Game 31, Dallas Mavericks host Minnesota Timberwolves

Theme: White Zombie, "Soul-Crusher"
Game Info: Try MSN for a nice change of pace

Hey there friends, this is your on-the-spot Know Absolutely Nothing, BJ, coming to you from the AAC with her new intern, MavsMonkey. Say hi MavsMonkey.

Hi MavsMonkey.

Cute. I'm a little busy right this second MavsMonkey, so could you go over the first half?

Yes, Allmighty Evil One. At halftime, I asked The Boss to bleach my fur and make me a NASCAR monkey. Dead legs. No bulling for shots. No fast-breaking. Shot selection on a par with a Tom Green movie -- acutely painful and so not funny. And how was that shit with smacking Dirk in the face not a foul? Coach had the dubious pleasure of being excused from the game in the second; by halftime nineteen thousand ex-Cowboy fans would've been glad to join him. You want to complain about getting booed? Fuck you, you earned every one. Boss, when that kind of shit is all we get, just leave me in the fucking bag already.

. . . agreed. I can't even bring myself to type how much we were down in the third. A lot, let's leave it at that.

But.

About halfway through the third, Dirk got a smack in the face that came yea close to breaking his nose--

Hell-loo! How was that not an ejection?!?

I guess because the fouler didn't curl his hand just right. Here's a can of Sarcasm. Apply liberally.

Wonder why Jet's firing the crowd up and we're still down twenty . . . and wonder why the crowd is in fact fired up?

The tide changed. You could feel it. The Mavs woke up, remembered they were playing a subpar team, and proceeded to turn them into wall hangings. Dirk had problems with his jumper early on -- and from the line he was six-of-ten, I'll chalk it up to the scrambled sinuses and let it go -- and he proceeded to take it in with more force than I've ever seen from him. Jason Kidd demonstrated why the Kidd trade was not a bad idea -- sixteen points, seventeen assists, and another put-a-little-English-on-it pass that's going to make somebody's highlight reel. Dampier had some monster dunks, and Josh Howard is slowly getting back in touch with his offensive awesomeness (though I'm getting annoyed, he specifically promised to quit relying on that step-back jump shot). The Jet was on fucking fire, everything he flung up found nylon. The Timberwolves, instead of sticking with the defensive gameplan that had been working -- outrun, outgun, and stick somebody about thirty pounds heavier on Dirk like a bumper sticker -- started commiting dumb fouls and getting sloppy with the ball. The Minnesota coach had timeouts to use and fouls to give and he neither used nor gave . . . and given the kind of rolls the Mavs went on, a momentum breaker would've helped.

More importantly, the defense locked down. In the second half the T-wolves couldn't shoot for shit. Overall, the energy was much better. In the first half I saw some defensive lapses for which there's simply no excuse.

I'm torn about how to feel about this game. I hope like hell I never see anything like that first half, ever again. This should've been a blowout from the first five seconds.

On the other hand-- let me set the stage for you. Nice weather and no Cowboys. The Organization didn't need to cheat to make it a sellout night. The Painted Fan section, underpopulated all month, was packed -- I was in their overflow section, Standing Room Only in the back of Section 114. A blowout would've made for a deserted arena halfway through the fourth, because Dallas sports fans don't see the point in hanging around unless something's hanging in the balance.

An epic, come-from-behind ass-whipping is what Dallas sports fans live for. Given that the Cowboys missed the playoffs and given that the Stars are minus Morrow, it looks like it's up to the Mavs to save the soul of the DFW sports scene.

And the way last night's game played out, they look up to the challenge. Block and an egoectomy, courtesy of Dr. Nowitzki! Kidd picks your pocket and there goes your lunch money! Monster slam from Diop! J-Ho throws up a prayer with one left on the shot clock and it goes! The Jet bombs your ass from any range!

In terms of basketball, this game's a meh. In terms of building and cultivating a fanbase, it's exactly what the doctor ordered. The biggest comeback in Dallas Mavericks history.

Final: 107-100, Mavericks!
-BJ

We're Having Fun Now

Ahhh . . . that's better.

It's interesting -- one could take the Mavs' Summer League so far as an example of team cohesion. In the course of three games we go from an almighty ass-whuppin to a game worthy of some chest-beating. Shan (you pronounce that Shane, Misters Maggot-Brained Announcers) Foster and Reyshawn Terry both looked salty. The team spent a lot less time in Offensive Half Court Hell; defensively they were a wall.

I don't think it was an even matchup, to be completely fair. This was the Timberwolves' first Summer League game, and they had a lot of the same problems as the Mavs did at their inauspicious debut.

