Mavs Moneyball Blog Off

Here is Zach Gershman and his player profile of Matt Carroll

Finally, the Dallas Mavericks went out and signed the shooting guard that we so desperately needed. I, for one, would like to welcome the church league great Tamm Llorrac to the Mavs and I am ecstatic to be doing his profile. Alright, alright, I am not doing a profile on Tamm Llorrac, I just wanted to make sure you were paying attention. All jokes aside, Matt Carroll is probably one of the best Mavericks you have never heard of or even seen play (unless you are a Bobcats fan, but who really calls themselves a Bobcats "fan").

Matt Carroll was an afterthought in the trade that saw DeSagana Diop go to the Bobcats in a massive salary dump; definitely a good move! While Ryan Hollins got plenty of playing time and even saw meaningful action in the playoffs, Matt Carroll was relegated to garbage time and obviously didn't make an impression on anyone.

The 6'6", 212lb guard from Notre Dame, Carroll doesn't seem like anything spectacular, but let's not gloss over him so quickly. If we go back to high school for a second, Carroll ranks second only to Kobe Bryant for amount of points scored for southeast Pennsylvania players. Not only that, but he was named Mr. Basketball in the state of Pennsylvania twice, something Bryant can't even claim.

Off at Notre Dame, Carroll played in 133 games averaging 13.9 points, 4.3 rebounds, and 2.4 assists a game (not too bad). He currently ranks sixth on Notre Dame's all-time leading scorers list and ranks second in three point field goals made. Surely great college and high school careers don't always translate to NBA success but they certainly give you a glimpse into what Carroll brings to the table.

I am sure you are telling yourself, "Matt Carroll can't be that good, we would give him more minutes if he was." Well, let's look at the numbers:

Matt Carroll's career numbers:

Seems to be nothing special, right? But let's look at his best season with Charlotte in 06-07, when he was playing a good amount of minutes and starting half the games:

If you don't think that Carroll's numbers are significant, let's have a look at what our new heir apparent to the shooting guard throne Quinton Ross did last season:

So, is Matt Carroll the next Jason Terry? Will he be able to play defense as well as Quinton Ross? The answer to both questions is "probably not", but he isn't horrible on defense and should provide more of a scoring punch than Ross. So what happened to Matt Carroll in 08-09 before he joined the Mavs? Well, someone named DJ Augustin joined the Bobcats that season, and I am sure you can see where most of the minutes went from there.

At the end of the day, Matt Carroll is definitely a pretty good shooting guard who, for some reason, cannot seem to get off the bench with the Mavericks. I would love to see him get some more playing time to see if he could recapture some of that past success.