ESPN's Eric Neel Article

[chumdawg]

Not sure that playing JJB and/or Ager has much to do with it. But yes, I agree that whatever the reason, it's not at all necessarily an indication of how well they might do in crunch time playoff situations. Actually, if anything you have to believe that the number of close games the Mavs have played will *help* them once the playoffs roll around.

But that's not what I'm thinking about. What I'm wondering is whether this Mavericks team truly is as powerful as some of those great teams of old. And more to the point, I'm wondering just exactly how much better the Mavs are than the other elite teams this year. My hunch is that the gap isn't as big as it looks...and I certainly hope all the talk about 70 wins and all time greatness isn't going to the Mavericks' heads.

Knowing Avery, I'm sure it's not. But then again, I keep thinking about last year's Finals. There is a certain type of racehorse that is commanding when he's loose on the lead but whose performance drops off considerably if he happens to be headed by another horse. That's kinda what happened last year to the Mavs. They breezed right through the first two games and the first three quarters of the third one. But when Miami headed them in that third game, they simply were not the same team for the rest of the series.

I guess what I'm worried about is that one of the drawbacks of the mindset where you believe from day one that you are the best team and, hey, the best team deserves the championship, is that you can't be sure exactly how you will respond when you are given a challenge.

[you]

Originally Posted by chumdawg

I guess what I'm worried about is that one of the drawbacks of the mindset where you believe from day one that you are the best team and, hey, the best team deserves the championship, is that you can't be sure exactly how you will respond when you are given a challenge.

I dont think that we have to worry too much about that. These guys are easily the best clutch team in the league.

The challenges are what makes the game fun to watch. What makes these Mavs great is that they find ways to win in those challenges and have since Avery became their General (see Houston playoffs, Spurs playoffs, etc). This team rises to challenges very well.

[dirno2000]

Chum I'd be curious to see how the 72-73 Celtics stacked up against the other teams that you looked at. They were the last team to win 65+ (they won 68) and not go on to win a championship.

[mffl03]

Great, another writer who watches 10 games and thinks he knows everything and anything about our team.

He even said it himself in that chat....."you can't get me to tune in. I apologize." So you are a sports writer who doesn't want to watch the games, but still feels like he can comment on them. Can you smell the bull???

It's just a gimmick. Remember when TNT bagged on us, and we would get mad all the time? Then we would tune in just to see what we would say? At least the TNT guys would actually watch most of the games.

[V2M]

Who cares whether they like us or not... just as long as they R.E.S.P.E.C.T us and more importantly F.E.A.R us!

[chumdawg]

Originally Posted by dirno2000

Chum I'd be curious to see how the 72-73 Celtics stacked up against the other teams that you looked at. They were the last team to win 65+ (they won 68) and not go on to win a championship.

Pretty close. They did a little bit better than these Mavs in games from the 16 to 20 point range, but they fell behind the Mavs in games from the 8 to 12 point range. Other than that, it was the same as pretty much most every other team. The Mavs notched a few wins with a one- or two-point margin that other teams didn't get.

My eyeball analysis would put the Mavs as a shade more accomplished than that team, though.

I'm looking at graphs, so you look for linear things that fit to most of the data points. But when it comes to sum-by-year margin of victory numbers, these Mavs are hampered by a couple of their big losses. They have a loss of 31, a loss of 22, and a loss of 18. Their losses are far and away worse than the losses of these elite teams we are looking at.

[dirno2000]

They have a loss of 31, a loss of 22, and a loss of 18. Their losses are far and away worse than the losses of these elite teams we are looking at.

I'm not sure what to make of those. My inclination is to throw them out. Sometimes the game gets away from you. OTOH we did lost those games with essentially the same team we have now so it's somewhere in us.

BTW, if you cap those 3 losses at single digits, our MOV shoots up to 9.4.

[chumdawg]

Right. That's what makes the Mavs tough to analyze. Two of those three losses happened before, evidently, they decided the season started.

[dirno2000]

If you take it a step further and say that our season started in PHX then we're at 10.3.

