Mavs, Kings hope to stack up vs. Lakers in West

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02/24/2002 - Updated 11:26 PM ET
Mavs, Kings hope to stack up vs. Lakers in West
By David DuPree, USA TODAY

The Dallas Mavericks and Sacramento Kings are now the NBA's two most talented teams. And yet the Los Angeles Lakers remain favored to win their third consecutive title.

After a whirlwind few days for the Mavericks, who made the season's biggest trade Thursday and defeated the Western Conference-leading Kings on Saturday, even Dallas team owner Mark Cuban knows his club faces an uphill challenge to dethrone Shaquille O'Neal and the Lakers.

"No trade can help us match up better with Shaq, but we hope that it makes it tougher for teams to match up with us," Cuban says. "The winner from the West will be whichever team is the hottest. There isn't a team in the top eight that will be an easy win in any round, so you can't think that you are only trying to get by Shaq."

The Mavericks and Kings certainly are giving the rest of the West teams plenty to think about. They also are providing fans a glimpse at the NBA's future. The new buzzword in the league is versatility, and Dallas and Sacramento are at the top in that department. They don't do one-dimensional.

The Mavericks have three 7-footers who can block shots and shoot three-pointers; the Kings have the NBA's best passing frontcourt. Both teams are loaded with 6-7 players who can do everything. Then there are foreign-born players such as Dallas' Dirk Nowitzki and Wang ZhiZhi and Sacramento's Peja Stojakovic, Vlade Divac and Hedo Turkoglu, all playing the game more like they were brought up on an inner-city outdoor court with those double-iron thick rims and chain nets than in gyms in Germany, China, Serbia and Turkey.

The Mavericks and Kings don't bother themselves with conventional positions. They just play basketball and have a darn good time doing it.

They are the NBA's highest-scoring teams, the Mavericks at 105 points a game and the Kings at 104.1.

They also have also won the most games this season — the Kings 40 and the Mavericks 39.

Just how versatile are these teams?

The Kings are the only team with seven players with scoring averages in double figures (Stojakovic, Turkoglu, Divac, Chris Webber, Mike Bibby, Doug Christie and Bobby Jackson).
Sacramento is the only team with four players averaging at least four assists a game (Bibby, Webber, Christie and Divac).
Webber and Minnesota's Kevin Garnett are the only players averaging at least 22 points, 10 rebounds, 4.5 assists, 1.5 blocked shots and 1.0 steals.
Of the 12 players on the Kings' active roster, nine play more than one position (Webber, Christie and Stojakovic play three, Turkoglu plays four).
For Dallas:

Of the 12 active Mavericks, 10 play more than one position, and Nowitzki, Eduardo Najera and Danny Manning play three.
Newly acquired Raef LaFrentz is the league's only player in the top 15 in three-point shooting and blocked shots.
Nowitzki is the only player in the league who has at least 100 three-pointers while averaging at least 20 points and 10 rebounds.
Steve Nash perhaps is the league's most efficient point guard. He is fourth in free-throw percentage (89.3) and three-point percentage (45.9), ninth in assists (7.8), 18th in field-goal percentage (49.2) and 24th in scoring (19.6).
"We are actively talking to law enforcement agencies to try to get the big fella (O'Neal) a job and to convince him that he will have a lot more fun retiring to a career as an FBI agent in Coppell, Texas, and then staging a bigger comeback then MJ (Michael Jordan) to prove he is the most valuable player ever in the NBA," Cuban jokes to make a point. "If he doesn't retire to the badge, then we feel that we at least got a little younger with Raef and Nick (Van Exel) so that when he gets tired of fighting Shaq 'n' Toe disease, we have a chance to win it all."

Lakers still team to beat

Everyone knows the road to the NBA title goes through Los Angeles and O'Neal, unchallenged as the league' most dominant player.

Neither the Kings nor Mavericks have the muscle to handle O'Neal very well, so they've done the next-best thing: built those versatile teams to give them advantages in enough other areas to offset O'Neal. Matching up against Dallas or Sacramento is a nightmare, with centers and power forwards outside on the perimeter, guards posting up, shots flying from everywhere and no-look passes whizzing by.

"Sometimes we make things too hard because we try to be too creative," Sacramento coach Rick Adelman says, "even with the simple plays."

The key is to get the home-court advantage in the playoffs, making the Lakers the visitors in a potential Game 7. That's why pursuit of the conference's best record is the first step toward getting the upper hand against the Lakers.

With an eye toward accomplishing that, the Mavericks last week pulled off an incredible seven-player trade that makes them, perhaps, the league's most explosive team. They got LaFrentz, Van Exel, Avery Johnson and Tariq Abdul-Wahad from Denver for Juwan Howard, Tim Hardaway, Donnell Harvey, a first-round pick in the next draft and $1 million.

"I didn't think our team was any better than the others that are fighting for a playoff position," Dallas coach Don Nelson says. "But I think this may elevate us to the point where it will give us a real chance to win our division. It makes my team more consistent, where I have some players who are alike in the things we like to run."

First-place Kings sit tight

The Kings didn't make any moves, which says it all about how they feel about themselves.

"With the level we're playing at, the chemistry we have and that fact that most of our guys have the experience of playing three or four years together, why would I be messing with this?" Sacramento general manager Geoff Petrie asks.

Petrie made his big moves in the offseason, trading erratic point guard Jason Williams to Memphis for steady Bibby and re-signing his star, Webber.

The Mavs, forever tinkering and experimenting, might have come up with something special by getting LaFrentz and point guard Van Exel.

Teamed with the 7-0 Nowitzki, the 6-11 LaFrentz gives the Mavericks an intriguing center-power forward combination. They aren't as dominant inside as San Antonio's Tim Duncan and David Robinson, but both are comfortable on the perimeter, shooting three-pointers with ease, and both also will go inside and rebound and block shots. Together, they create as difficult a matchup problem as most teams have trying to deal with O'Neal and Kobe Bryant.

In their first game with their remodeled roster, the Mavericks, coincidentally, faced the Kings and beat them 111-97 Saturday in Dallas. LaFrentz played 31 minutes, made two three-pointers, blocked two shots and had 14 points and six rebounds, while Van Exel, in 30 minutes, had eight points, eight assists and four rebounds. The former Nuggets complemented Mavericks stars Nowitzki (26 points and 23 rebounds) and Nash (28 points and eight assists).

"It's a good trade for them," Adelman says. "They've got that many more weapons to go with."

Says Nash, "With the new guys, we can really spread the floor and give a lot of different looks."

Cuban didn't flinch at taking on $84 million in salaries in the trade.

"It's my obligation to fill the revenue on the other side," he says. "I think I'm a good enough businessperson to generate revenue to compensate for it."

It's all about beating the Lakers. "It will be a while before we really know how to play with each other, but the future is bright," Nowitzki says.

Some critics believe the Mavericks now have too many offensive options and that there is no way to keep everybody happy.

Van Exel disagrees and says he isn't concerned about a changed role, even if it means less playing time and fewer scoring opportunities. Dallas relies so much on togetherness that Nash, Nowitzki and Finley were told about the trade and given veto rights.