And So The Mavericks Season Ends...

Wish you guys could have gotten past the nugs just so I could continue to watch one of the best scorers in NBA history, possibly the best offensive PF ever. Hope we see more magic from Dirk next season, (just not against my blazers).

As usual, Wes, you hit the nail on the head and summarize things well. I do disagree with one point: That the Mavs overachieved. This is a team that simply didn’t have the mindset to play defense, and in that way they underachieved on the defensive end all year long. That is what gave this team such low expectations into the playoffs, but it’s a false perception to me, because they could and should have achieved more. All they had to do was play defense, and they didn’t.

That quote from Dirk is just fantastic … It almost gives me tears because a player 30 years old, 4 time all-nba first team, 9 time all-nba, 1 time mvp, a 25/10 on the playoffs telling that coming the next season as “hopefully a better player and person” that the heart of a champion and that’s why he needs a ring before everything is said and done. We are not as far as I thought in the last off season. We really need to change the center position, resign Bass and bring a good SG to start. Kidd is not a problem for us, as soon as he gets a contract worth 8 – 10 million a year, he will be paid properly, because he still brings a lot of good things to the team. He has a strong mind, gives stability for the team and makes people around him better for sure. I think that the key for us is to find a good presence on the center position and a good SG. Imagine having Terry, Barea and Wright coming off the bench, that would give us a lot of depth. We are close, Rick is a very good coach, Cuban is a owner that wants to expend and we have good contracts to get something in return, Josh, Dampier and Stack all have good contracts that can be used to get some good players … We’ll be fine, at least now we have hope and we are sure we won’t have Juwan Howard here again :P …

jakedfw – I couldn’t agree more with you. As I watched the Denver series, I saw a different team that the one that pounded the spurs. The Mavericks completely lost their defensive intensity in this series. It’s like they used it all up against SA. This shouldn’t surprise us because we’ve seen the defensive inconsistency all season. BUT the point is – you can see how capable they COULD be defensively if they put their mind to it…..and when they brought it in the first round, it teased the fans because I thought “ok here we go, it’s the playoffs, they’re turning it on” only to see the brain lapse in the 2nd round.

I don’t blindly buy into the fact that Denver was “just the better team.” They might be. They might not. They probably are. But how many times did the Mavs kill themselves in this series? More so than Denver stopping them – in my homer-blue-shades opinion.

Damp, Kidd, Stack, and Howard all need to go. JayKim nails it – Kidd’s weaknesses are now more than his strengths. He’s going to get lit up by any quality point guard. He obviously played well against SA, but he had ONE good game against Parker out of 5 and 0 good games against Denver out of 5. Damp’s a pushover and I’m tired of waiting for him to channel his inner beast. Howard – I’m just sick of his inconsistency and drama.

I do think Terry just had a bad post-season – don’t forget he was probably the regular season MVP. He can play D when he really wants to but he suffers from this team/coach mentality of …well……..not playing D.