Now you can make the argument that every team will look better if you remove their worst 4 games and that would be a fair point.

The difference is I'm not arbitrarily removing games. The ones that I'm taking out happened consecutively and, it could be argued, are the least relevant. 57 games is s pretty big sample size when you’ve only played 61.

[Dr.Zoidberg]

From DallasBasketball.com:

`Wintensyty`
New Mavs Flaw: They´re Too Good
By Mike Fisher - DB.com

The national search for Mavs' blemishes reveals that, according to one writer, they do indeed have a flaw. ... in that they are flawless. And, he says, they are also an all-time "great team,'' "smart,'' "fantastic,'' "admirable,'' "proficient,'' "formidable,'' "bulldog-like,'' and "genius.'' Yes, it's come to this: Dallas is now being ripped for being too good.
The culprit here is ESPN.com's Eric Neel , whose column essentially deconstructs Dallas, piece-by-piece, and concludes that the Mavs don't cause him to feel "any kind of geniune enthusiasm'' because "greatness isn't everything.''
In this queering of criticism, Neel analyzes in some depth the 52-9 Mavs, winners of 17 straight after Sunday night's win at the Lakers. As a professional courtesy, I'll put his column under similar piece-by-piece scrutiny:
Neel says: The Dallas Mavericks are a great team. ... The regular season they're putting together ranks with some of the best we've ever seen. Barring a crippling injury or a brush with a norovirus, they're going to belong at the table with the 1996 Bulls, the 1986 Celtics, the 1983 Sixers and the 1972 Lakers as architects of a truly dominant 82-game run.
I just wish I cared. I wish they inspired me even a little. I have tremendous respect, but I wish I felt any kind of genuine enthusiasm for them at all. I wish I felt the love. ... Those other elite clubs had strong identities, some juice, some compelling lightning something about them. Jordan made 72 a mission, a dare, and Rodman made every day an adventure in self-loathing rebounding genius. Bird defended the home turf like a frothing dog. Moses was Moses and Doc was Doc. The Lakers, with Wilt holding the block and West sniping from every kind of angle, over every kind of defender, looked supernatural. You didn't have to love them but you had to pay attention. In fact, you couldn't turn away.
Fish says: I'll ignore for the moment Neel's gimmick here, which is to simply serve as a contrarian. (Eric is clearly the sort of gent who insists to his friends that Jennifer Aniston is hotter than Angelina Jolie, just so he can contribute something different to the conversation.) Instead, let's get to a common writerly misstep: Revisionist Sports History.
The man is terribly, wrong about how a team achieves its identiy, about how a team's history develops. Bird wasn't noticed to be a "frothing dog'' until well after his coaches knew he was one. Rodman wasn't initially a rebounding freak in Chicago; at first he was just a freak, and a risky one. The young Michael Jordan was reputed to be a selfish player who would never win a title. "Moses was Moses''? What sort of a clear identity is that? Dating all the way back to his ABA days, Dr. J reputedly was a carvinal act who could not shoot. Doesn't anybody remember that?
The budding legend (as the Mavs might be) can NEVER match up with the established legend. ... until the budding legend itself becomes an established legend. How narrow-minded and focused on Revisionist Sports History must one be to not recognized one's own inability to see the wide-angled view?
Neel says: We should be trained on them, geeked, obsessed, awed, but we aren't. The Suns -- Steve's boys, the fuel-injected fun ball gang, a brotherhood forged in dedication to a philosophy, a dream -- are captivating. The Pistons -- a gangly, tough, scrap-heap collective straight out of "Kelly's Heroes," a bunch, even with a title in the bag, who are absolutely certain you don't believe in them -- inspire. The Mavs don't compete historically and they don't compete now.
Fish says: Every time a writer makes the above claim -- that Detroit plays defense like Dallas does not, that Phoenix runs like Dallas does not -- I work on the assumption that his wife didn't allow him to sign up for the DirecTV.
Fact: The Mavs are one of the two or three best offensive teams in basketball, and is among the few teams that run with effectiveness even nearing the Suns' effectiveness.
Fact: The Mavs are one of the two or three best defensive teams in basketball, and is among the few teams (Chicago? San Antonio?) that play with the start-to-finish intensity even nearing the Pistons' intensity.
Neel says: Mark Cuban's part of the problem. He's smart, funny and insightful. He speaks truth to power and sometimes goes on entertaining, ridiculous rants. ... I love him. But there's no denying that he overshadows the team on the floor. ... I don't root for him. I don't root for them because of him. He's ownership. I want to give a damn about labor.
Fish says: I would like to propose that Eric and I fly to New York to appear on "Maury'' so Eric can take a lie-detector test. "You are NOT the author of that paragraph!'' Maury would bark at Eric. That's how preposterous the previous paragraph is. Neel "loves him'' but isn't "for him''? Neel thinks Cuban is "smart, funny, insightful and truthful'' but is also "part of the problem''?
