Reply With Quote
One of the biggest arguments against the Mavs is their margin of victory is significantly lower than every other team in the Western Conference at +2.7. In fact, despite being 2nd in the West the Mavs have the 12th best margin of victory in the league.
But I would like to present a theory for the Mavs margin of victory, "the Josh Howard cancer" effect.
J-Ho made his return to the regular rotation of the Mavs on December 5th up until the ASB, and during this time the Mavs went 18-14 with a margin of victory of -.5. IN fact if you throw out the 50 point win against the Knicks as an outlier, their margin of victory was worse than 2 points a game. It should be noted the Mavs had Dampier injury issues at this time which forced more time for Gooden, who has terrible on/off stats despite putting up a seemingly decent 8/7 (or something like that).
In the games before that, and the games after the ASB, the Mavs are 36-13, with a margin of victory of +4.7. If you throw out the 34 point loss to the Knicks as an outlier, it becomes +5.5.
Granted, every team can pick and choose information like this, but I'm just pointing out that the Mavs may not be a fool's gold team with an inflated record.
