The good/bad/ugly vs. L.A. - Dallas-Mavs.com Forums

Dropstep · 10-29-2003, 10:10 AM

the good- A. Jamison off the bench erupted and schooled the Lakeshow when he was in the game, he actually helped the Mavs score almost as many points in the paint as the Lakers. . . Amazing. I was also thouroughly impresed with Howard!

the bad- Fortson left a lot of questions in my mind, then again it was Shaq . . . Defense was bad, bad, bad 51% shooting.

the ugly- any of the big 3 shooting behind the arc!

bingocasino · 10-29-2003, 10:41 AM

fortson was good in the post against shaq.walker looked damn good.
haven´t seen nash looking so bad for a long time.dirks defense has to improve a lot.but rebounding was alright!
finley played worse. no chemistry at all means alot of work for nellie.

Dropstep · 10-29-2003, 11:27 AM

i agree, this team needs a lot of time to gel . . . what do you other peeps think about your good/bad/ and uglies.

sike · 10-29-2003, 11:32 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by: bingocasino
fortson was good in the post against shaq.walker looked damn good.
haven´t seen nash looking so bad for a long time.dirks defense has to improve a lot.but rebounding was alright!
finley played worse. no chemistry at all means alot of work for nellie.

I actually think that Fort did not do a poor job on Shaq, his off the ball "D" was another story..plus he was active and going for the ball....needs more minutes..but so does Bradley.....Fort and Shawn may actually become a decent one\two punch...talk about change of pace...can you imagine for unalike centers big men?..if only they would get the minutes

Dirkenstien · 10-29-2003, 01:04 PM

Good: Fort did a decent job on shaq, I liked the aggressiveness of AJ going to the basket. Walker's walk up threes looked great, they will work well with our style
Bad: Chemistry was off, obviously. The team overall just looked unorganized and out of sync ..which I suppose is understandable considering they've only had a handful of practices with eachother.
Ugly: The big threes inability to step up and hit open shots. Although I was pleased with how much our players got to the line, the execution was very very poor...the little things add up.

Dallas will be a great team once they gell ...i say give them a month to feel the system and have it become second nature.

Dropstep · 10-29-2003, 03:07 PM

i agree Dirk

Captain Disaster · 10-29-2003, 03:30 PM

We lost to the superior experience of THREE future hall-of-famers. Everyone is focusing on Shaq & Kobe. In case we've all forgotten, Malone is an incredible 6' 9" 260 pound coordinated FREAK! And Payton is one of the top three point guards of the last DECADE! They will definitely be favored, barring injury, to win it all; they better be. Heck, they may even shatter the single season victory mark.

The current Mavs roster is out of sync; including the coaches: THEY SHOULD BE! They've only been together a handful of days; GIMME A BREAK!

Nowitzki (SORRY!) is NOT yet a dominant player against the BEST teams. He is a very good player, but he is not yet DOMINANT; everyone should stop expecting this for now. HE had his chances to take over tonight (0 -6 from 3 point land), it didn't happen.

WE had to start off with the LAKERS, the team we DO NOT match up with, the team we have choked repeatedly against, the team that for some reason has there best games against us, the team that would have stopped us in the FIRST round last year if we would've had to play them.

We ARE NOT the best team in the NBA -- yet. We may move into the top three -- may; then again, we may move to number 5.

Let's withhold judgement until we've played about 20 games; Raef & Nick got way more than that.

Finally, remember, we play a back-to-back tonight in Golden State; Nellie had to rest people more than he would've liked.

Dirk41= konsesjonen · 10-29-2003, 04:14 PM

37/10 against SA in the playoffs, including 17-17 ft's isn't dominating a good team??

grndmstr_c · 10-29-2003, 04:34 PM

Good - Fortson did about as well as I could have hoped against Shaq. Did a good job of keeping him out of the paint, which is all you can hope to do against him. AJ and AW both played well. Dirk taking the ball to the hole. He knew his shot was off, and IMO his overall game was off, but he did the right thing and repeatedly drove and drew fouls. Rebounding was good. Breaking it down by offensive and defensive rebounding percentages we outrebounded them, even though the total number of boards was the same. Najera also came in and played well at the end, I thought.

Bad - the Big 3's shooting.

Ugly - the lack of organization on both sides of the ball.

What I take from the game - it wasn't pleasant to watch, but it could have been worse. I was worried the Lakers might run a layup drill on us, but it was really their jump shooting that put them ahead (will someone PLEASE explain to me why Devean George has taken to shooting like that against us!). Our biggest problems were things that figure to either be rarities (Big 3 shoot like crap), or things that should improve considerably of the course of the season (getting in sync).

Misfit Mav · 10-29-2003, 07:48 PM

The Good:

*Post defense against Shaq looked adequate at times. Fortson did seem able to keep him from effortlessly backing his way under the hoop, which was about all I was hoping for. Walker even did a little better than I was expecting (which isn’t saying too much), but Jamison on Shaq was as ugly as you’d think. We did an ok job of double and triple-teaming him, but did a terrible job getting back to the open man after the pass.

*Dirk played an excellent game, although Nellie sat him early, along with the other starters. GREAT effort on the boards, and some nice drives and post-ups to make up for his shaky outside shot.

*Some pretty good inside scoring in general. I thought Dirk, Jamison, and Walker all looked very good in the paint. Not classic, back-em-down, skyhook post-play, but good, scrappy lay-ups and baby hooks. It helped us get to the line a lot, which is very important for the success of this team.

*Josh Howard looked pretty good in garbage time, if that means anything. I think we will be seeing more of him soon, especially if Delk doesn’t improve soon.

The Bad:

*Guard play. It was terrible. Nash, Finley, Delk, and Best all looked like scrubs. Nash looked totally lost. I could swear I saw him pass up an open lay-up to dish to a guy without a shot more than once. Finley looked as poor as in pre-season, however, he played very well in garbage minutes and hopefully that will help him get back into a groove. He looks very rusty, but I expect him to bounce back, along with Nash. I was disappointed in the play of Delk and Best, for whom I had high expectations. But the worst thing about the guards may have been their:

*Perimeter defense. It looked much worse than our post defense. Payton was penetrating at will. We let Devean George shoot 7-9. And without Bradley inside, they had no that could contest their lay-ups. I think we should definitely see more Bradley, and hopefully Dirk can contest some shots as well (but we don’t want him getting into foul trouble).

*Obviously, our jumpshooting was terrible. But I really don’t think this will be a long-term problem. We are rusty and need to time to integrate the new players, but we are probably the best shooting team in the league.

The Ugly:

*The coaching. There were two things I really didn’t like. The first was the combined 18 minutes for Fortson and Bradley. I think Murphy3 was right to worry about Nelson under-using these guys. Both of them looked pretty good, too, in the time that they were out there. The other thing was the fact that Nellie conceded the game, and put in the scrubs in the fourth quarter, when we only had a 12 point deficit, AND they were still playing their starters. I really think that Nellie should have know from last year’s Staple Center fiasco that a deficit of 12 stinkin’ points is not too much to make up in the fourth. Still, I was pretty happy with Nellie coaching in the play-offs last year, so I will not complain too much after one game. Hopefully, he will play his centers more in the future. He does tend to play un-necessary tricks against the Lakers.

Edit: I guess we actually had a 19 point deficit goint into the fourth. I still would have liked to see a furious come-back attempt, like the Lakers had against us. 19 points is a lot worse than 12, though.