I hadn't taken that into consideration. A lot of these guys are first-year players, or they've been overseas (I can't even imagine playing a sport at any pro level while living in another country). And they're trying to gell as a team given about a week's worth of practise, when they know full damn well they're probably going nowhere -- back to the D-League, back to Europe, back to where-ever. And considering that turning pro voids your college eligibility . . .

I'm not hunting up excuses. I'm trying to understand how this all works.

Anywho, the rest of Summer League should be interesting. I think I understand what Coach was saying when he said he was looking for shooters -- in major game situations the opposing defensive strategy seems to be Pile People On Dirk with double- and triple-teams. Why? Because it works. I'm going to need to research this a bit more, but it squares with what I've been reading; Dirk's a perimiter player, and his instinct when double-teamed is to fall back with a jump shot. When he's well defended, those shots don't sink.

The downside to multiple defenders on one guy, of course, is it leaves the rest of the offensive team underdefended. What I think the Org is aiming for is a scenario where the Bad Guys double up on Dirk, Dirk passes out to Jason Kidd, Kidd finds the underdefended player and passes to them for a jump shot or a layup. This Plan B depends on two things; Jason Kidd's offensive playmaking abilities and a reliable scorer on the floor.

As usual, if I'm full of shit, tell me so I can find out you're right and learn something. (Please don't take any name-calling personally. I hate being wrong.)

One more thing about Summer League; at about the nine minute mark in the second quarter there was an offensive rebound I wish the announcers would've paid attention to. T-wolves sent up a jump shot, it was waaaay short, and one of the Mavs leapt and caught it mid-air.

Here's my problem; since the throw was a shot and not a pass, and since the ball was going down, would that rebound actually be a goaltending violation? Once a shot's on the downward arc, hands off. Or is it since the shot was clearly short it didn't count as a shot? Was that a no-call on the part of the refs? The zebras are in training too, in Summer League.
-BJ

Drawing Straws and Here Come The Rookies

Tomorrow is Draft Day, so in the spirit of Higher Learning, we're going to have a brief lesson on how the NBA circulates the talent pool:

The Draft, or Oh Shit Here Come The FNGs:
The deadline for declaring eligibility is 60 days prior to Draft Day, with potential draftees given until 10 days before the draft to back out if they change their minds. They must be at least nineteen years old and/or one year out of high school, and if they are not drafted run the risk of losing their college eligibility. That may change in the next year or so; the league is considering raising the minimum age to 22.

The talent pool is evaluated, the NBA processes the data gathered, and the Draft is announced listing players in order of their potential awesomeness. Quick hits; Jason Kidd was a #2 pick in 1994, Stackhouse was #3 in 1995, Dirk was #9 in 1998, Jet Terry was #10 in 1999, Dampier was #10 in 1996, J-Ho was #29 in 2003, and Brandon Bass was #33 in 2005. Teams then get to select from that list, with a lottery system determining who gets first dibs -- see below. The draft is conducted in two rounds of thirty (one pick per team per round), for a total of sixty brand-spandy-new NBA rookies.

List of prospective draftees here.

The Lottery, or Fate as a Bingo Tank:
How it works is the 14 teams who didn't make the NBA playoffs are each given a list of four number codes. The team with the worst record gets the most codes (250), therefore has the best chance of scoring a number one pick (odds are about one in four).

On Lotto Day, a group of NBA officials, team representatives, and some media guys acting as witnesses (check this out for an eyewitness account) enter a room. Cell phones, laptops, and PDAs are left outside. The door is locked. A set of ping-pong balls numbered 1 to 14 are dropped into a lotto randomizer, left to cook for exactly twenty seconds, and four are drawn. The team holding those four numbers (doesn't matter what order they're drawn in) gets the #1 draft pick. Process repeated for picks 2 and 3. Picks 4 through 30 are handed out in inverse order of win-loss ratio.

This year's lottery was held on May 20. The Chicago Bulls (33-49) came away with the #1 pick, the Miami Heat (15-67) #2, and the Minnesota Timberwolves (22-60) got #3. Click for the full list of picks.

A side-effect of the lottery that wasn't anticipated (correct me if I'm wrong on this) is the incentive for teams that aren't doing well in the regular season to delibrately run their record down in the hopes of scoring one of the first three picks. Hence the pissing and moaning in Dallas about how the team should've quit trying to even make the playoffs this year and just taken our chances with the lottery.

Fuck that shit, says I. If there isn't nobility in trying, why bother competing at all? Boring rant for another day.

A more in-depth look at talent rotation, free agency, what about the undrafted, and so on later. Right now Dallas only has one draft pick, #51. The first round pick (#21) went to the New Jersey Nets as part of the trade for Jason Kidd. Word around the campfire is the Organization is going to try and buy our way back into Round One.
-BJ

Sources:
http://www.nba.com/draft2008/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_Draft
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_Draft_Lottery
http://www.nba.com/history/draft_evolution.html