April 22nd, 2008 at 8:57 pm by Greg | Posted in Avery Johnson, Mavs Talk |
What an absolute embarrassment tonight. I don’t even know where to start and I know I could rant for quite a while. I’ll try to make this short though and just let this game speak for itself.
The entire game was downhill from the start. Avery had the team attempting to trap Paul for about 10 minutes before completely abandoning it. Every time Paul was trapped he had no problem finding the open man. Dirk and Damp just aren’t good/quick enough to be able to handle Chandler and West. And what happened to the plan to let Howard try and guard Paul? I saw that happen just a couple of times. And having Eddie Jones on him was just a freaking joke.
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The lineups were a huge mess again. Late in the first quarter Stackhouse and Jones were in the game at the same time. Sorry, but I just don’t even see that being a good idea. Then to start the second quarter this gem was on the floor: Terry, Howard, Stackhouse, Bass, Allen. What the hell? How could that possibly be considered a good option? Malik Allen can’t get off the bench in game one and all of a sudden he’s in the game when the Mavs are down 10? Dirk didn’t get back in the game until 7 minutes were left in the half. Devean George didn’t even see the court in the first half. With 2:24 left in the second Damp and Kidd are taken out of the game and replaced by Jones and Bass. I honestly stopped paying attention there, but I’m sure the second half wasn’t any better.
Damp played a total of 16 minutes while Bass played 29. Might not seem like such a bad idea since Bass ended up with 19 points and 8 boards, but the guy cannot play defense. Not that any Mav was too keen on playing D tonight anyways. Avery and his staff have to come up with some way to slow Paul down, but I don’t really see that happening. Having Del Harris on the bench to help out with seems like it would be a good idea right now.
It seems pretty obvious to me that Avery has completely lost this team. Nothing he says seems to have any effect on them. For the past three days Avery has said that they have to play better defense and then they come out with this type of performance. On TNT they showed a bit of Avery’s speech in the locker room. He ended by saying “Let’s score about 10 points in the paint to start this quarter.” The first basket of the quarter by the Mavs? A 16 foot jumper by Dirk.
There are going to be some people that say that the Mavs are still ok, that the Hornets just did what they had to do by holding home court (I’m looking at you Brad Davis). While technically true, has this team and coached showed anybody anything that should breed any confidence going into Friday’s game?
I know this post is pretty disjointed and rambling but I’m just so frustrated by seeing what this team has become when they have so much more potential. A change has to be made and I really wouldn’t mind if it was made tonight.
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Edit: One more thing. Has Avery been wearing his Spurs championship ring before tonight? I couldn’t believe it when I saw that he had it on. Is that supposed to be some kind of motivational tool? If I was a player I’d just be pissed that my coach was wearing something with another team’s logo on it. Just another ridiculous decision by Avery.
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