Conclusions: Final Impressions of 2009/10 Mavs' Season

Conclusions:

For me, this Mavs’ team was a missed opportunity. While the roster was vastly overhauled, nothing changed. However, you can’t deny the affects of changing 2 key members of your rotation at the All Star break (or what should have been 40% of your starting 5). Give me a moment to explain:

For years now, we’ve seen the Mavs roster change piece by piece, and finally we had a change that impacted the core when Josh Howard was sent away, and Dampier should have been relegated to backup duties. Still, the style of play seems to have changed very little, particularly in the playoffs. In the end, this is still an offense heavily reliant on isolation play, mixed in with the two man game of Terry and Dirk.

Again, while the roster has been vastly upgraded, the game plan has not adapted to those players, rather those players are being asked to adapt or change to fill the same old roles those before them filled, the biggest example being Shawn Marion.

We’ve watched as Marion was forced into the Antoine Wright role, ignoring the vast difference in what they bring to the court. Butler was essentially forced into being Josh Howard. Haywood was asked to play exactly as Dampier has, ignoring his radically different areas of talent – such as hands and athletic ability. Roddy was treated like Ager, or any other untrustworthy rookie by a coach with an overreliance on what is known, even if what is known has been known to fail. Meanwhile, regardless of their effectiveness, Terry, Dampier, and other rotation players held strong to their previous roles.

While this formula may have gotten the Mavs to the Finals, it hasn’t worked in the playoffs since, and ignores those many roster changes that have taken place. When the pieces are not the same, you can’t continue to try to force them together in the precisely same manner.

Isolation offenses can work and work very well, but they can also cause a team to become stagnant, which is something we’ve all seen the Mavs do, regardless of personnel. How many times have we watched 4 guys stand still while Dirk is asked to shoulder the complete load on the offensive end. If Dirk doesn’t score, this likely means a contested jumpshot for another player for reasons I’ll elaborate on as I go, not good offense.

To go back to my original point:

Marion was often asked to stand motionless in the corner on offense, by design or action/reward (how many times do you make a cut when the pass continues to not come?), this would seem to sever most of his strongest assets from the game. Essentially, he’s Antoine Wright – not based on talent, but forced by design.

Haywood was ignored almost completely on the low block after an experience that would seem to alert most players that this was a bad idea, a 13 game win streak in which he continually delivered at the rim when given the chance. After that, whether it be by design or habit, players simply stopped looking for him. You can blame this on not starting, and thus not playing with Kidd (though Kidd wasn’t innocent of ignoring him either), but if you go back and watch, you can’t fairly blame him for this, at least not consistently (but what came first, inconsistency in chances or effort?). He continued to be open, or to successfully post up his man. The ball simply stopped coming.

Butler, a better passer and ball handler than Josh Howard, was rarely to never involved in any sort of pick-and-roll play, and often asked to stand in the opposite corner as Marion with little chance to contribute other than a corner 3 (not his biggest strength) or a desperate late shotclock attempt. More than he’s given credit for, Butler can create his own shot, and do so with a fairly strong level of success, but very few players can be asked to do nothing but isolation plays with great result, particularly in the playoffs. If you’re not one of those 10-15 best players in the league, it’s too easy to neutralize (ask Joe Johnson), especially when the you’re not a very strong 3 point shooting team, and the other four players are merely standing and watching.

On the other end of that, it felt like I noticed an unusually high number of stupid plays from a “high BBIQ”, veteran team. For example, Bonner switches on to Butler, the team starts to clear out and just as Butler starts to make a move someone will roll slowly down to the block, essentially cutting off Butler’s (or any other player’s) path to the rim. Combined with poor overall movement, unintelligent movement is a killer.

Jason Terry continues to be handed the ball in the playoffs and is often asked to lead the 4th quarter offense in the two man game with Dirk. Well, we’re going on four years of this failing as soon as the playoffs arrive (maybe it’s only two years, but it feels like four). Perhaps it’s time to go in another direction. Coach’s tend to stick with what has worked, but shouldn’t they also go away from what has not....especially when there are new capable alternatives available?

Given that Butler and Haywood didn’t join the team until the All-Star break, it’s not hard to understand why it may have been difficult to adjust to their styles in time for this year’s playoffs. It’s also not hard to understand why Carlisle may have had a hard time in trusting a rookie after making the mistake of not building that trust in the regular season (other than in game 6, where there is no defense of Roddy not playing until the final minutes of the fourth quarter).

That is a legitimate excuse for Carlisle, he may have not had time to truly implement the new talent as he would with a preseason of practices, just as you could say there wasn’t time for the rest of the players to properly adjust. Of course, that doesn’t explain trying to force Marion to be an Antoine Wright clone, which I wasn’t aware of being desirous for a “contender”.

On top of this, considering my own player grades, it’s hard to win in the playoffs when only 3 or 4 players (Dirk, Butler, Barea and I suppose you could count Najera – and two of those didn’t perform well, they just didn’t play any worse than they did in the regular season) perform at the level they did in the regular season…..and only 1 or 2 exceed their regular season performances (Dirk and Butler). Watch any other team that is currently having success, and you’ll find a plethora of examples showing different players stepping up and creating wins for their team. The stars tend to get the bulk of the credit and the blame, but without these other players stepping up when given the chance there is no success.

Is it Lebron’s fault Mo Williams is failing? Is it Dirk’s fault Terry, Kidd and Marion played so poorly? On the converse side, was it Nash’s skill that scored 26 points for Dragic in the final 14 minutes? Was it Duncan’s skill that hit those shots for Hill against the Mavs, and then his fault when Hill couldn’t duplicate that level of success in the second round?

All in all, I still think this can be a very good team next year, even with only minor roster moves and Carlisle returning, but it’s time to really look at the roster and build a plan of attack around that roster, rather than forcing a plan that was designed with different players in mind.

In the end, I feel that this was probably the most talented roster in the Dirk era, but that talent was bound and confined within an approach not designed to stress its strengths, rather constructed ignorant of them. While I place some of the blame on Carlisle and some on the players (for not throwing passes that were often there), you can’t ignore the constraints of time.

My hope remains high for next season, but things can’t stay the same.