New Mavs arouse yearn for yesteryear

[MavsFanFinley]

New Mavs arouse yearn for yesteryear

Star-Telegram
Randy Galloway

The Mavericks? Disorganized, confused, painful to watch, and the worst sin of all for a Big Nellie team -- boring.

What are we seeing this week?

Is this simply the price of future progress? Or the work of a mad basketball scientist who misread his test tubes?

Very early overreaction:

Undo everything.

Bring back Nicky. And even Raef. Re-sign Raja and Adrian.

Bring back the emphasis on the Big Three.

The Big Three made the Mavericks a big deal. Made the Mavs the most entertaining team in the world. Made the Mavs a winner. Made the Mavs a happy brotherhood, and a beautiful offensive machine.

Hasn't Michael Finley, leader of the Big Three, earned the right to shoot himself out of a slump? How long does the happy brotherhood last if Finley is getting eight shots a game, and a newcomer from a bad Boston team is jacking at will? Even if Antoine Walker is hitting, which he has been, how does this make the Mavs better in the long run?

Scoring wasn't exactly the problem.

But the trade parade of August created a new problem.

And the trade parade didn't solve the old problem. And it won't solve the old problem. Not now, and certainly not in May, when the playoff mentality of pack 'em in, half-court hell, always takes over.

Defense? Rebounding?

They used to be the old problems. Return us, please, to the days when those were the only problems.

OK...

That's a wrap on that rant. I feel better already.

What's done is done.

Now, what does Nellie do about all this?

The Mavericks' home opener is Saturday against Utah. Next week, Miami, Washington and Toronto come up real quick.

This is a fortunate stretch of schedule that possibly allows the Mavs to sort things out, and also get a win streak going.

No disrespect intended, but consider these upcoming opponents as "scrimmages."

The Mavericks need scrimmages.

As Don Nelson has pointed out, and as his floor leader, Steve Nash, confirmed again Thursday, training camp is still going on.

Nash admits to "feeling rusty." The Mavs, as a team, look very rusty. The best rust-remover is about two hours a day of five-on-five practice-floor monotony.

But Walker and guard Tony Delk have been around less than two weeks. Antawn Jamison and Danny Fortson, plus guard Travis Best, are also newcomers.

The Mavericks have little time to scrimmage. Instead, they do walk-throughs. It's teaching, not practicing.

'We started all over," Dirk Nowitzki said. "We spend a lot of time [in practice] standing around, because everything has to be explained to our new guys.'

That's one way to legitimately excuse away the standing-around embarrassment of the opening-night road performance against the Lakers.

The Lakers, of course, have newcomers. Why did they look so good in that opener? Shaq, for one thing. And they were playing the Mavericks for another thing. They were playing a team not even close to being ready to begin a season.

Even with an eventual win against the Warriors, the Wednesday-night follow-up was much worse than what happened in LA. Considering the class of the competition, the Mavs went from embarrassing to disgraceful.

Still, it was a W. And it was a scrimmage. Maybe they can milk more of both over the next four games. If you snooze, you lose. Lose valuable ground in the Western Conference.

If it's any consolation, the San Antonio Spurs have also looked awful this week. That's a key foe, obviously, in the West. Another might be the Timberwolves, another rebuilt club also panned for its play, albeit a W, in the opener Wednesday night.

But the Mavericks have changed more than players.

The personality of the club suddenly appears different, and that's a spooky unknown factor.

It seems Antoine Walker is quickly assuming a leadership role, or at least attempting it. He's a shot monger, that's for sure. The Mavs have never had a problem with the often touchy issue of shot distribution. But now? Stay tuned.

Walker is also a chatty fellow. One reason the Celtics wanted him gone was his chatty personality. Management didn't want him as a dominant personality. But after two games, he's talking a lot on the floor. Again, how does that eventually go over, particularly with the Big Three?

As the departed Nick Van Exel said about his former teammates before Wednesday's game in Oakland, "Everybody over there is so nice. There's not a mean-hearted person in that locker room."

At the moment, however, there's a lot of confused people in the Mavs' locker room.

The good ol' days (last season) never seemed so good.

[kingrex]

I think Galloway answered his own questions. Give them time. Time to practice. Time to gel. Time to learn the schemes both defensively and offensively. Yes, fear of the unknown entity is uncomfortable, but I still think we will prove to be a better team in the long run than last year's squad.

[LRB]

Randy Galloway is a pompous @$$ and an idiot to boot. Especially when it comes to basketball. I think everyone expected the Mavs to struggle go gel during the start of the season. And the Big Three just flat out don't have their long distance shots down. Nothing to do with the new additions. That does happen to jump shooters.

And Randy please note that we've greatly improved on our rebounding from last year. We're only gotten 1 less rebound than our opponents after facing 2 very good rebounding teams on the road. Fare cry from the 10+ rebound advantages that we'd often give up to strong rebounding opponents last year. Yeah our defense does stink, but again that's to be expected without having the whole team together for training camp. 2 games is not a reasonable time for this team to gel.

[Psychedelic Fuzz]

Galloway is full of himself, and at least from the impression i get, is not a "basketball guy." He has to write a column to get a check, so he regurgitates this.
....and yet I listen to his mindless banter every day on the radio

[kingrex]

Hey psych? I Galloway better than listening to the ticket?

