Dallas Mavericks driver

[dude1394]

Since I've been declared the official Avery basher I thought it incumbent to post this article.
I haven't seen the GM rankings on coaches. Interesting..

Dallas Mavericks tip off looking to rebound
09:59 PM CDT on Tuesday, October 30, 2007

By EDDIE SEFKO / The Dallas Morning News
esefko@dallasnews.com

CLEVELAND – The Mavericks embark Wednesday night on a new season that can't possibly be any worse than the way the last one ended.

They will look familiar. The engine and all the moving parts from last season's model are still there. They slapped on a new hood ornament and a couple of pinstripes. But nothing major.

So it all comes down to the driver, right?

And we're not talking about point guard Devin Harris.

Avery Johnson has had an up-and-down tour as Mavericks coach through two full seasons. He was the first coach in franchise history to lead the team to the NBA Finals. The Mavericks lost that series in spectacular fashion, losing a 2-0 lead to Miami.
Mavericks/NBA

Last season, of course, the bottom fell out in the first round against Golden State after the Mavs won 67 games in the regular season.

So Johnson has seen both sides. And he faces the critics going into his third season. It's not fire-and-brimstone stuff. But it's still a situation in which the coach has to prove he can lead the Mavericks back to where they once went – the NBA Finals. Management, of which Johnson is part, has decided these players are good enough.

So everybody wants to know if the coaching is good enough, too.

To that, Johnson says, bring it on. There's no doubt in his mind that he's the man for this job.

"If I'm not, I'll be the first one to tell Mark [Cuban]," Johnson says. "When we started here, we talked about a three-year plan, and we're in our third year now. We've been able to keep this team together. So now we'll see where it goes from here. But every year, just like I did when I played, I analyze myself first, and then I make recommendations to the owner – unless he makes a recommendation to me."

Cuban, the seven-year owner, has been lucky. He hasn't yet had to tell a coach that he's fired. Those are tough situations.

But Johnson understands that his job is tough, too. He has a profound respect for how tough it is to win nightly. He's won 127 games in his first two full seasons. Tack on the 16-2 record he had at the end of the 2004-05 season after taking over for Don Nelson, and Johnson is 143-49. He was the fastest coach in NBA history to 100 wins and probably will be to 150, too.

Yet, there are knocks on Johnson. Outsiders have said he is too headstrong and too slow to accept information and suggestions. But he has worked hard during this training camp to improve those perceived faults.

When the NBA general managers' survey was released last week, results to the coaching questions were not endearing to Johnson.

Johnson was not among the five coaches who received votes for best coach. He also didn't make the rankings for in-game adjustments, best coach in the last two minutes, best at offensive strategy or, most disturbingly, best at defensive strategy.

He did tie for sixth among those listed as the best manager/motivator.

Johnson said he didn't see the survey. But he waved off any findings, noting that they are much like all-star voting, which turns into popularity contests.

That said, Johnson is the first to say that he has much to prove, just as his team does.

"A lot of us have something to prove," Johnson says. "When you don't come in first place, it's all disappointing to all of us. But at the same time, what we've found out is you kind of keep at it, and hopefully you will have a breakthrough year.

"There are other teams that have things to prove. You don't think Phoenix and their staff has something to prove? Everybody's talking about San Antonio not being able to repeat. They got something to prove.

"But it's not easy. It's easy to go from nothing to something. But it's hard to go from something to championship."

The three-year plan that Johnson spoke about when he took over the Mavericks was accelerated when they went to the NBA Finals in 2006. Or was it?

Johnson said his coaching career is not unlike what he went through as a player, when he went undrafted and washed out with several teams before finally proving himself in San Antonio.

"I don't think I really hit my stride until pretty much the middle of my career," he says. "But having that experience and all those long years and a lot of the great coaches I played for and have been mentored by, it helped me get my feet solid.
Despite the success of coach Avery Johson, the Dallas Mavericks have higher expectations.

"We're still learning. All of us are. We took a hard look at ourselves as a staff. We took an extra hard look at the head coach, and we took a look at our personnel. And we've tried to make good judgments based on the information we found."

That's why just about everybody is still here.

His players feel Johnson has evolved, just like a lot of them have. And the results should be at their best this season.

"Even though we went to the Finals in that second year, we didn't think we were going to the Finals," guard Jason Terry says. "We were just going to play the season out, and whatever happened, happened. Last year, we had all the expectations to get back there, and it didn't happen. But that's life. It goes on. And now, it's the third year."

Terry, along with Dirk Nowitzki and others, maintains that this team has as good a chance to win it all as any they have been on.

Johnson can't argue.

"This team has a chance to be pretty good," he says. "We don't know what's around the corner for us. But we have a chance to be pretty good. We know our competition is stiff.

"We know we're not the favorites this year. A lot of people are picking Houston to win our division or the Spurs to repeat as champions. A lot of people are picking Boston. We know we're not the favorites. But we like our chances.

"It's a lot of motivation to see what we can do with this ballclub."

[dude1394]

By the way there are lots of good stuff in the two papers today. This one on nowitzki is a hoot. Good grief his dad never taught him to tie a tie. Also I certainly didn't realize that his dad was having surgery during the GSW series.

What a goomer.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont...e.362549e.html

Between bites of roast chicken, potatoes and Caesar salad, Dallas Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki playfully fielded questions about his personal life. No topics verboten. He divulged that he has a personal chef, doesn't have a girlfriend, hasn't been to a mall in about six years and can't remember when he last went to a movie.
Dirk Nowitzki
LOUIS DeLUCA/DMN

Fun factoids about the NBA's reigning Most Valuable Player? Actually, Nowitzki regards them as drawbacks to being a world-visible athlete. Though affable with the media, he closely guards what little privacy he has left.

So while the top-seeded Mavericks were getting shocked by Golden State in the first round of last spring's playoffs, the public never knew that Nowitzki's father, Jörg, was undergoing surgery in Dallas.

[Dirkadirkastan]

The league is still hurting from all the pain the Mavs inflicted on them last year. Obviously the other GMs don't want to think about that, and understandably so.

[MavsX]

who cares. what does johnson or mav fans care if johnson was voted #1 for any of those categories.