Shooting Stars - DMN Article

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Shooting stars ... Do Mavs have too many?
2003-04 Mavericks Season Preview: Dallas coach Don Nelson believes you can't have too many pure shooters is better than the alternative, so long as they are pure makers, too. But at some point, sharing the basketball becomes an issue when you have a surplus of talented offensive players. The Los Angeles Lakers, who host the Mavericks in the opener on Tuesday, have four players who each shot the ball more than 1,000 times last season. Only one team has five such prolific hoisters – the Mavericks.



Shooting stars ... Do Mavs have too many?
Surplus of talented offensive players could be a blessing or a curse


07:42 PM CDT on Saturday, October 25, 2003

By EDDIE SEFKO / The Dallas Morning News

Donnie Nelson never lost his poker face when he was chatting with a half-dozen NBA assistant coaches during a summer clinic, and they all wanted to know the same thing.

"How are you going to get your guys to share the basketball?" one colleague asked. "You've got too many shooters."

Without any hesitation or change in expression, Nelson retorted: "There's no such thing." To prove his point, he went out and got another one.

OK, so that old saying about the acorn not falling far from the tree really is true. Donnie Nelson, the Mavericks' president of basketball operations and son of coach Don Nelson, couldn't agree more with his father's theory that an abundance or even an over-abundance of pure shooters is better than the alternative, so long as they are pure makers, too.

But at some point, sharing the basketball becomes an issue when you have a surplus of talented offensive players. The Los Angeles Lakers, who host the Mavericks in the opener on Tuesday, have assembled four players who each shot the ball more than 1,000 times last season.

Only one team has five such prolific hoisters – the Mavericks.

Dirk Nowitzki is the unquestioned leader and one of the best offensive players in the NBA, having raised his scoring average every year. Michael Finley has been a proven 20-point producer for years. Steve Nash has averaged nearly 18 points the last two seasons. Antawn Jamison, once the newcomer to the mix but now an old-timer without even playing a game, was in the top 15 in the league in scoring two of the last three seasons. And Antoine Walker has drained 3-pointers and posted up in the paint with great success throughout his career.

Combined, they could be good for 100 points a night.

Or, in a worst-case scenario, they could be too good to be true.

Best ever?

Don Nelson says this is the best team he's ever had. And going into the long NBA grind, the players prefer to emphasize just how good it really could be.

"We don't really care who does the scoring," Nash says. "But for our team to win, certain guys are going to have to take a certain amount of shots. It's not selfishness or unselfishness. It's out of necessity.

"But believe me, there are enough shots to go around."

Are there? That's the ultimate question.

"Did we have problems last year?" Steve Nash asks. The answer is no, although the four big scorers last season were not in the starting lineup together. Nick Van Exel came off the bench almost exclusively.

This year, the Fab Five won't all start – but four of them probably will. In Don Nelson's universe, there are no guarantees. Finley as sixth man of the year may have a nice ring to it somewhere along the line, although Nelson is starting the season with Jamison in the role of providing instant offense off the bench.

But the first order of business is finding roles for five big-time scorers. To have that much talent is reason for optimism. Channeling that talent is the next big challenge. If they can, pity the opponent that has to deal with these weapons.

"Offensively, it's going to be scary," says Jamison, the off-season acquisition from Golden State. "It's going to be hard to double-team anybody."

That much is true. And from a character standpoint, it's hard to see the Mavericks stepping on each other's toes. They no longer are a young, brash, up-and-coming team. They have veterans, who have been in the league at least five seasons, manning all the critical spots on the floor. This team is stepping into adulthood and because it is filled with quality citizens, some outsiders think selfishness is the least of their concerns.

"There's never been a championship team that didn't play a completely selfless style of basketball," says Hall of Famer and television analyst Bill Walton. "To me, the most mind-boggling story in all of sports is why more teams aren't committed to selfless goals.

"This whole sense – when I have the ball, it's my game and my world and everybody else just stands around and watches – is a self-defeating style that keeps teams from getting to that championship level.

"I don't see those problems present or permeating into the Mavericks, because the best players on the team are the most selfless – Dirk Nowitzki and Steve Nash."

