly in sync with the news of the day in Mavsland (Roddy back, Butler back for playoffs?, Melo coming?):

http://nba-point-forward.si.com/2011...entity-issues/

Quote:
Monday Musings: Mavs face identity issues

It remains to be seen how much and how quickly Rodrigue Beaubois can help the Mavs this season. (Danny Bollinger/NBAE via Getty Images)

Valentine’s Day brings us within a week and a half of the trade deadline, and now that the Andrew Bynum-Carmelo Anthony rumors have died down, there appears to be only one elite team that has even a slight chance at striking a landscape-shaking deal in the next 10 days: the Dallas Mavericks.

They’ve been tinkering around the edges since Caron Butler went down with what was thought to be a season-ending knee injury. They signed Sasha Pavlovic and then Peja Stojakovic to fill some of the scoring void at small forward, they’ve given more minutes to J.J. Barea and Ian Mahinmi, and they’ve played Shawn Marion more at small forward. They’ve won 11 of 12 to slip past the Lakers into the second spot in the Western Conference, and they are finally primed to get Roddy Beaubois — fast becoming the Loch Ness monster of alleged impact players — back as early as Wednesday from foot surgery. And now Butler, pleased with his rehab, is talking about coming back for the playoffs.

That complicates things on many levels. Having a rotation player come back only for the postseason is always tricky because the team will have established new rotations without him and he’ll have to work himself back into game conditioning during must-win time. Remember the Jameer Nelson/Rafer Alston mess Orlando went through in 2009?

Butler’s $10.6 million expiring contract — with some sweetener attached — also represents the primary bait Dallas has to pull a deal for a big-name wing player — someone like Tayshaun Prince, Rip Hamilton, Stephen Jackson, Gerald Wallace or any number of other guys who might become available as surrendering teams look to ditch long-term payroll. Those teams may also ask for Beaubois as the sweetener, but Mark Cuban has said rather loudly that the second-year guard is essentially untouchable. How much and how quickly he can help Dallas this season are still questions — ones that will only begin to be answered with about a week to go before the deadline.

The larger question, though, is: Who are the Dallas Mavericks? Is this a real championship contender?

Despite all the hype about Tyson Chandler (and few have been bigger fans of this move than I have been), the Mavs’ new stinginess and Dirk Nowitzki’s uber-efficient season, this team is, by the numbers, an almost exact replica of last year’s club — a 55-win second seed that flamed out in the first round.

The Mavs are decent at many things but elite at very few, save for avoiding fouls on defense and sticking long two-point shots on offense. Their defense, the subject of so much early-season fawning, is allowing 105.6 points per 100 possessions — good for just 12th in the league.

Last season? The Mavs allowed 106.3 points per 100 possessions — good for 12th in the league. And the illusion of improvement disappears when you consider that the league as a whole is giving up about 0.6 fewer points per 100 possessions this season.

The Dallas offense is scoring a solid 109.0 points per 100 possessions — the ninth-best mark. Last season, the Mavs scored 109.2 points per 100 possessions — 10th overall.

Add it up, and the Mavs are outscoring opponents by about three points per game — almost the exact same margin of victory as last season. Six teams have higher victory margins — much higher, in fact — and that’s not the sort of overall statistical profile associated with a championship-level team. The Mavs are once again winning more than the numbers suggest they should, mostly because they have somehow duplicated last season’s ridiculous performance in close games; Dallas is 9-3 in games decided by three or fewer points, tied with the Thunder for the best mark in the league.

The Mavs, again, look like a paper contender in the big picture. But what if that picture isn’t really accurate?

The nine games Nowitzki missed with a knee injury did enormous damage to Dallas’ profile. The Mavs went 2-7 in those games and were outscored by 53 points overall, about six per game. Take out those games, and the Mavs have outscored their opponents by about 4.9 points per game. That would still rank seventh in the league, but it puts Dallas much closer to the elite — and above the average margin last season’s Lakers posted.

There’s also this nugget, courtesy of Jonathan Tjarks at GetBuckets: Dallas is 7-3 combined against Orlando, San Antonio, Boston, Miami and the Lakers — and all three of those losses came when Nowitzki was out. The Mavs are 0-2 against Chicago, but even tossing the Bulls in among the league’s contenders, Rick Carlisle’s team is 7-2 against the league’s best with Nowitzki healthy.

And then there’s the whole thing about winning close games. The Mavs pulled this last year (9-2 in games decided by three or fewer points) and the year before (10-4), but the skeptics warned there was little evidence to suggest teams really “know how to win” close games, or that such trends carry over to the playoffs. Did consecutive first-round losses prove the skeptics right?

What you believe about Dallas depends a lot on what you believe about things like being “clutch” and knowing how to win. But even if you’re skeptical about that stuff, you have to recognize that Dallas with Dirk looks like a legitimately strong club.

If Cuban thinks the Mavs have a realistic chance to win the title, he’ll do whatever he can do boost their chances — he wants to win, and he knows Nowitzki deserves the best chance possible. But how does he get Nowitzki the best chance this season? With Beaubois, Stojakovic and the possibility of Butler returning in April? Or some other way?

May the countdown to the Feb. 24 trade deadline begin.
Quote:
10 THINGS I LIKE AND DON’T LIKE
8. J.J. Barea’s one-handed style

Lamar Odom probably has the coolest-looking arm-extended move in the league with the statue-of-liberty thing he does on hard drives down the lane, but Barea’s Nash-like one-handed scoop shot is growing on me. The little guy is playing great, in general, lately — 14 points per game on 57 percent shooting over his last 11 games — and his ability to dangle the ball in his right hand without getting stripped or rejected is always fun to watch.
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