Madape's proposal: balance and bastards

[madape]

It has been said by many that this maverick team is too "nice" and too "soft" to win a championship. As Nick Van Exel proved last spring, playoff teams need players who don't take shit from nobody, who bring the confidence and swagger of a champion, and who don't mind saying "Fuck You" right some punk's stinking mug. Every team needs some kind of balance between the softies and the thugs. With most NBA teams, a guy like Nick would be enough to take care of the "thug" side of the equation. But with the multitude of daisy-picking boy-scouts the Mavs seem to have aquired over the years, we need to go "bastard" to the EXTREME. There are incredibly talented guys out there who teams won't touch because of their reputation for being a "bad-boy". I say, hell yeah! The badder the better!

So here is mad-ape's three step off-season program for an INFUSION of the talent and attitude we need to take us to the next level.

Step one:


Offer Derrick Coleman the full exception. There should be no argument. He is the most talented member of this big man free-agent class. Forget about Malone, Mourning, Miller, Nesterovic, or the Kandiman. Coleman is the best. He's big. He's athletic. He can score at will. He can defend. He can rebound. He can block shots. He can run the floor. The man is a freak of nature. If you give him 35 minutes a game here and feed him the ball, you are looking at 20 points, 10 rebounds, 2 blocks. It's that simple.

Step two:



Sign Roy Tarpley to whatever it takes - I think the Mavs can sign him without dipping into their exception. For the newbies to Mavs-fan land, The man is a horse. He is easily the best center in franchise history, and he'd be the best big man on the team right now. A physical defensive presense big enough and strong enough to go against the best that the Western conference has to offer (and he doesn't mind dropping 30 points on fools every now and then either). Forget about Don Carter and his Nancy Reagan "Just say No" mission statement of the late 80s. This is the year 2003. If you don't drink a little or smoke a little, people think there's something wrong with you. Tarp was and still is a better talent than Rasheed Wallace, Marcus Camby, and Chris Webber, yet those guys don't care WHO knows they smoke weed. If Tarp started his career in the mid 90s, smoked the same amount of dope and snorted the same amount of coke, he'd go scott-free and be the seven time all-star his talent deems that he would be. He was a man playing out of his era, waiting for the world to catch up to him. Now that it has, it is Tarp's time to shine.

Step three:


Sign J.R. Rider to the veteran minimum. If you look up Rider in the dictionary, here's what you'd read: Offensive EXPLOSION!!!!! Here's a question: What do you do when you are down by 10 points with five minutes left in the game? Simple. Bring in Rider and watch the lead disappear! The man can score on anyone, anywhere, anytime. Plus, he smokes pot. A shit load of pot. So sign him up, and we've got that base covered.

Our new 15-man roster
PG: Nash/Nick/Marquis/Avery
SG: Finley/Rider/Abdul-Wahad
SF: Dirk/Howard
PF: Coleman/Raef/Najera
C: Tarpley/Bradley/Esch

That equals:
6 boys scouts (Nash, Fin, Dirk, Raef, Bradley, Esch)
4 bastards (Nick, Coleman, Tarp, Rider)
2 rookies (Howard, Daniels)
1 washed up veteran (AJ)
2 wierd foreign dudes (Najera, Abdul-Wahad)

Unmatched skillz
Perfect balance