There's more to support that argument, such as the fact that Jamison is not the sort of player who needs to have his number dialed a lot. And while Walker's image took a hit in Boston last season, he enjoys passing the ball, which usually makes for happier teammates.

Sharing the ball

The Mavericks do not have the market cornered on the question of how to distribute the basketball. The Los Angeles Lakers, with Karl Malone and Gary Payton joining Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant, are heavy on artillery, too.

Minnesota is another team that added multiple offensive threats to go with a superstar, Kevin Garnett. In the East, New Jersey added Alonzo Mourning to Jason Kidd and a growing cast that needs to be fed with more shots, including Kenyon Martin and Richard Jefferson.

"We're going to be a tough team to match up with, and we have far more flexibility defensively in our matchups, one through five," owner Mark Cuban says. "We still have tough matchups with Shaq, [Tim] Duncan and Garnett. But those were going to be there anyway.

"We now put an incredible amount of pressure on teams to defend us everywhere on the court. I don't know if anyone else in the league can say that."

Teams loaded with great offensive players have had success before, as long as they played some defense and bought into the all-for-one mentality.

"One of the most challenging keys to coaching is trying to get players to do the things they don't want to do in order to achieve what it is you want to do as a team," says former Miami coach Pat Riley, who got Magic Johnson, James Worthy, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Byron Scott to do exactly that when he coached the Lakers of the '80s. "Everybody has to respect the fact that if you have four or five real good scorers, it just makes you so much more balanced.

"Magic Johnson was a great leader, as was Kareem. Once there's cohesion to what it is you're doing, there may be one guy up there who's going to get the most shots, [but others] are going to kill you some nights."

hatever it takes'

Finley, 30, is the senior member of the Mavericks. It will be up to him, as well as a watchful coaches, to monitor the ebb and flow of who gets the shots – and when.

"The basketball, that will take care of itself," Finley says without any trace of uncertainty. "The basketball staff will put us in positions where everybody can contribute in some way, shape or form. Different guys can have big scoring nights. But that's not our main concern. It's about doing whatever it takes to win."

That will be the bottom line, of course. And with a quintet that combined to average 101.4 points last season, a successful regular season is not only expected, but demanded. A deep trip into the playoffs would solidify this core.

"What we gave ourselves with these two new guys is a chance this year," assistant coach Del Harris says. "We had no chance before."

And that's all anybody in the NBA can ask for, a chance.

But to skeptics around the league, the only way the Mavericks can capitalize on that opportunity is to do one thing: share the basketball.

E-mail esefko@dallasnews.com.


OFFENSE APLENTY



The Mavericks have an abundance of shooters. A look at their 2002-03 statistics:



POINTS PER GAME
Dirk Nowitzki 25.1
Antawn Jamison 22.1
Antoine Walker 20.1
Michael Finley 19.3
Steve Nash 17.7
Total 103.3
Mavs in '02-03 103.0



SHOTS PER GAME
Antoine Walker 19.9
Dirk Nowitzki 18.6
Antawn Jamison 17.9
Michael Finley 17.3
Steve Nash 13.6
Total 87.3
Mavs in '02-03 85.1



3-POINTERS PER GAME
Antoine Walker 7.5
Dirk Nowitzki 4.9
Michael Finley 4.7
Steve Nash 3.3
Antawn Jamison 2.6
Total 23.0
Mavs in '02-03 20.3

[Dirk41= konsesjonen]

nice article. It is scary to see our key 5 avg. 103, the same amount our team scored last year.

[Dirkenstien]

scary, ...yet exciting

[LRB]

The Mavs have and established culture of unselfishness. NVE immediately fit right in. I don't see any problems with any of the newcomers as well.

[dallas_esq]

The Mavs got better during the offseason. They didn't get a 5, but they got better. We can't ask any more than that right now. I think if Nellie thinks there is "no such thing" as too many shooters, then it must be true.

[Murphy3]

they definitely got more talented..but, it's way to early to say whether or not they got better

[Joey]

Does anybody have an average as to how many shots a team can average per game? I've heard analysts talking about these five Mavs averaging 85-90 shots per game and they say that that is too many...so my question is how many are normally taken. Where does this theory come from and what are the basis for comparison?