Vote of Confidence

[Holt's Cat]

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20080323/capt.67200549505343889e267eac1da1c3a4.spurs_maveri cks_basketball_dna103.jpg

...or ironic self-parody. In any event, it looks like AJ's days in Dallas are numbered. Which is a good thing if you'd like to see one less contender in the Western Conference.

Pull the Trigger, Mawrk.

[Mr.Bottomtooth]

I say either he gets hired by the Bulls, he goes back to assistant coaching for either the Mavs or Spurs, or if the Celtics end up being a dud in the playoffs, they fire Doc and hire Avery.

[Holt's Cat]

I don't see him taking anything other than a HC gig, but it'd be nice to see him make it back to SA.

Not for Mike Bud, though.

[urunobili]

I don't see him taking anything other than a HC gig, but it'd be nice to see him make it back to SA.

Not for Mike Bud, though.
this team chemistry doesn't need AJ around at all... this is team Duncan's team and things are handled on a quiet way... on the post Duncan era we'll talk...

[50 cent]

Fuck Avery. I never want to see him back in SA.

[easjer]

Fuck Avery. I never want to see him back in SA.


+1

He has revealed that he is not someone I ever want on the coaching bench in SA. While he's retained the right sort of ideas, he doesn't know how to translate that into the talents of the players he has, he hasn't learned moderation in coaching, he's far too emotional and far too controlling. He tries to run the team as if he is a captain or point guard instead of the coach.

No thanks.

[pjjrfan]

I just don't think Avery is a good fit here, now the Bulls maybe. But they didn't do too well with Skiles, a guy whose personality is much like Averys.

[T Park]

Hes welcome back down here anytime.

[urunobili]

Hes welcome back down here anytime.
Manu should have never given up number 6... Bufford did not even think about that until someone came and had to tell him...

[Findog]

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20080323/capt.67200549505343889e267eac1da1c3a4.spurs_maveri cks_basketball_dna103.jpg

...or ironic self-parody. In any event, it looks like AJ's days in Dallas are numbered. Which is a good thing if you'd like to see one less contender in the Western Conference.

Pull the Trigger, Mawrk.

Get a clue. This team is being mismanaged by Avery. He's a good coach, but he's a grinding micro manager. His usefulness in Dallas has expired.

[Findog]

I'm not saying firing Avery solves all of Dallas' problems, but when a guy has lost a locker room, right or wrong, it's time for him to go. The average lifespan of a coach in this league is 3 years, unless you have clout (Jackzen, Popovich, Sloan). Avery has been in Dallas for 3 years, and he's a wear 'em down type like Fratello or Skiles.

He was absolutely what this team needed three years ago, somebody who would force them to play defense and give them a swift kick in the ass. Now they need a coach who will exercise some common sense when it comes to substitution patterns and lay off with the Napoleon act. It was real smart Avery to take it easy early on because "it's the playoffs that matter," huh? Now we don't have the W-L record and pole position to survive Dirk being out two weeks. Betcha the team would love to have back those early season losses to the Kings, Bucks, Pacers, Hawks and Wizards when they were clearly chugging along in second gear.

[T Park]

Del Harris ain't the answer I know that..

[Findog]

Del Harris ain't the answer I know that..

At this point, he's a better fit for this team than Avery. A lot of guys are a better fit for this team than Avery. The Mavs have personnel matters they need to address, otherwise firing Avery is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Avery reshaped this team in his image, turned them into a hard-nosed club that earnestly made an effort on defense, transformed them into something more Spurs-like than their doppelganger in the desert. He deserves a hell of a lot of credit for that. He was also thoroughly outcoached by Nellie and Riley. I guarantee you those two coaches would've picked our rosters if they had the choice, that's how bad Avery got worked. His biggest weaknesses as an in-game coach is his tendency to outsmart himself, like benching Kidd when the whole purpose of getting him was to get easier shots and opportunities for our scorers, going small against Golden State and away from the lineup that won us 67 games, etc.

[Holt's Cat]

Get a clue. This team is being mismanaged by Avery. He's a good coach, but he's a grinding micro manager. His usefulness in Dallas has expired.

Right, because Nellie took the Mavs to the Finals.

I hope you get what you seek.

[T Park]

Del Harris worked wonders with Shaq Kobe and others.

Good luck with that :lmao

[Findog]

Right, because Nellie took the Mavs to the Finals.

I hope you get what you seek.

