a quick bitching on the mavs.

it was a tale of two halves. a near brilliant effort on both sides of the ball during the first half. the second half? maybe one of the worst halves i've ever seen. what the hell happened? just about everything wrong with our team was exposed (like, pants down, bare ass, exposed). it was straight embarrassing, with yet again, a disgustingly pathetic 3rd quarter. dirk tried his best to carry the team, but when the defense realizes that the rest of your team is sucking BALLS, of course there are gonna be four hands all up in dirk's face on every shot attempt.

our offense plays like greg davis wrote up the playbook. avery seems to roll a 6-sided dice on the scorers table: 1) dirk iso, 2) jet curls, 3) j-ho iso where he pretends to maybe want to drive in (which he doesn't do anyway) but instead takes retarded shots a step inside the 3 point line, 4) a sadly mediocre version of the pick and roll that should be far more effective than it currently is (kidd aint nash, but would it hurt to look at some old dirty dirk and nash-ty game tape?), 5) avery lets kidd do his penetrate and dish thing (he never looks for his shot on the penetration. never! wtf?), 6) and then the "no court-sense/leadership" play where a random mav (usually an offensive scrub; see devean george, eddie jones, juwan howard (???why does he play???)) jacks up a brick that clanks off the rim.

i mean, fine, this is a gross generalization, but if i feel like i'm seeing the same bullshit over and over again, what do you think real opposing nba coaches are seeing? where are all the backdoor cuts? i don't remember the last time i saw a mav sneak around and score the easy basket, which leads me to my next question. why isn't anyone moving, ever? we need that unpredictable movement to balance out the defense's anticipation of dirk receiving the ball. simply put, that would make just about everything easier for dirk. j-ho and stack? go back to what helped get us to the finals. slash, dammit! why doesn't kidd use his size more often? he needs to be posting up on his iso's way more often than avery allows. make the other team adjust to what you're doing and then switch it up. can it possibly be that difficult with two potential hall of famers and a supposedly solid supporting cast?

all of these questions lead to an important question to consider in the coming offseasons (one i will surely be discussing soon): can most of the fingers be pointed at avery johnson? is he the right fit for this team? are they even responding to him anymore? does he even know what basketball is?

on an unrelated note, i wish chris paul would change his number to 30, and then have people call him c3p0.

oh yeah, and the stars beat the defending stanley cup champs and are moving into round 2. yay!

quick predictions (after one game of play):
-lakers over nugs in 5. defense wins championships. so does talent/a real playbook. pau was monstrous.
-mavs over hornets in 7. gonna have to grind this one out. apparently it's gonna take a lot more from the mavs than i thought. that chris paul character is pretty good, to say the least.
-spurs over suns in 7. this one was a toughy. was gonna go with the spurs in this series, even before the kind of heart they showed in their double OT thriller (can you say OMG tim duncan? that dude is amazing.) yeah they're old, but they're also fucking good. if they arent dominating you, somehow they stick around till the end of the game and pull it out. where can the mavs purchase this kind of attitude?
-jazz over rockets in 5. houston really needed that home win in game 1. the jazz have the momentum for game 2, and are practically undefeatable at home. too much strength and length on the utah side for the overmatched, undersized rockets. the idiots who say the rockets are better off without yao will be sorely disappointed.

oh yeah, almost forgot about the other conference. predictions for the conference no one cares about:
-boston over atlanta in 4. keep on fighting the good fight, hawks fans. you'll get there some day (and by "get there," i mean finish a season with a sub-par record in the east but still finish around 5th or 6th place, thus avoiding a top east team but then getting demolished in the second round).
-detroit over philly in 6. if i wanted to be bold, i'd say philly over detroit in 6. i know philly is a hot young team, but really, the pistons should be able to handle them. i thought detroit only stopped caring about basketball halfway through the second round. maybe they start earlier this year.
-magic over raptors in 5. the magic are just more well put together than the raptors. add in man-child supreme dwight howard, and you've got yourself an uphill battle. hedo for mvp!
-wizards over cavs in 7. this will be an all out battle, because lebron wants it to be. the wizards clearly have the better all around team (though the outcomes of playoffs past would say differently), but this choice would have been much easier/simpler if lebron didnt have the scary "fuck you, give me the rock, i'm gonna score no matter what" attitude, which was clearly on display saturday. other than that, i still feel safe choosing the wiz. but that lebron...

that's it for now. more thoughts on the state of the mavs later. enjoy these playoffs as much as possible. i enjoyed about 9 hours straight on saturday. it was awesome.

2 comments:

Albert said...

3) j-ho iso where he pretends to maybe want to drive in (which he doesn't do anyway) but instead takes retarded shots a step inside the 3 point line

Thats a pretty accurate description of that play and maybe my most hated play in the Mavs repertoire (esp in the 2nd half). He always acts for a second that he wants to drive, does a few jab steps, maybe a forward dribble or two, then ultimately decides to pull up. Finley should sue for patent infringement.

I love how so many plays involve Kidd passing to someone in the high post or on the wing, then running away from the ball. Really utilizing that playmaking point guard.

Justin said...

lebron over wizards
that nigga crazy.