MaNuMaNiAc
04-28-2005, 01:39 PM
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/writers/jack_mccallum/04/28/mavs.rockets/index.html
Losing battle
Mavericks ill-equipped for versatile, tough Rockets
Posted: Thursday April 28, 2005 12:44PM; Updated: Thursday April 28, 2005 12:44PM
I spent my first playoff weekend in Dallas, watching the Mavericks go down 0-2, along with one of my playoff predictions. I'm not sure why I picked Dallas over the Houston Rockets, but it had something to do with my assumption that Dallas's improvement on defense was more profound than Houston's improvement on offense.
I was wrong.
Dallas can still rally -- I don't consider the Rockets a super team -- but, with the Rockets back home and Game 3 looming on Thursday night, here's my five-pack on why the Mavs will not come back.
The matchup is a better fit for T-Mac than for Dirk-No
Dirk Nowitzki had the most underrated season of any star player in the NBA; he could easily be on the all-NBA team and few took notice. Tracy McGrady will be, at best, a second-teamer and possibly a third.
But this series works for McGrady and against Nowitzki. Defenses are flying around at laser speed, and Dirk, for all his talents, is not a ball-handler or an initiator of the offense. That leave the Mavs stuck posting him up on either side of the floor, where double- and triple-teams are collapsing on him.
McGrady, on the other hand, is a moveable feast. He runs the point, he's slides off picks, he hides underneath as a small forward. In short, he's not a stationary target, as Nowitzki often is.
Center is central for the Rockets
Stop me if you've heard this before, but -- eventually -- all playoff games (with the possible exception of those played by the Phoenix Suns) are going to slow down. It will happen because of increasing conservatism on the part of coaches, nerves, great defense, superior scouting or some combination of all of them. And when it happens, post-up players often take over.
Erick Dampier deserves a lot of credit for solidifying an interior Dallas defense that had been non-existent in previous years. But he doesn't have the defensive talents to completely shut down the Rockets' Yao Ming, and he doesn't have anything resembling the offensive talents to match what Yao did in Game 2 when Yao missed just one shot on his way to scoring 33 points.
http://i.cnn.net/si/images/1.gif
True grit on the pine
On paper, one could asses the relative bench strength of the two teams and conclude that it favors the Mavs, whose reserves include Sixth Man of the Year candidate Jerry Stackhouse, multi-talented Keith Van Horn and Marquis Daniels, whom the Mavs thought so highly of that they let Steve Nash escape via free agency.
But games aren't won on paper. There may not be four hungrier NBA vets in the playoffs than Bob Sura, David Wesley, Mike James and Jon Barry, none of whom you heard much about during the season. But they've come alive in the postseason, and the Mavs' supporting cast, Van Horn in particular, has gone to sleep.
Houston is not well well-behaved
There's a certain disruption factor that happens in the playoffs. The scouting is so intense that opponents know literally every offensive play that is being run. You can hear defenses play for it: "OK, it's fist down!"
Consequently, teams need to be able to throw in a few curveballs, do the unpredictable, upset the equilibrium. Dallas simply does not have that kind of team. Josh Howard is the closest thing they have to a disruptor and, as bright as his future might be, Thursday's game will be only his eighth postseason contest.
The Rockets, by contrast, are full of disruptors: the aforementioned quartet and, of course, the ultimate disruptor, Dikembe Mutombo. No one (including me) saw the pickup of Mutombo as anything significant. But put him in the postseason, spot his minutes behind Yao, tell him to throw a few elbows and shake a few fingers (well, you don't really have to tell him to do that), and he's able to discombobulate a lot of teams, the Mavs being one of them.
The Rockets win The Battle of the Little Men
No, we're not talking about point guards. We're talking about 5-foot-9 coach Jeff Van Gundy and 5-11 coach Avery Johnson. The Mavs deserve plenty of credit for being that rare NBA team to promote from within and save the franchise agonizing hours of public speculation about who's going to coach the team. (See Los Angeles Lakers, New York Knicks, Cleveland Cavaliers, Minnesota Timberwolves, etc.) But in this his first playoff battle as a coach, Johnson is severely overmatched against Van Gundy, who, counting the first two games of this series, has coached in 76 postseason games and is one of the best minds in the business to begin with.
In a game of one-on-one, however, I still like Avery, who won a championship ring with San Antonio in 1999, over Van Gundy, who averaged 8.8 points per game for Nazareth, a small college in Rochester, N.Y.
