Monday, October 25, 2004
By Chad Ford
NBA Insider
With huge offseason moves come great expectations.
The Lakers chose Kobe Bryant over the most dominant player in the league over the past decade, Shaquille O'Neal.
The Heat traded away three starters, including two young, up-and-coming stars who had led them to an improbable playoff berth, in return for Shaq. But can one player, no matter how great he is, really make up for the loss of three?
The Mavericks overhauled their roster in yet another effort to turn a good playoff team into a championship contender. Will perennial losers Erick Dampier and Jason Terry really be the guys that lead Dallas to a title?
The Rockets, just one year into the Jeff Van Gundy experiment, jettisoned their backcourt when superstar Tracy McGrady became available on the trade market. The tandem of Yao Ming and T-Mac looks great on paper, but can the chemistry develop quickly enough to bridge that huge East-West divide?
Marc Stein broke down the pressures the Lakers are going to feel this season. Here's Insider's season preview of three other teams that will be under the gun to make good on their dramatic offseason makeovers.
MIAMI HEAT
Starting Five: Dwyane Wade, Eddie Jones, Rasual Butler, Udonis Haslem, Shaquille O'Neal.
Key Subs: Damon Jones, Michael Doleac, Wesley Person, Christian Laettner.
Outlook: Shaq changes everything. Forget for a second about who the Heat had to give up to get him. Lamar Odom, Caron Butler and Brian Grant are all nice players. Together they have zero All-Star selections, zero NBA titles and just one postseason appearance. Shaq? Three NBA titles and an MVP award.
The Lakers added three starters while subtracting one and immediately dropped from championship contenders to playoff bubble boys.
But here's what's interesting. No one, other than the people who sell season tickets, are calling the Shaq trade a slam dunk in Miami, either. Whenever you subtract three starters and replace him with one, you've got some major holes to fill.
The Heat haven't had the money to do it, putting as much or more weight on Shaq's shoulders as Kobe is carrying in Los Angeles. Shaq appears ready for the challenge. He's in the best shape of his career and looks as sharp in the preseason as we've seen him in quite a while.
Can the rest of his supporting cast do enough to make it work it?
Last season, Dwyane Wade averaged 16.2 ppg in the regular season and 18.0 in the playoffs.
Second-year guard Dwyane Wade comes into the season with enormous expectations. Wade was brilliant in the playoffs, averaging 21 ppg, 5.7 apg and 4 rpg on 49 percent shooting against Indiana. But he did it by relentlessly attacking the basket. With Shaq in the paint, Wade is going to have to work on that jumper. He didn't make one in the Indiana series. That's going to be a major adjustment.
The rest of the Heat's supporting cast is average, at best. Eddie Jones should flourish with Shaq back. Jones recorded the best shooting year of his career in L.A. with Shaq and should get plenty of good looks. The rest of the team is a question mark. Rasual Butler and Udonis Haslem will start at the three and the four, respectively. They've started a combined 23 games in their careers. Both will be asked to play defense and stay out of Shaq and Wade's way.
The bench has a few bright spots. Damon Jones has looked solid as Wade's backup. Head coach Stan Van Gundy is hoping to use a lot of sets that have Jones at the point, Wade at the two and Eddie Jones playing the three this year. Shaq is calling Michael Doleac the first real backup center he's ever played with (no offense, Elden Campbell). Wesley Person and Christian Laettner have enough experience to help, if their bodies hold up.
While team president Pat Riley says this season can be a success even if the Heat don't win the title, let's get real. Shaq is 32 years old. His body seems to break down a little more every year. The Heat's window to get this done is probably three years at the max. After that, Riley will be looking longingly out his office window at American Airlines arena wondering what Odom and Butler are doing these days.
The Heat mortgaged their future for one reason – to bring home a championship now. If it works, no one will remember the sacrifices the team made to make it happen. If Shaq can't deliver the goods, on the other hand, the Heat could be headed for the ice age.
DALLAS MAVERICKS
Starting Five: Jason Terry, Michael Finley, Josh Howard, Dirk Nowitzki, Erick Dampier.
Key Subs: Jerry Stackhouse, Marquis Daniels, Devin Harris, Calvin Booth.
