Game Thoughts: Trail Blazers @ Mavs - Feb.4

[Rogue]

After finishing their honey trip to Florida, Mavs have turned back home to face a new chanllenger which stood 2games up over mavs in the west, but our beloved mavs have beaten tonight's opponent and sucsessfully exceeded the rockets to rank 6th on the season standing list. Mavs beat Blazers that stand on the 4th position even after losing tonight's game, while rockets lost a devision game to Memphis Grizzlies which is ranking 12th in the western conference with 13-35. Houston Rockets added the 13th win to the book of their friend-team, while making their own season record 30-20.

We started tonights game with 4-0 over the blazers but the portland younsters soon answered us with a 3pt from Rodriguez. It's a good thing to start a game with a 3 but the blazers didn't keep it any longer afterwards. Blazers ended their next two offensive rounds with two blocks from Dampier and Kidd, while our mavs kept our striking waves to boarden our leading gap to 13-7 with 7:07 to go in this quarter, though Dirk was replaced with 2 personal fouls at 7:31. The forced sub ution of Dirk surely gave the Blazers to fight back, unfortunately they recognized this chance and managed to shortened the game during this period. Our players tried their best to stop those youngsters catching us up, but they failed to keep our lead and finished the 1st quarter with 27-29, mavs down by 2.

The game started going to our hands since the beginning of the 2nd quarter when Nowitzki had fully prepared himself to show us some highlights. The game really went on our way in the 2nd quarter when Dirk played all the 12 minutes of it. We outscored the blazers 14pts in this quarter to take back the leading role, finishing the 1st half with 57-45 over Blazers.

Blazers respectfully kept trying their best to shorten the gap in the seacond half, though they were playing on road against the best team of the western conference. Blazers efforts paied off at the end of the third quarter, they outscored us 27-25 in this quarter to cut our leading gap to 10pts. But we were still holding the 10pts leading gap before the fourth began, 82-72 mavs leading by 10.

Outlaw started their dogfight with a 2+1 to make the score board 75-82, and hit another jumper before long, but Dirk and Barea eached hit a lay-up to keep us leading by 9pts. After a no-score blanket from 9:34 to 7:39 and an official timeout during that period, Roy's 2 streak jump shots shortened our leading gap to 5 pts. But our beloved mavs were mature enough to control the ripe Blazers who missed their next 3 shots while letting us get 3 field goals including a 3 to re-erect our leading gap 93:81, with 5:30 left in the game. We kept 10+ leading gap to the last minute when we all knew that the win was already in our pocket, though the Blazers hadn't given up and cut our leading gap to 3pts for a second at 0:10, Dirk and Terry are well known to be consistant at the line and they did proved it. Dirk and Terry hit all the 4fts to close the game at 104-99. Mavs got their 4th win tonight after beating warriors, heat and magic in the past 3 games in a row.


Dirk Nowitzki:



38:00 16pts 11rebs 5-13FG 1-2 3pt 5-6ft 3ast 3fouls 4TO
Dirk just played less than 5min in the first quarter due to foul troubles, which also affacted his performances of the whole game. But he still got a double double tonight, 11rebs along with 16pts. Dirk didn't scored too many tonight but he did make some key points that had changed the trend of tonight's game, especially his out-standing effect at the beginning of the 2nd quarter. And his 38:00 was also the team high though he only played 5min in the 1st quarter.


Jason Kidd:


34:18 7pts 7rebs 10asts 3-5FG 1-3 3pt 2 TOs
Kidd still did his work well tonight though didn't look brighter than Dirk and Terry. Kidd was not the guy that changed the game by scoring, but his 10 asts did have shown his value. Our players can score even without Kidd, but we can hardly consistanly keep our canon hot without him. Besides, his 7rebs were also pretty good for a PG.


Josh Howard:


34:24 23pts 4rebs 11-17FG 1-3 3pt 2ast 5fouls Zero turnover
Howard proved he's still athletic enough to lead the team in scoring, he also took 5fouls which was also brilliant besides his team high 23pts. Howard's 5fouls showed how active he was at the defensive end, but he had drawn NO foul at offensive end through the game. Most of his points came from wide open jumpers in fast breaks, though his 11-17FG is not pretty bad. He was a typical "grab and shoot" player tonight, which may also partially explain his zero turnover. Over all, Josh Howard did a good job tonight, at least he got the points we needed him to get.


Jason Terry:


30:46 20pts 2rebs 5asts 7-15FG 1-3 3pt 5-5ft 1to 3fouls
Terry got some points when we needed them most, besides his perfect performance on the line also deserved to be praised a little bit. His 5asts also played an important role for our victory. Terry's stats have become more and more consistant since he was demoted to bench, though he is not as efficient a 6th player as Ginobili. Ginobili always aquire more points with the amount of shots terry uses.