And once we were there, Riley ran circles around Avery. Just like Nellie ran circles around Avery a year later. This team has peaked, and Avery's usefulness to the Mavs has peaked as well. Maybe if you watched more than the four games a year the Spurs play against Dallas or had a clue you'd realize that.

Endorsing Avery's dismissal does not mean I want Nellie back or prefer his approach. That's a false paradigm you've set up, but that's nothing new with you.

[T Park]

Del Harri's championship lineage no question should take over though.

[Findog]

Del Harris worked wonders with Shaq Kobe and others.

Good luck with that :lmao

Del Harris > Avery. He was in charge of the defense last year. This year, same personnel, much worse defense.

Who is to say he's our coach next year anyway? JVG is out there, so is Rick Carlisle. Donnie may come down from the front office.

[Findog]

Del Harri's championship lineage no question should take over though.

The Mavs aren't a championship team right now no matter who is the coach. Are there coaches out there right now that can get get more results than what Avery is doing? Yes. That's the only consideration.

[traitoravery]

Knowing Cuban he will go after someone big like LB.

[ludda]

+1

He has revealed that he is not someone I ever want on the coaching bench in SA. While he's retained the right sort of ideas, he doesn't know how to translate that into the talents of the players he has, he hasn't learned moderation in coaching, he's far too emotional and far too controlling. He tries to run the team as if he is a captain or point guard instead of the coach.

No thanks.

I agree, no thanks.

[Findog]

Knowing Cuban he will go after someone big like LB.

Supposedly he is done coaching in the pros, he'll go back to college if he returns to coaching at all. Would love to see it happen.

[T Park]

Del Harris > Avery. He was in charge of the defense last year. This year, same personnel, much worse defense.

Who is to say he's our coach next year anyway? JVG is out there, so is Rick Carlisle. Donnie may come down from the front office.

Donnie nelson? :lmao

Best bet would be to go after Larry Brown.

[Findog]

Donnie nelson? :lmao

Honestly, what is so hilarious about that?

[T Park]

Cool, go for Donnie Nelson.

Just makes going through the west easier for the Spurs.

[Findog]

Cool, go for Donnie Nelson.

Just makes going through the west easier for the Spurs.

I would think Dirk's injury and Avery sitting on our bench makes it easier for the Spurs. But what do I know, I've only lived and died with my team all year and could probably dissect them inside and out, just like you can do with the Spurs.

[Holt's Cat]

And once we were there, Riley ran circles around Avery. Just like Nellie ran circles around Avery a year later. This team has peaked, and Avery's usefulness to the Mavs has peaked as well. Maybe if you watched more than the four games a year the Spurs play against Dallas or had a clue you'd realize that.

Endorsing Avery's dismissal does not mean I want Nellie back or prefer his approach. That's a false paradigm you've set up, but that's nothing new with you.

:lol

Obviously I was not suggesting that Nelson would be his replacement nor that you would want him back. But you have someone who took that franchise to the next level for the first time.

Of course, it's not surprising that you couldn't figure that out.

[T Park]

Talking about next year not this year.

But you don't seem to know, your moving between this year and next year like you have add.

[Findog]

Obviously I was not suggesting that Nelson would be his replacement nor that you would want him back. But you have someone who took that franchise to the next level for the first time.
.

Dirk and Avery together took this franchise to a place they had never been. Avery deserves a ton of credit for where this thing has gone since Nellie quit like a bitch.

But things aren't static. It's not 2006 anymore. I think Avery up until the Warriors series could've been forgiven for Riley outcoaching him, because Riley outcoaches a lot of people and Avery had done great things with this team. But he accepted no responsibility whatsoever for the Warriors series, he just threw Dirk under a bus when Dirk didn't lose that series by himself and when Avery badly got worked over himself. And that's just part of the problem with Avery. He preaches leadership and toughness but demonstrates none himself. He can't be counted on to make common-sense in-game adjustments.

He's a good coach and he'll work again in this league, but his usefulness in Dallas is at an end. If the players are tuning him out, and there's ample evidence of that happening, it doesn't matter who is right or wrong, he needs to go in favor of somebody who they'll listen to.

[Findog]

Talking about next year not this year.

But you don't seem to know, your moving between this year and next year like you have add.

The Mavs need to make some personnel moves in addition to changing coaches. I'll get back to you in October once I see how the roster shakes out.

[himat]

Avery is the only reason that the Mavs are a threat to the title. Without him they would be the 60 win 100ppg scoring team that no one would be scared of. In the last 3 years this is the only team that has beaten the Spurs.

[Findog]

Avery is the only reason that the Mavs are a threat to the title. Without him they would be the 60 win 100ppg scoring team that no one would be scared of.