Outlook: Mark Cuban made two bold predictions this summer. First, he claimed his new reality series, The Benefactor, would be a big hit. Second, he claimed the new version of the Mavericks he pieced together is the "best team we've ever had."
The first prediction was completely off the mark. The Benefactor stunk and ended up being canceled prematurely by ABC.
Jason Terry averaged 5.4 apg last season; Steve Nash, now with the Suns, averaged 8.8.
Let's hope his fortune-telling skills are a little better when it comes to basketball. Cuban likes to gamble, and this summer was no different. He let the heart and soul of the Mavericks, Steve Nash, walk away.
He traded away the reigning Sixth Man of the Year, Antawn Jamison, for a guy, Jerry Stackhouse, that has been labeled a cancer on the last two teams he's played for and a rookie point guard (Devin Harris) with big upside, but without the physical strength to contribute right away.
He swapped Antoine Walker for a point guard that most league coaches believe is much closer to a shooting guard than a playmaker. Then Cuban capped his offseason by paying more than $70 million to Erick Dampier – an inconsistent, injury-prone center coming off a stellar 2003-04 campaign.
On paper, Cuban's prediction doesn't seem farfetched. The Mavericks got much better defensively – their Achilles' heel in the playoffs the past two years. Terry is a much better defender than Nash at the point; Stackhouse can be a physical perimeter defender when he wants to be; and Dampier gives the Mavs a legitimate bruiser – a dominant rebounder and shotblocker – in the paint.
The Mavs added all of that without sacrificing offensive firepower. Terry and Stackhouse can score at will. Harris has the potential to be a big-time playmaker and also can fill it up when called upon. Dampier isn't a dominant scorer in the paint, but he's a bigger threat offensively than anyone the Mavs have put in that position the past decade.
Scoring and defense. Athleticism and basketball savvy. Youth and experience. So why are some NBA folks predicting a Benefactor-esque apocalypse for the Mavericks this season?
One rival GM breaks it down:
"The team is talented and deep. They'll be able to score the same clip that they did last year, and they are much better equipped to defend. But two things really bother me about this team. First, I think they are going to miss Nash more than (they) think. He was a perfect fit in Nellie's offense. I don't think Terry pushes it or creates as many opportunities for his teammates as Nash did.
"Second, when you're adding missing pieces to the puzzle, you really want to add veteran guys who know what it takes to win. They added three guys who've been stuck on losing teams for most, if not all, of their careers. Guys like Terry, Dampier and even Stack don't have a clue what it takes to win. Just because all of the guys on your team can fill up a stat sheet doesn't necessarily translate into wins in the NBA."
So far the reviews out of the preseason have been justifiably mixed. It's going to take a team like this a while to jell together. Will Terry pass the ball? Will Damp bog down their uptempo game? Will Jerry blow his stack coming off the bench?
When I talked to Dirk Nowitzki last week on the road in Orlando, he didn't sound like a man confident that this version of the Mavs was the best ever.
"We still have a long way to go to be a good team," Nowitzki told Insider just hours before the winless Magic ran them out of the gym. "We miss him [Nash] a lot. To me he was always our motor. He got us going every night. I thought he was a top-three or four point guard in the league. The two guards we got are solid. They have to get used to Nellie. It takes a while to get used to, I hope."
If Cuban's right, the Mavericks couldn't have picked a better time to make their move. The top of the Western Conference isn't a strong as it used to be. The Spurs, Timberwolves and Kings are still good, but they're all beatable.
If he's wrong and the Mavs actually sink deeper into the Western Conference quicksand, it's probably time to cancel this version of the Mavericks and start from scratch again next season.
HOUSTON ROCKETS
Starting Five: Charlie Ward, Tracy McGrady, Jim Jackson, Juwan Howard, Yao Ming.
Key Subs: Maurice Taylor, Bob Sura, Dikembe Mutombo, Tyronn Lue.
Outlook: With Yao and McGrady, the Rockets now own, on paper, the best one-two punch in the NBA. But before you pencil them into the Finals, Magic GM John Weisbrod suggests you understand why he traded away McGrady in the first place.
"He's arguably the most talented player in the game right now," Weisbrod told Insider last week. "If he ever gets his work ethic and mental game up to his physical skills, the sky is the limit. So you don't just give guys like that away without thinking about it.
