Mavericks Vs Spurs: What Went Wrong?

The Mavericks rolled into San Antonio last night with a full head of steam after throttling the Houston Rockets the night before. The Spurs came into the game missing their two top players in Tony Parker (ankle), and Tim Duncan (ankle) Mavericks roll to victory right? Not so fast.

The Mavericks shot an abysmal 35% from the field, Erick Dampier finally decided to take a night off, J.J. Barea was once again awful, and Rick Carlisle made serious miscues with his line up decisions.

Mavericks vs Spurs boxscore

All of us have wondered when the "Real" Erick Dampier was going to show up, and last night against a broken Spurs team he decided to make his grand entrance. One night after having his best game in a long time, Dampier was so bad he could only manage to stay on the floor for 18 minutes, and score 1 point.

Erick was slow and out of position at both ends of the floor and forced Carlisle to go to his bench. Here is where the first of the Mavs problems began. To replace Dampier Carlisle first called upon Drew Gooden (mistake #1) and well... He was worse than Dampier.

Gooden continues to believe that he is related in some way to Larry Bird, and continues to shoot that 15- 18 foot jump shot, has he even made one of these this year? Anyway after seeing the atrocity that is Drew Gooden for an unbearable 9 minutes, Carlisle was once again forced to go to his bench.

This time Carlisle decided to try and go small (mistake #2) and while I understand the thought process, but when you depend on the play of J.J. Barea I also understand that this cannot work on a consistent basis. Sometimes Barea does some very wonderful things, but as I am about to show you, the majority of the time he hurts this team by being on the floor.

In the Table below you can see what happens both offensively and defensively to this team when and when he is not on the floor.

As you can see the Mavs defense is infinitely better with Barea off the floor, there is an upgrade offensively with him on the floor but not enough of a gain to have his liability defensively for 25 - 30 minutes a night, as we saw last night.

The object of having Barea is to have a player that can compete with and handle some the quicker guards that the Mavs face, and to be able to raise the tempo of the game without getting sloppy.

The problem is that these things are not happening on a consistent basis, and it is time this coaching staff came to that realization, and quickly. I like Barea but I also think he needs more seasoning, and needs to understand his job better.

This last graph I have shows Barea's production by position based on 48 minutes, and his counterparts, and then the net of the two. 82 Games has some great information and I highly suggest for all of you stat junkies to check it out.

Player 48 Minute production by position:

Opponent Counterpart 48 Minute production:

Net 48 Minute production by position:

Now that I have bored you all to do with numbers and reasoning as to why Barea needs to have a roll reduction until he can be consistent, lets move on to mistake #3 for Coach Carlisle.

With zero post presence last night the Mavs began to do what they always do, jump shot city. When they shoot 55% like they did against Houston it is wonderful, but when they shoot 35% like last night it is not too good.

Carlisle made the decision to go small and what he was left with was the infamous "holy shit we are trouble play" you know the one, It's the one where Dirk gets the ball and everyone else on the floor stands around and watches him work. It's kind of hard for anyone to win a game 1 against 5, now to Dirk's credit he cut the lead from 15 to 9 but still.

Carlisle for whatever reason forgot about his "lightning in a bottle" player from training camp, yes Kris Humphries. Humphries could have done wonders for this team last night just with his hustle. The Spurs went big and physical and the Mavs simply, were small and weak, Humphries would have changed this.

Carlisle must change his ways or things will get worse before they get better. The Mavs must be able to adapt to the situations they are in, and as of right now they are failing miserably at this.