There's something almost psychotic about the love-hate feelings Eric Neel reveals here. Deep, where-he-lives feelings. Like, almost Skip Bayless-level weird.
Neel says: All I see is Nowitzki. Which means all I see is accurate, somewhat wooden jump shots and hard-to-guard head-fake finishes. The guy is a superstar, probably the league MVP given what the team is doing. He gets banged on nightly and he wears the mantle of being The Man with seeming ease and determination. He's a fantastic player. I admire the hell out of him. But he's also, I'm sorry, boring to watch. No signature move. No defining moment (as of yet). No edge, no magic. Think of him next to the other top-tier players in the league right now. Play word association. Nash is Miraculous, Wade is Relentless, James is Terrifying, Arenas is Nutty and Garnett is Fierce. Nowitzki is, I don't know, Proficient?
Fish says: Five critical points here:
1) What is this, Bizarro World? Where Rodman's "self-loathing'' is admired and The UberMan's -- a fantastic and proficient superstar MVP -- is mocked?
2) Dirk is dissed because he lacks a singular "signature move''? What's wrong with him possessing in his bag o' tricks, like, 27 signature moves?
3) Are we quite certain we're ready to take Dirk's freakish skills so for granted that we want to reduce him to "proficient''? Shouldn't we just stick with "freakish''?
4) Ah, more Revisionist Sports History: According to Neel, MJ and Bird and West apparently only had one signature move. They did? What a backhanded dismissal of the brilliance of those versatile players.
5) All I see is Nowitzki. Here I am embarrassed for Eric Neel.
Neel says: (T)he rest of the club (is) a collection of almost perfectly calibrated role players. Josh Howard is a formidable talent, but his skill set. ... makes him near invisible. After him it's Terry, Stackhouse, Buckner, Harris, Dampier, Diop, John and Doe. Nothing to hang your hat or your heart on.
Fish says: A Mavs fan does not need to be reminded of the visibility of All-Star Josh Howard, or of the fun-loving, intensity-drenched supporting cast. So I'll do it another way, with a look backwards at one of Neel's "memorable'' great teams, featuring a supporting I assume "he can hang his hat on.''
After stars Moses Malone and Julius Irving, those Sixers featured third-leading scorer Andrew Toney, assist guy Mo Cheeks and defensive ace Bobby Jones.
Toney, Cheeks and the painfully quiet Bobby Jones. Hanging your hat yet, anybody?
Next on the roster: A collection of "memorables'' named Clint Richardson, Clemon Johnson, Franklin Edwards, Reggie Johnson, Earl Cureton, JJ Anderson, Mark McNamara, Marc Iavaroni (who I do remember) and somebody named Russ Schoene.
Oh, and, I guess, somebody memorable named "John'' and somebody memorable named "Doe.''
Neel says: Once upon a time the Mavs were a fairly freestyling bunch, practitioners of a kind of lyrical ball movement. Now, under Avery Johnson's able direction and bulldog disposition, they're prone to win at a slower pace, with more isolations and jump shots. They have a method, but no style, nothing I can get behind, nothing that stands out.
Fish says: Here, Mr. Neel not only has it wrong -- he has it 180 degrees wrong. The reason NOTHING stands out is because EVERYTHING stands out. The Mavs are like a mountain range with each mountain at the same altitude; just because one doesn't rise above the others doesn't mean its not way the hell up there.
This team dominates in the half-court, still runs with the best of 'em, is indeed proficient, is unselfish, is meshed, plays top-3 defense, doesn't cause trouble, still relies on "lyrical ball movement'' (ask anybody who knows basketball), on and on and on. ...
Like Federer, like Tiger, like the best Spurs teams, if the Mavs win a title, the reason NOTHING will stand out is because EVERYTHING stands out.
Neel says: We're talking about the Mavs, when we remember to talk about them at all, because they've won a big ol' boatload of basketball games. End of story. Yes, they're a great team, but greatness isn't everything.
Fish says: And, finally, yet another 180-degree twist, yet another twisted attempt at a history lesson, yet another ignorant way to look at this team, yet another queering of criticism. For, you see, the Mavs are NOT great. Not yet. But if they accomplish greatness -- Lakers/Celtics/Sixers/Bulls greatness -- do you understand how it will be remembered?
Dirk will make a game-winning shot in the NBA Finals that is remembered by the narrow-minded as his "signature shot.'' America will choose to like or dislike Mark Cuban because he's a lightning rod. People will get to know Josh Howard and he'll become less "invisible.'' Avery Johnson's terrific rags-to-riches story, his faith, his charity, his grit, they will all be discussed and admired. All the people on the bench will emerge from their Johndom and their Doeness. ... heck, maybe one of the Mavs' supporting cast members will somebody be as memorable as Russ Scheone!
And, contrary to the claims of this insipid critique, it will indeed be everything.