"But, I wanted people who respect the organization and the game. You accomplish that when you get guys who care about winning and the team more than themselves or their numbers. We tried to build this team with guys that care about winning,"
Will T-Mac play ball with Yao?
Weisbrod wasn't just implying that McGrady cared more about himself than winning. He said a few minutes later: "One of the things we had last year and one of the reasons we lost so often was because people left the building feeling fine with themselves. Tracy would say, you know, 'I had my 35, what else did you want me to do?' The other guys would say, 'Hey, I'm just a role player, this is Tracy's team.' "
Those are harsh words for a player many believe might be the best small forward in the game. They're also strong enough that the folks in Houston might start sweating things a little bit.
McGrady's new head coach, Jeff Van Gundy, is a no-nonsense guy. He cracked down hard on Francis, a three-time all-star, last season, and Francis slipped into a funk, producing the worst stats of his career.
Francis' take on the whole ordeal?
"It was a tough, tough year," Francis said. "It's tough when a coach asks you not to use your strengths to help your team win. … I'm not saying Jeff's offense didn't feature me, but it didn't feature me enough."
Put together Weisbrod's scouting report on McGrady with Francis' take on Van Gundy, and it's not a stretch to wonder how well the two are going to get along this season.
For better or worse, the Rockets are going to be about Yao. T-Mac will be a sidekick.
Van Gundy is still going to want the offense to run through Yao, taking away some of the offensive freedom McGrady enjoyed in Orlando. He's also going to ask McGrady to give the team a consistent defensive effort every night, something neither Doc Rivers nor Johnny Davis seemed able to get out of him.
"What Tracy has to do, and do it more consistently, is play with the intensity of Kobe," said Rivers, who coached McGrady in Orlando for three seasons. "Just the intensity question all the time, defensively and offensively. He has to do it right all the time."
If T-Mac responds to Van Gundy's tough tactics with a career year on both ends of the floor, the Rockets will be the sleeper in the West.
"I think obviously coming off the year that Tracy had last year … I think this is the perfect time to coach Tracy," Rivers said.
If McGrady doesn't respond, he and the Rockets could be in for a high-profile divorce before the honeymoon even ends.
By Chad Ford
NBA Insider
With huge offseason moves come great expectations.
The Lakers chose Kobe Bryant over the most dominant player in the league over the past decade, Shaquille O'Neal.
The Heat traded away three starters, including two young, up-and-coming stars who had led them to an improbable playoff berth, in return for Shaq. But can one player, no matter how great he is, really make up for the loss of three?
The Mavericks overhauled their roster in yet another effort to turn a good playoff team into a championship contender. Will perennial losers Erick Dampier and Jason Terry really be the guys that lead Dallas to a title?
The Rockets, just one year into the Jeff Van Gundy experiment, jettisoned their backcourt when superstar Tracy McGrady became available on the trade market. The tandem of Yao Ming and T-Mac looks great on paper, but can the chemistry develop quickly enough to bridge that huge East-West divide?
Marc Stein broke down the pressures the Lakers are going to feel this season. Here's Insider's season preview of three other teams that will be under the gun to make good on their dramatic offseason makeovers.
MIAMI HEAT
Starting Five: Dwyane Wade, Eddie Jones, Rasual Butler, Udonis Haslem, Shaquille O'Neal.
Key Subs: Damon Jones, Michael Doleac, Wesley Person, Christian Laettner.
Outlook: Shaq changes everything. Forget for a second about who the Heat had to give up to get him. Lamar Odom, Caron Butler and Brian Grant are all nice players. Together they have zero All-Star selections, zero NBA titles and just one postseason appearance. Shaq? Three NBA titles and an MVP award.
The Lakers added three starters while subtracting one and immediately dropped from championship contenders to playoff bubble boys.
But here's what's interesting. No one, other than the people who sell season tickets, are calling the Shaq trade a slam dunk in Miami, either. Whenever you subtract three starters and replace him with one, you've got some major holes to fill.
The Heat haven't had the money to do it, putting as much or more weight on Shaq's shoulders as Kobe is carrying in Los Angeles. Shaq appears ready for the challenge. He's in the best shape of his career and looks as sharp in the preseason as we've seen him in quite a while.
Can the rest of his supporting cast do enough to make it work it?
