Before the trade, and with the Mavs playing on the 2nd night of a b2b. The Mavs won in Denver earlier this year when Billups was out with an injury. Neither game tells us anything about a potential playoff meeting.
Are you disputing Butler is a very good player? He was traded for Shaq, a move that helped the Heat win a championship. He didn't get enough touches in LA with Kobe in supreme selfish mode and the Lakers didn't know what they had. The Wizards dumped him because they're in blow it up rebuild mode. His being traded says nothing negative about him.
This 12 game stretch has been brutal for the Mavs.
4 back to backs, lots of good teams, only 3 really bad teams.
the rest of March is pretty easy though... I could see us only having 0-1 losses.
Who were the Lakers missing that night? The Mavs were missing Butler and Dampier.
Fact: Any team can sweep the Nuggets without Chauncey in a playoff series. Sad, but true.
Try 5 games behind. Maybe only 3 more losses. Yes, the Spurs have played 4 fewer games. But SA would have to win all four to THEN be 3 games behind the Mavs.
Yeah, I love the "only look at the loss column" logic when deciding how many games behind a team is. The Spurs only win about 60% of their games, but saying they are only 3 games behind assumes that they will win all 4 of the additional games the Mavs have played that they haven't.
They'll be sure to make up that ground now with a platoon of George Hill and Roger Mason at PG.
Unstoppable. Mavs should just quit.
Caron got traded a couple times because he isn't tough. That point has been established.
Also Mavs were without Damp and Matrix in that game.
Amuseddaysleeper came with some really weak in this thread.
He really hates the Mavericks and wishes they would all die in a plane crash.
Yep and no KMart in that game either.
Like I said, you can't extrapolate either of the two games towards a playoff meeting.
It's fair to say that the Mavs have upgraded their roster from last year's playoff meeting quite a bit.
2009 Dallas: Dirk Kidd Jet Damp Howard Barea Wright Hollins
2010 Dallas: Dirk Kidd Jet Damp Haywood Butler Matrix Beaubois Barea
Denver has added Lawson and Afflalo too, but might have lost KMart for the year. And with him they were barely defending Dirk last year. However it plays out this year, it's clear the Mavs are muuuuuch better equiped at handling Denver.
Indeed it was a lovely move to swap Josh/gooden for Haywood/butler at the point of time when the trade was executed, but was it such a big surprise in the view of the whole season? It was the marion trade and only marion trade in which Mavs got a wicked deal, swapping some putrid dip s into someone who still plays. And subsequently the Mavs started to regard themselves as real contenders for the upcoming 09-10 season, of course, on the basic assumption that all their guys in blue would remain healthy and play fine.
As Ortis Smith furled up Gortat and managed to drain Brandon Bass off Dallas, Donnie meticulously chose to throw his invaluable MLE on Drew Gooden who was roughly one of the bests still available in FA market. Crisply Drew was signed with expectations rising.
The new signings were expected to bring a lot of changes and to make their team a turbulent power together with their new teammates which included Josh Howard. Therefore by the time of season starting you had got a roster starring the pivots like Josh, Dirk, Kidd, Gooden, Marion, JET, JJB etc.
The season started well for Mavs but it then went disappointing as Josh broke his achilles tendon and consequently it forced Carlisle to play either JJB or Roddy in starting lineups, despite that his sub was either too inchoate or too short. the first half of season was so disappointing that the Mavs were over satisfied by the trade of Josh/Gooden and Haywood/Butler, while the impact that could be produced by Gooden and a healthy Josh shouldn't be any smaller than what could be done by Haywood/Butler.
So the Mavs are just playing at exactly the great level as their off-season expectation supposed. the current Josh/Gooden combo surely isn't as effective as haywood/butler at present, but they're just doing what Josh/Gooden were expected from off-season.
Beside losing to the nets they've done pretty well (Mason needs to GTFO though.)
Mavs were a little bit lucky on that win streak but they seemed to have a different vibe at the time. They definitely showed some warts, given some of the close calls, but again... just had a different vibe.
Not sure where that "vibe" or "mojo" went.
I use quotations since its hard to quantify these things!
Poor Mavs fan. You do realize they will lose in the playoffs. And before you call me a "hater"...those MFers cost me 200 bucks when they went to and lost in the finals. Mavs will do what they do...which is raise expectations of their fans (thus causing them to start annoying threads like this one) and then LOSE!
Kick bikes Dirk......kick bikes.
Why do Rocket fans continue to talk trash?
Now this is an actual prophet.
Agreed. That is pretty in accurate if you ask me. I don't recall him ever changing his thoughts once he sees something wrong.
Well done prophet!
That's what you get!
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