Erick Dampier:


23:31 2pts 2rebs 1-3FG 1to
His stats always mislead us to think that he just plays 10 or some minutes per night. Tonight he wasn't quite different from the Dampier we used to know. Dampier is still useful at both ends, but his entire value is compressed on PicknRolls and those temporary blocks. Houston's Carl Landry does much more yet takes 5m that is less than half of Dampier's.


Antonie Wright:


30:53 11pts 0reb 4-8FG 1-3 3pt 2-2 FT 4ast 4fouls 0 turnover
He also did a good work tonight, together with Kidd and Terry at the backcourt. But he really hadn't made too many appealing highlights for us to boast of for him.





Jose Juan Barea



13:46 7pts 2asts 3-6FG 3rebs
Barea contributed 7pts to our book and we are all satisfied with his performances tonight.



Brandon Bass:


34:03 19pts 4rebs 9-11FG 1-1FT 4fouls 1ast 2 turnovers

Bass deserves the biggest "wow" of this night. He did a great work in the first quarter when Dirk was out with 2 personal fouls, but he did a lot more than we can describe with words, including his "DH type" of dunk in the 2nd quarter, I would like to believe that was a dunk rather than a hard lay-up. But he still has a lot more work to do, now the most important work for him to do is to persuade Dampier to give up the thought of killing himself.


Offense: Our team performed pretty good at offensive end, especially in the 2nd quarter during which we scored 30pts, though our 22pts of the 4th quarter was not pretty good. Most of our paint scores were achieved by brandon Bass who got 19pts tonight. Our players rely too hard on jumpers, so our offense sometimes inevitably limp when their hands are cooled off. Centers always get the most Paint scores for their teams, but our lovely center is a big exception.

Defense: We forced a couple of TOs to the Blazers, but I still think that young team deserveed more, at least we should have given a double double to Roy who achieved 5 TOs tonight. We protected our defensive rebounds well, especially Dirk that grabed 11 defensive rebs, though he didn't grabed any offensive rebound. And our players were also very aggresive on defense tonight, Kidd Bass and Dampier each gave the Blazers 2 blocks, even the undersized Terry had a block on his book too.

Teamwork: All of our players that played the game had got at least 1ast on their book, except Singleton who just played 20seconds during the garbage time. Besides Kidd 10ast and terry's 5asts, Wright's 4ast was also pretty good, even Dampier made one assist tonight. Our team did pretty good at assisting work, though our backup PG barea still needs some work on that front. Except Singleton, all of our players scored tonight and five of them reached double digit. Our team got 45pts from the bench, we kept the ball moving, we made our opponent lose heart... Our beloved Mavs deserved this win. We are gonna continue our winning streak, may Cuban bless our beloved Mavs.

[Ghazi]

We Mavs fans should feel good about these 4 wins in succession, but shouldn't get excited. I find it hard to believe the difference between being mediocre or elite is who is calling the plays, but unless these 4 wins in succession have been a fluky hot shooting streak, it certainly seems like the difference between being mediocre or a very good team. And I would be content with that.

Part of me thinks our beloved Mavs are just having a hot shooting stretch, but man I'm seeing some better body and ball movement on the offensive side of the basketball. The fast break game has been good, even against Miami and Orlando who are good defensive teams. We see cutting, backdoor cuts, a Kidd to Damp alley oop?! Jeez. My only complaint would be we've only been to the FT line 77 times in the past 4 games.

But they mentioned a good stat tonight, I forget what game it was but there was a point a few weeks ago where the mavs FTA and 3PA were equal, but the past 8-10 games or so the Mavs are getting to the line 9 more times than they are attempting threes. So that is good for our Mavs.

The defense has looked better, but only because we looked so god damn awful against the Bucks and Celtics. I don't think we can be a great defensive team, but I don't see why we can't at the very least be a good defensive team, as was the case in the past 3 years.

The defensive efficiency rating for the past 4 games though, has been very good. All 4 opponents were held under their offensive efficiency ratings, and OUR offensive efficiency rating has been more than than the defensive efficiency of all 4 opponents.

So, we should not get too excited, but for the time being, we should feel good about our beloved Mavs. Let's hope our beloved Mavs can sustain this v Utah tomorrow, for if we don't, mono and brick will be quick to discredit our beloved Mavs.

[Brickhouse]

Our players rely too hard on jumpers, so our offense sometimes inevitably limp when their hands are cooled off. Centers always get the most Paint scores for their teams, but our lovely center is a big exception.

But he still has a lot more work to do, now the most important work for him to do is to persuade Dampier to give up the thought of killing himself.

for if we don't, mono and brick will be quick to discredit our beloved Mavs.

we love our team!

[Ghazi]

Yes we do brick, yes we do.

[Chieflion]

Mavs should ask dampier to announce his retirement so to save some money and get cap space.

[MI21]

Rogue > timvp

[pauls931]

Mavs should ask dampier to announce his retirement so to save some money and get cap space.

Is he the best center in the league yet?