Losing battle
Mavericks ill-equipped for versatile, tough Rockets
Posted: Thursday April 28, 2005 12:44PM; Updated: Thursday April 28, 2005 12:44PM
I spent my first playoff weekend in Dallas, watching the Mavericks go down 0-2, along with one of my playoff predictions. I'm not sure why I picked Dallas over the Houston Rockets, but it had something to do with my assumption that Dallas's improvement on defense was more profound than Houston's improvement on offense.
I was wrong.
Dallas can still rally -- I don't consider the Rockets a super team -- but, with the Rockets back home and Game 3 looming on Thursday night, here's my five-pack on why the Mavs will not come back.
The matchup is a better fit for T-Mac than for Dirk-No
Dirk Nowitzki had the most underrated season of any star player in the NBA; he could easily be on the all-NBA team and few took notice. Tracy McGrady will be, at best, a second-teamer and possibly a third.
But this series works for McGrady and against Nowitzki. Defenses are flying around at laser speed, and Dirk, for all his talents, is not a ball-handler or an initiator of the offense. That leave the Mavs stuck posting him up on either side of the floor, where double- and triple-teams are collapsing on him.
McGrady, on the other hand, is a moveable feast. He runs the point, he's slides off picks, he hides underneath as a small forward. In short, he's not a stationary target, as Nowitzki often is.
Center is central for the Rockets
Stop me if you've heard this before, but -- eventually -- all playoff games (with the possible exception of those played by the Phoenix Suns) are going to slow down. It will happen because of increasing conservatism on the part of coaches, nerves, great defense, superior scouting or some combination of all of them. And when it happens, post-up players often take over.
Erick Dampier deserves a lot of credit for solidifying an interior Dallas defense that had been non-existent in previous years. But he doesn't have the defensive talents to completely shut down the Rockets' Yao Ming, and he doesn't have anything resembling the offensive talents to match what Yao did in Game 2 when Yao missed just one shot on his way to scoring 33 points.
http://i.cnn.net/si/images/1.gif
True grit on the pine
On paper, one could asses the relative bench strength of the two teams and conclude that it favors the Mavs, whose reserves include Sixth Man of the Year candidate Jerry Stackhouse, multi-talented Keith Van Horn and Marquis Daniels, whom the Mavs thought so highly of that they let Steve Nash escape via free agency.
But games aren't won on paper. There may not be four hungrier NBA vets in the playoffs than Bob Sura, David Wesley, Mike James and Jon Barry, none of whom you heard much about during the season. But they've come alive in the postseason, and the Mavs' supporting cast, Van Horn in particular, has gone to sleep.
Houston is not well well-behaved
There's a certain disruption factor that happens in the playoffs. The scouting is so intense that opponents know literally every offensive play that is being run. You can hear defenses play for it: "OK, it's fist down!"
Consequently, teams need to be able to throw in a few curveballs, do the unpredictable, upset the equilibrium. Dallas simply does not have that kind of team. Josh Howard is the closest thing they have to a disruptor and, as bright as his future might be, Thursday's game will be only his eighth postseason contest.
The Rockets, by contrast, are full of disruptors: the aforementioned quartet and, of course, the ultimate disruptor, Dikembe Mutombo. No one (including me) saw the pickup of Mutombo as anything significant. But put him in the postseason, spot his minutes behind Yao, tell him to throw a few elbows and shake a few fingers (well, you don't really have to tell him to do that), and he's able to discombobulate a lot of teams, the Mavs being one of them.
The Rockets win The Battle of the Little Men
No, we're not talking about point guards. We're talking about 5-foot-9 coach Jeff Van Gundy and 5-11 coach Avery Johnson. The Mavs deserve plenty of credit for being that rare NBA team to promote from within and save the franchise agonizing hours of public speculation about who's going to coach the team. (See Los Angeles Lakers, New York Knicks, Cleveland Cavaliers, Minnesota Timberwolves, etc.) But in this his first playoff battle as a coach, Johnson is severely overmatched against Van Gundy, who, counting the first two games of this series, has coached in 76 postseason games and is one of the best minds in the business to begin with.
In a game of one-on-one, however, I still like Avery, who won a championship ring with San Antonio in 1999, over Van Gundy, who averaged 8.8 points per game for Nazareth, a small college in Rochester, N.Y.