Avery isn't the only coach who will preach defense and instruct them to dole out hard fouls.

[Holt's Cat]

Avery's problem is that he coaches for a team whose ownership believes it knows more about basketball than he does.

[Findog]

Avery's problem is that he coaches for a team whose ownership believes it knows more about basketball than he does.

Mark Cuban is not the only person wondering what is the purpose of acquiring Jason Kidd if he's going to sit out the last possession against the Spurs or only play 27 minutes in a big home game against the Lakers. If you're not going to let him run the offense, what was the purpose of trading for him? If Avery didn't think he was the right PG for this team, why not say so before altering 1/4 of the roster 2 months before the playoffs started?

[T Park]

If Avery didn't think he was the right PG for this team, why not say so before altering 1/4 of the roster 2 months before the playoffs started

maybe he did and Cuban told him to STFU.

[Findog]

maybe he did and Cuban told him to STFU.

Who knows what the story is? If Cuban is initiating personnel moves, then it's just a big, dysfunctional mess.

[T Park]

Theres reports that Cuban was the big initiator of the Jason Kidd trade.

I believe that 100% honestly.

[Findog]

Theres reports that Cuban was the big initiator of the Jason Kidd trade.

I believe that 100% honestly.

I find that hard to believe because Avery was so hard on Devin and wouldn't let him off the leash. Dirk was probably the biggest driving force for the trade, he was 100% in favor of it.

[T Park]

Supposedly Cuban initiated the talks.

[Findog]

Supposedly Cuban initiated the talks.

The guys around him outside of Dirk, Josh and Jet are not a great fit for his skills. They should've done this in the offseason or waited until this summer. It was a mistake I think to do it around the trading deadline.

[jag]

Avery is a great coach, but his biggest problem is he tries to control everything/thinks he can control everything. See: 2006 NBA Finals

[BonnerDynasty]

Fuck Avery. I never want to see him back in SA.

[bigfan]

Who gives a crap about the Mavs? Its like having a discussion about the Timberwolves or Heat.

[jag]

Who gives a crap about the Mavs? Its like having a discussion about the Timberwolves or Heat.
...except one is a potential title contender and the other two have a shot at the #1 pick in the draft.

[himat]

Who gives a crap about the Mavs? Its like having a discussion about the Timberwolves or Heat.

The Mavs are the only team in the West to beat the Spurs in the last 3 years.

[Findog]

Murphy's Law has been in effect for the Mavs in the last 10 months. They're going to have to either deal Kidd this summer because his expiring will be attractive to some teams or get some athletes that can run the floor with him. He's at his best in the open court. We scored only 23 points today in transition, and 58 in half-court. Ouch!

[SenorSpur]

Supposedly Cuban initiated the talks.

I recall reading a report somewhere that Cuban re-initiated talks of the Kidd trade with Nets GM Rod Thorn around the time of a Mavs road game versus Nets, just before the ASG in Feb.

[gospursgojas]

Fuck Avery. I never want to see him back in SA.

:tu

[spursreport]

The Mavs are the only team in the West to beat the Spurs in the last 3 years.

And the Spurs were the only team in the West to eliminate the Pistons in the Larry Brown era. Now :stfu and go have fantasies about how your one hit wonder team will get eliminated yet again this season.

[J.T.]

The Mavs are the only team in the West to beat the Spurs in the last 3 years.

So what? The Mavs needed seven games to do it and the Spurs had all of their Big 3 playing injured in that series. I give the Mavs major props for turning into the 1996 Chicago Bulls any time they play us, but do realize that the Mavs barely avoided having their Annual Playoffs Choke in May instead of June in 2006.

[Tigole Bitties]

Mark Cuban is the Jerry Jones of basketball.

Although his "O" face on Dancing With the Stars is pure comedic gold.

[Spurs Brazil]

Mostly Cloudy Forecast: Dark Days Without Dirk
By Marc Stein
ESPN.com
(Archive)
DALLAS -- Not as bad as it looked on TV?

There's a chance that sentiment might actually wind up applying to the stomach-turning twisting and folding that Dirk Nowitzki's left leg did Sunday afternoon.

As for the Dallas Mavericks' standing in the Western Conference race, well, that's as disturbing as it appears on pretty much any screen you choose. Television, computer, handheld, whatever.

