2-5: Mavs lose to Lakers

[jthig32]

Man, what a game. It sucks to lose it, but it was a fun one to watch.

First off, I don't want to hear any of this "there are no moral victories" bullcrap. This was progress. Significant progress. When you go toe to toe with LA without Josh and with Dirk playing pretty darn badly, you have done something. Beyond that, it's the 7th game of the season. You're looking for signs that this team can compete, and they were there tonight.

I don't want to hear another thing about Kidd hurting this team one way or another, Devin being the better fit, blah blah blah. Jason Kidd was the best player on the floor tonight (for either team).

Damp was a complete stud tonight.

Green was pretty good tonight, but it's worth noting that he had the only negative plus/minus on the starting unit, and he turned the ball over quite a bit for his minutes. He's scoring well, but he still has some work to do. Very exciting possibilities though. VERY exciting.

Stack...goodness. What can you say, he was fantastic. Offensively and defensively.

Want to see why the Mavs lost tonight besides Dirk's rough game? Look at the plus/minus numbers of both benches. Josh coming back and Green (or Terry, I guess) moving to the bench should help that, but the bench absolutely has to play better.

That said, fourth quarter execution was still really, really poor. A lot of that goes to Dirk, who just couldn't hit anything. Mostly good shots, just didn't hit them.

Bass played 11 minutes tonight, missed one shot, collected no rebounds and was a -10.....

Talk it up. I'm sure we'll have the negative nancies flaming against the people that found encouraging things in this game.