before the season that a new up-tempo system and a new coach would perhaps mask our deficiencies in having very few jump shooters by going to the rim, especially considering we had one of the greatest passers ever in Jason Kidd and that the improvement would make up for any regression in defence that came from up-tempo systems. Instead as it turned out, when we weren’t running, our half-court offense was just about the same as before: Dirk would get the ball and make his moves, Jet would work guys over looking for an opening and Josh would chuck up ill-advised jumpshots.

It was obvious Josh was becoming too in love with his jumpshot, which was especially bad in Avery’s iso system. He’s still a great finisher at the rim, only he never shows it these days. Before the start of the season, we thought he’d be getting out there on the break and taking Kidd’s feeds and going to the rim. Instead, he hung back as usual, waited till the transition stopped then got the ball and took more jumpshots.

We resigned Diop for too much but we expected him to return to pair with Damp in that solid center tandem we had, scoring on any open feeds he got under the basket. Instead, we found out he couldn’t rebound or finish inside anymore and his free-throw shooting had managed to get worse.

Yes, Stack was getting old and he always was a streaky shooter. But despite all that, he still came off the bench to score in double-digits last year even off a mediocre percentage. Nobody expected him (yes, NOBODY apart from you, I guess) to start the season out like he did and shoot a ton of bricks.

The reason why this team crawled into the playoffs last season was because our offense was minimally effective down the stretch. As I said previously, most though an offense with Kidd would be better under a faster system (maybe some, including me remembered Nellieball too much). There’s been no evidence of that since old habits apparently die hard, and our defence has probably suffered as a result of being more offensively-minded. We didn’t make any moves (nor did we make an attempt to find ourselves someone in that deep draft class) but it was hardly like we really lacked the talent beforehand.

There was one team I just couldn’t see the Mavs matching up with before the season, and that was the Lakers. We were lucky to be in front of them in the two games we played against them and we played shit in attempting to hold the leads. But for the other teams, I didn’t see how we couldn’t beat any of them.

You cannot say that this team sucks. It’s a good team with some killer flaws, which range from an inability to adjust on offence when jumpshots aren’t falling, to an over-reliance on jumpshots, to giving up offensive boards, to stupid mental lapses. Fine, they have countless flaws. But I don’t agree with your belief that the Mavs were horrible before the season even started.

Something will be maid … And I hope is something good. But this team really has no clue at all. When you have Kidd, Wright, George, Dirk and Dampier … You have basically one player that can really score. Not even his Airness would survive in that thing. If we could somehow trade for camby and then for Mike Miller we would be a really lot better. Miller rebounds well, can actually make tough shots, and is almost 100% in open shots, something that only Terry and Dirk can do here. George needs 3 or 4 open shots to make one. And Camby is the man, plays great defense, can finish a pass (something really rare in here), he would cover Dirk’s problems and with a lineup of Kidd, Miller, Josh (well, that would be miracle to get both those player and still have him), Dirk and Camby we would be fine. But that’s a dream and I don’t think we can get thos players. But I hope something happens because we are really heartless, effortless, offenseless, all less … We can count only on Dirk and Terry and that’s it. Like I said in a post the other day, our chances to win rest on Dirk + Terry scoring near 60 points anything less we don’t have a chance.