If Nowitzki misses the next two weeks, as Mavs owner Mark Cuban fears, Dallas will have to play three games without the reigning MVP against its two nearest rivals in the race to clinch the West's seventh and eighth seeds, as well as road games against the Lakers and Suns. The seven games on the schedule in this two-week span include a Thursday trip to No. 9 Denver -- which can clinch the season-series tiebreaker with a victory -- and a home-and-home with No. 8 Golden State.

But this might be the truly troubling part:

Even if Nowitzki were to make it back faster somehow -- if the damage he sustained in Sunday's 88-81 loss to San Antonio was purely in the "left lower leg" as the Mavs described it and not his left knee -- Dallas has no guarantees that it'll be way better off.

That's how discombobulated and unsure Nowitzki's team looks these days, as it braces for a stretch with five out of six games on the road after Tuesday's presumed home gimme against the Clippers.

As Mavs swingman Jerry Stackhouse summarized it: "You and everybody else in the dang Dallas world knows that a lot of what we do revolves around Dirk. So if he's out, you can't just abandon everything and start something new on the fly. We haven't had success trying to tweak this thing on the fly yet. We need him to heal up. Fast."

The latest update on the tweaking leads to more unpleasant reading for the Mavs. After this fall-from-ahead defeat, they've dropped to 0-8 against teams with winning records since making the Jason Kidd trade.

They had targeted the past week as maybe the season's most pivotal, with visits from the Lakers on Tuesday, Boston on Thursday and San Antonio on Easter. After painfully narrow losses in the first two games -- and a loud blowup between Cuban and coach Avery Johnson in between after the Mavs fell into a 25-point hole against L.A. -- Dallas was hoping to follow the Phoenix blueprint and turn this Sunday afternoon showcase with the Spurs into a turning point.

Phoenix, remember, launched its first good spell in the Shaquille O'Neal era with an ABC home victory over the Spurs two Sundays back. Cuban even tried to lessen the tension and add to the flipping-the-page karma here by showing up in an "Avery's Team" T-shirt that he proudly grabbed and popped as he walked down an American Airlines Center corridor before tipoff.

Dallas then went out and celebrated Kidd's 35th birthday with a full-blown nightmare at lunchtime. Tim Duncan shot 1-for-10 in the first half, Tony Parker shot 4-for-21 overall and the Mavs wound up collapsing against a vulnerable opponent that, just like Boston, didn't even manage to shoot 35 percent from the floor. After two Nowitzki free throws made it 54-42 roughly halfway through the third quarter, Dallas began settling for jumpers and stagnating in the halfcourt, leading to the surrender of 19 consecutive points.

San Antonio had scored 14 of those 19 in a row by the time Nowitzki's left leg was pinned and pressed by the landing of Ime Udoka after Nowitzki's blocked Udoka's driving layup. Which is another way of saying that the Mavs' confidence was already draining away when they were subjected to the frightful sight of their franchise player going down in what to some had the look of a season-ending heap.

History says Nowitzki will actually rebound faster than anyone who saw the footage would dare imagine … as long as the damage is restricted to the ankle area. He's done it so many times that he makes you think he has bionic ankles, with one theory in Mavsland suggesting that Nowitzki -- thanks to years of countless deep-knee bends and other unorthodox exercises with his German mentor Holger Geschwindner -- can play through ankle sprains so easily because of his world-class flexibility.

But his team, with or without Nowitzki, is out of wiggle room. The Mavs are only 9-8 since Kidd arrived -- with Kidd himself managing to score only 10 points over the past three games with defenses sagging off him more and more -- and thus prompted a bit of a press-room scramble Sunday. More than one scribe was moved to double-check and make sure that the first-round pick which Dallas sent to New Jersey as part of the Kidd trade is indeed lottery-protected, because the team that made a run at 70 wins last season might be forced to use that pick if it can't win a few games over the next two weeks.

Which only puts more pressure on Kidd, whether or not Nowitzki can soon go, at a time when Johnson says teams "are playing five in the paint on us" and when Kidd is increasingly tentative in halfcourt sets. He's admittedly struggling to find a way to "be myself and just play" or to "stop thinking and just react."

"… Losing three in a row, whether it's at home or on the road, is not a good place to be," Johnson conceded. "We'll talk to them again and pick them up. Hopefully they'll come into practice tomorrow with a renewed sense of optimism, knowing that the season is not over."

If you were watching on this painful Easter Sunday, that might have been the best thing anyone could say about the Mavs' season.

Marc Stein is the senior NBA writer for ESPN.com. To e-mail him, click here.

Dimes Past: March 15-16 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22-23 | 23

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/dailydime?page=dime-080324

[Strike]

Fuck Avery. I never want to see him back in SA.

I concur.