10:14 pm March 11 2007

http://www.dallasbasketball.com/mainArticle.asp

[Underdog]

To reiterate: Eric Neel is an idiot....

[alexamenos]

Originally Posted by chumdawg

But I do think there is some merit to the notion that says: no matter how you got yourself into a one-point or two-point situation (whether your larger lead evaporated, or you came from behind yourself), if you get yourself into enough of those you are bound to lose some of them.

I don't necessarily disagree with with this. I take issue (not with you specifically, but generally) when all games decided by X points are deemed *close* and the outcome attributed to *luck.*

cheers

[craggmac]

It just breaks my heart that this young man has lost all reasoning for being a basketball fan. I would highly recommend that he take up watching men's gymnastics.

[you]

Good retort, Fisher. I think that you just blasted him out of the water.

[Joey]

Originally Posted by mary

Maybe one of the players should volunteer to travel to Colorado and engage in non-mutual anal sex with a young pretty hotel worker.

I bet that would get people excited.

Somebody needs to "take one for the team".

Get DJ to do it...He's out for the season anyway. rotfl

[Murphy3]

Why would 3 losses by large margins worry anyone? That doesn't make any sense. Who cares that they've lost 3-4 games by large margins? So, they're capable of losing a game by a large margin every 20 games or so... What does that have to do with anything? That the Mavs are in trouble if every offensive weapon happens to go cold at the same time? I think we already knew that.. I think we also know that that holds true for every team.

[jthig32]

Originally Posted by Murphy3

Why would 3 losses by large margins worry anyone? That doesn't make any sense. Who cares that they've lost 3-4 games by large margins? So, they're capable of losing a game by a large margin every 20 games or so... What does that have to do with anything? That the Mavs are in trouble if every offensive weapon happens to go cold at the same time? I think we already knew that.. I think we also know that that holds true for every team.

That's why I have such a hard time with point differential. If you don't remove the outliers, you get skewed results. I don't care if the Mavs lose by 80 in every one of their losses. If they only lose 1 game in 8, I couldn't care less if they get blown out in that one game.

I undstand that winning by 15 is more repeatable than winning by 5 is, and I understand that the Mavs have probably been a bit lucky to be so successful in close games this year, but if you don't do something to control the big losses and big wins in your point differential equation, I'm not real interested in it.