Last season, Dwyane Wade averaged 16.2 ppg in the regular season and 18.0 in the playoffs.
Second-year guard Dwyane Wade comes into the season with enormous expectations. Wade was brilliant in the playoffs, averaging 21 ppg, 5.7 apg and 4 rpg on 49 percent shooting against Indiana. But he did it by relentlessly attacking the basket. With Shaq in the paint, Wade is going to have to work on that jumper. He didn't make one in the Indiana series. That's going to be a major adjustment.
The rest of the Heat's supporting cast is average, at best. Eddie Jones should flourish with Shaq back. Jones recorded the best shooting year of his career in L.A. with Shaq and should get plenty of good looks. The rest of the team is a question mark. Rasual Butler and Udonis Haslem will start at the three and the four, respectively. They've started a combined 23 games in their careers. Both will be asked to play defense and stay out of Shaq and Wade's way.
The bench has a few bright spots. Damon Jones has looked solid as Wade's backup. Head coach Stan Van Gundy is hoping to use a lot of sets that have Jones at the point, Wade at the two and Eddie Jones playing the three this year. Shaq is calling Michael Doleac the first real backup center he's ever played with (no offense, Elden Campbell). Wesley Person and Christian Laettner have enough experience to help, if their bodies hold up.
While team president Pat Riley says this season can be a success even if the Heat don't win the title, let's get real. Shaq is 32 years old. His body seems to break down a little more every year. The Heat's window to get this done is probably three years at the max. After that, Riley will be looking longingly out his office window at American Airlines arena wondering what Odom and Butler are doing these days.
The Heat mortgaged their future for one reason – to bring home a championship now. If it works, no one will remember the sacrifices the team made to make it happen. If Shaq can't deliver the goods, on the other hand, the Heat could be headed for the ice age.
DALLAS MAVERICKS
Starting Five: Jason Terry, Michael Finley, Josh Howard, Dirk Nowitzki, Erick Dampier.
Key Subs: Jerry Stackhouse, Marquis Daniels, Devin Harris, Calvin Booth.
Outlook: Mark Cuban made two bold predictions this summer. First, he claimed his new reality series, The Benefactor, would be a big hit. Second, he claimed the new version of the Mavericks he pieced together is the "best team we've ever had."
The first prediction was completely off the mark. The Benefactor stunk and ended up being canceled prematurely by ABC.
Jason Terry averaged 5.4 apg last season; Steve Nash, now with the Suns, averaged 8.8.
Let's hope his fortune-telling skills are a little better when it comes to basketball. Cuban likes to gamble, and this summer was no different. He let the heart and soul of the Mavericks, Steve Nash, walk away.
He traded away the reigning Sixth Man of the Year, Antawn Jamison, for a guy, Jerry Stackhouse, that has been labeled a cancer on the last two teams he's played for and a rookie point guard (Devin Harris) with big upside, but without the physical strength to contribute right away.
He swapped Antoine Walker for a point guard that most league coaches believe is much closer to a shooting guard than a playmaker. Then Cuban capped his offseason by paying more than $70 million to Erick Dampier – an inconsistent, injury-prone center coming off a stellar 2003-04 campaign.
On paper, Cuban's prediction doesn't seem farfetched. The Mavericks got much better defensively – their Achilles' heel in the playoffs the past two years. Terry is a much better defender than Nash at the point; Stackhouse can be a physical perimeter defender when he wants to be; and Dampier gives the Mavs a legitimate bruiser – a dominant rebounder and shotblocker – in the paint.
The Mavs added all of that without sacrificing offensive firepower. Terry and Stackhouse can score at will. Harris has the potential to be a big-time playmaker and also can fill it up when called upon. Dampier isn't a dominant scorer in the paint, but he's a bigger threat offensively than anyone the Mavs have put in that position the past decade.
Scoring and defense. Athleticism and basketball savvy. Youth and experience. So why are some NBA folks predicting a Benefactor-esque apocalypse for the Mavericks this season?
One rival GM breaks it down:
"The team is talented and deep. They'll be able to score the same clip that they did last year, and they are much better equipped to defend. But two things really bother me about this team. First, I think they are going to miss Nash more than (they) think. He was a perfect fit in Nellie's offense. I don't think Terry pushes it or creates as many opportunities for his teammates as Nash did.