[u2sarajevo]

Originally posted by: Psychedelic Fuzz
Galloway is full of himself, and at least from the impression i get, is not a "basketball guy." He has to write a column to get a check, so he regurgitates this. ....and yet I listen to his mindless banter every day on the radio

Galloway IS full of himself. He pretends to know about everything sports related but makes himself out to be a fool to anyone who actually knows Hockey or Basketball.

...and as for listening to his mindless banter, you should try the Hardline. They will give you some mindless banter also, but at least they admit it. And instead of laughing at them you will be laughing with them.

[Psychedelic Fuzz]

Galloway is better than The Ticket, but not better than Coop and Newy. The one single solitary redeeming quality about the ticket is that they broadcast online.

[FineCubanCigar]

Micahel Finley is .5 pts away from us having 3 guys averaging a double, double . . .Dirk, Walker, Fin . . . with Walker and Dirk averaging 20/10. The rebounding has improved, shooting is in a slump (that happened even last year), and interior defense is still a question mark.

[kingrex]

The Nelson's would be the first to admit that they haven't answered all concerns from last year, but I agree with them that they have improved their rebounding and increased their scoring options from last year.

[Big Lo]

i even have to admit to thefact that galloway is full of himself as well. and the hardline is far down either. and whats funny is that i think rhyner got wind of the fact that people were bashing him about is contrarian opinions and got upset yesterday on air. what a load of garbage. coop an newy and fox1190 are still the best dallas has to offer imho. the ticket needs to move down the dial to the eagle.

have people not noticed that the mavs have been pounding the rock inside lately? and killing on the o.glass? they still manage 96 pts, shooting horribly from the floor. and as for finley, he knows his number will be called, and so hes not worried, as he said. If your shots not falling, do other things to help out the team. we have far too many shooters and scorers for one guy to be off while taking all the shots. and isnt that true? don nelson wanted more clips, so if ones shooting blanks, switch clips and fire again.

teams realized that in the offseason with the lakers retooling as they did; the west as construced back then would have been steamrolled without a major overhaul. and so dallas, without a dominant inside man, had only one alternative left. and so with that last option they reorganized the team, and had little than a few weeks to sharpen the pencil.

the onset of zones, offensive sets, reads, continuity; the mavs rolled out an egg against the lakers.
we fought back and played well to finish GS; and now we have a few scrimmigaes left till we face off in SA

** fox1190 (-) the hotspot

[FineCubanCigar]

excellent post big lo

[dude1394]

Galloway is very,very hard to listen to, easier to read. He's actually pretty right on and even admits he was knee-jerking for a reaction. But there are some things that are interesting:

Rebounding much,much better all around.
3Pt shooting really off, and I don't believe that has anything to do with "gelling" or not, you can either shoot it or not. Possibly just a general uneasiness with what is supposed to be going on offensively so they are hesitating a little, maybe.

Looks like a lot MORE zones will be played this year, golden state seemed almost 100% zones.

I'm starting to like walker a lot more than I thought I would. I think nick may be right that there needs to be a jerk in the locker room and I don't think jamison is it. Delk/Walker might add some of that very un-southern yankee blankety-blank to the team.

[LRB]

Originally posted by: Big Lo
i even have to admit to thefact that galloway is full of himself as well. and the hardline is far down either. and whats funny is that i think rhyner got wind of the fact that people were bashing him about is contrarian opinions and got upset yesterday on air. what a load of garbage. coop an newy and fox1190 are still the best dallas has to offer imho. the ticket needs to move down the dial to the eagle.

have people not noticed that the mavs have been pounding the rock inside lately? and killing on the o.glass? they still manage 96 pts, shooting horribly from the floor. and as for finley, he knows his number will be called, and so hes not worried, as he said. If your shots not falling, do other things to help out the team. we have far too many shooters and scorers for one guy to be off while taking all the shots. and isnt that true? don nelson wanted more clips, so if ones shooting blanks, switch clips and fire again.

teams realized that in the offseason with the lakers retooling as they did; the west as construced back then would have been steamrolled without a major overhaul. and so dallas, without a dominant inside man, had only one alternative left. and so with that last option they reorganized the team, and had little than a few weeks to sharpen the pencil.

the onset of zones, offensive sets, reads, continuity; the mavs rolled out an egg against the lakers.
we fought back and played well to finish GS; and now we have a few scrimmigaes left till we face off in SA

** fox1190 (-) the hotspot

Nice post Big Lo and welcome to the board.

[mary]

That's one way to legitimately excuse away the standing-around embarrassment of the opening-night road performance against the Lakers.

I don't know if given the curcumstances, an opening night loss to the Lakers AT the Staples Center is an "embarassment", no matter how poorly you played. Let's see what happens in December when the word "embarassment" COULD become relevant to how some teams are shaping up.

On another note, I'm rather fond of Galloway. I think most of the times he's not really taking himself too seriously, and I kinda enjoy that.

[ShaggyDirk]

n

[bogey]

Galloway is a tool. He has nothing in his bag. He spilled it all out on one of his chronic drunk binges.


Galloway hasn't been sober on the air in a decade.