Sorry for being away much of last week. I am back and ready to roll.
- Dirk Nowitzki will be back. Also, he's pretty excited about the season. In an email interview with The Dallas Morning News, Dirk confirmed that he's done through his normal summer training and should be back to the Dirk we all know and love. Not too surprising, given the fact that there were no championship celebrations or lockouts this summer. There were tons of people who thought last year was just Dirk getting old. Yes, he is, but I don't think people truly understood how different Dirk's off-season was and how that changed his training. Good to see Dirk's summer back to normal. Also, Dirk talks about the new additions.
- The Mavericks are bringing in combo guard Josh Akognon as a non-roster invitee. Akognon led the Sacramento Kings summer league team in scoring this summer and has bounced around a lot. He's 5'11'', but played shooting guard in college. There were apparently a lot of other teams interested, but Mark Cuban swayed him. Akognon will only make the roster if there's an injury and even if he does, Dallas has about an infinite supply of small guards without a defined position. What's one more gonna hurt? Also, since I'll never pronounce his name right, I'm going to call him "Aragorn" because the names looked kinda similar and it's cool and shut up.
- NBA.com has a post highlighting advanced stats on the Southwest Division and they go with some offensive numbers about last season's Mavs. As said time and time again on this blog by myself and the other writers, the Mavericks defense is fine. It's the offense that needs a boost and provides answers to why the Mavericks acquired the players they did this off-season. The offensive boost of Kaman/Brand over Haywood/Mahinmi is going to be astronomical.
- Apparently, some NBA 2k13 player ratings have been released and SURPRISE, the ranking of Dirk Nowtizki is comically low. I know it's trite to bitch about the arbitrary player ratings of a video game, but Dirk has been consistently underrated in the game since I can remember playing it years ago. Some hilarious comparisons for how awful it is: Carmelo Anthony is a 92. Kobe Bryant is a 93. Tim Duncan is an 87. Blake Griffin is an 86. Joe Johnson is an 85. This just goes to prove that it doesn't matter how much of an efficient-scoring machine you are, unless you can dunk it or have cool commercials, you aren't getting a proper rating in NBA 2k.
- I hate linking to the random Bleacher Report articles that aren't from the amazing NBA staff writers they have accumulated, but that last link made me rage. So here's a positive article on the Mavs and why they should be good at putting balls through hoops.