"Second, when you're adding missing pieces to the puzzle, you really want to add veteran guys who know what it takes to win. They added three guys who've been stuck on losing teams for most, if not all, of their careers. Guys like Terry, Dampier and even Stack don't have a clue what it takes to win. Just because all of the guys on your team can fill up a stat sheet doesn't necessarily translate into wins in the NBA."
So far the reviews out of the preseason have been justifiably mixed. It's going to take a team like this a while to jell together. Will Terry pass the ball? Will Damp bog down their uptempo game? Will Jerry blow his stack coming off the bench?
When I talked to Dirk Nowitzki last week on the road in Orlando, he didn't sound like a man confident that this version of the Mavs was the best ever.
"We still have a long way to go to be a good team," Nowitzki told Insider just hours before the winless Magic ran them out of the gym. "We miss him [Nash] a lot. To me he was always our motor. He got us going every night. I thought he was a top-three or four point guard in the league. The two guards we got are solid. They have to get used to Nellie. It takes a while to get used to, I hope."
If Cuban's right, the Mavericks couldn't have picked a better time to make their move. The top of the Western Conference isn't a strong as it used to be. The Spurs, Timberwolves and Kings are still good, but they're all beatable.
If he's wrong and the Mavs actually sink deeper into the Western Conference quicksand, it's probably time to cancel this version of the Mavericks and start from scratch again next season.
HOUSTON ROCKETS
Starting Five: Charlie Ward, Tracy McGrady, Jim Jackson, Juwan Howard, Yao Ming.
Key Subs: Maurice Taylor, Bob Sura, Dikembe Mutombo, Tyronn Lue.
Outlook: With Yao and McGrady, the Rockets now own, on paper, the best one-two punch in the NBA. But before you pencil them into the Finals, Magic GM John Weisbrod suggests you understand why he traded away McGrady in the first place.
"He's arguably the most talented player in the game right now," Weisbrod told Insider last week. "If he ever gets his work ethic and mental game up to his physical skills, the sky is the limit. So you don't just give guys like that away without thinking about it.
"But, I wanted people who respect the organization and the game. You accomplish that when you get guys who care about winning and the team more than themselves or their numbers. We tried to build this team with guys that care about winning,"
Will T-Mac play ball with Yao?
Weisbrod wasn't just implying that McGrady cared more about himself than winning. He said a few minutes later: "One of the things we had last year and one of the reasons we lost so often was because people left the building feeling fine with themselves. Tracy would say, you know, 'I had my 35, what else did you want me to do?' The other guys would say, 'Hey, I'm just a role player, this is Tracy's team.' "
Those are harsh words for a player many believe might be the best small forward in the game. They're also strong enough that the folks in Houston might start sweating things a little bit.
McGrady's new head coach, Jeff Van Gundy, is a no-nonsense guy. He cracked down hard on Francis, a three-time all-star, last season, and Francis slipped into a funk, producing the worst stats of his career.
Francis' take on the whole ordeal?
"It was a tough, tough year," Francis said. "It's tough when a coach asks you not to use your strengths to help your team win. … I'm not saying Jeff's offense didn't feature me, but it didn't feature me enough."
Put together Weisbrod's scouting report on McGrady with Francis' take on Van Gundy, and it's not a stretch to wonder how well the two are going to get along this season.
For better or worse, the Rockets are going to be about Yao. T-Mac will be a sidekick.
Van Gundy is still going to want the offense to run through Yao, taking away some of the offensive freedom McGrady enjoyed in Orlando. He's also going to ask McGrady to give the team a consistent defensive effort every night, something neither Doc Rivers nor Johnny Davis seemed able to get out of him.
"What Tracy has to do, and do it more consistently, is play with the intensity of Kobe," said Rivers, who coached McGrady in Orlando for three seasons. "Just the intensity question all the time, defensively and offensively. He has to do it right all the time."
If T-Mac responds to Van Gundy's tough tactics with a career year on both ends of the floor, the Rockets will be the sleeper in the West.
"I think obviously coming off the year that Tracy had last year … I think this is the perfect time to coach Tracy," Rivers said.
If McGrady doesn't respond, he and the Rockets could be in for a high-profile divorce before the honeymoon even ends.
