SEASON OPENER- Mavericks @ Suns Game Thread

[thegrahamcrackr]

Rosenbaum's evaluations are fundamentally flawed. You have to take them with a grain of salt. There simply isn't a raw statistic to measure 75% of what defense is, therefor his evaluations aren't accurate. He relies pretty heavy on plus minus to do it (which he gets from 82games), and they don't even do plus minus in the way that the teams do.

Take it from a guy that works for an NBA scouting company that sells their stats to teams. Charting defense is just too hard to do. You can try to use some basic statistics as a pointer, but no one in the NBA will trust an evaluation based solely on stats.

 

[ASUCHRIS]

Oh and your little stat site lists Vince Carter as a top 10 defender at his position, with Marion not even getting a sniff...

 

[greensborohill]

You can come up with statistics that would prove pretty much anything. Use your brain kid, it doesn't take a genius to see that Dirk is an overhyped small forward with the body of a weak power forward. The "Dirk is top 5 player" bandwagon cleared out nicely after the playoffs last year. If you don't remember, Marion completely shut him down, and showed how one dimensional he truly is. An exceptional shooter? Without a doubt. Unfortunately, he does little else to make his teams win. Go over the game film of the playoffs from last year. See your "leader" berating his teammates over defense, which is almost laughable. From where I sit, we worked your team last year, and even without Amare, we would still beat you in the playoffs.

In conclusion:

Suns > Mavs.

understand?

Completly shut him down??

26.5 PPG (above his season average) 11.5 RPG (above his season average)

How's that shut down?

And the end result of last season was the same for both teams. . we both didn't win anything.

As far as stats. . I understand that stats can skew things. . .just don't feed me some crap from ESPN Pg. 2 & expect me to se your point.

Let's not talk about the playoffs just yet. . . there's a good chance you might not make it.

 

[ASUCHRIS]

Completly shut him down??

26.5 PPG (above his season average) 11.5 RPG (above his season average)

How's that shut down?

And the end result of last season was the same for both teams. . we both didn't win anything.

As far as stats. . I understand that stats can skew things. . .just don't feed me some crap from ESPN Pg. 2 & expect me to se your point.

Let's not talk about the playoffs just yet. . . there's a good chance you might not make it.

There you go with your stats again, Dirk had a bad series, and embarassed himself. It's ok, that's not my OPINION, your OPINION is that he had a good series, and that he is good at defense, among other fantastically ridiculous thoughts. Perhaps they should include some sort of statistic for berating your own teammate on national TV...

That's fine, I'm just telling you that if you go among even the most casual of NBA fans, pretty much anyone will laugh in your face if you tell them that Dirk is a good defender. I love the fact that you list Simmons as crap, but recognize a guy that has VC as a top 10 defender at his position as a reputable source. At least you are consistent... The point of the page 2 article was to once again try to hammer home the fact that the "every guy" Bill Simmons, among millions of others are quick to recognize that Dirk is a below average defender.

In regards to the playoffs, I think it's funny that a Mavs fan would even bring them up, since it's pretty much common knowledge that once the playoffs come around, the Mavs are primed for an early exit. We'll see who goes farther this year. Looking at your previous logic, I'm actually pleased to see that you don't count us as a playoff team. I'm putting some money on the Suns right now... Don't come here and get all cocky because your team pulled a game completely out of their asses twice; if we had Amare last night we would have won by 30.

 

[Ouchie-Z-Clown]

if we had Amare last night we would have won by 30.

dude, don't ever type that again. we don't have amare. not for a long time. and we don't know how his knee will even respond. i mean, are you gonna type that after every loss? let's not go down that avenue this season. we got what we got, and that's a team that's gonna be hard-pressed to win more than 45 games.

 

[fordronken]

dude, don't ever type that again. we don't have amare. not for a long time. and we don't know how his knee will even respond. i mean, are you gonna type that after every loss? let's not go down that avenue this season. we got what we got, and that's a team that's gonna be hard-pressed to win more than 45 games.

If we had Amare last night you wouldn't have said that.

 

[CaptainInsano]

If we had Amare the score would have been:

Suns: 156
Mavs: negative 67

 

[nowagimp]

As a suns fan, I am depressed about Amare's injury. We need him back to be able to make a run at the Spurs and even the rockets. If I were you Greensborohill, I would be really be depressed because there is no cavalry and the Mavs are most likely the third best team in Texas. They struggled to win(2OT) against a team with 10 new pieces playing in their first official game together. The Mavs have no distributor of the ball, no power forward, no low post offense, and they are chained to a long term contract to a worthless center who they basically exchanged for the best point guard in the league. Because of Dirk, they will win enough games to prevent the attainment of a good draft pick to address these deficiencies. They also have a controilling owner who spends money foolishly(can you say salary cap?) and yet is most likely to micromanage basketball decisions. I'll bet they even may lose Dirk when his current contract expires.

 

[thegrahamcrackr]

As a suns fan, I am depressed about Amare's injury. We need him back to be able to make a run at the Spurs and even the rockets. If I were you Greensborohill, I would be really be depressed because there is no cavalry and the Mavs are most likely the third best team in Texas. They struggled to win(2OT) against a team with 10 new pieces playing in their first official game together. The Mavs have no distributor of the ball, no power forward, no low post offense, and they are chained to a long term contract to a worthless center who they basically exchanged for the best point guard in the league. Because of Dirk, they will win enough games to prevent the attainment of a good draft pick to address these deficiencies. They also have a controilling owner who spends money foolishly(can you say salary cap?) and yet is most likely to micromanage basketball decisions. I'll bet they even may lose Dirk when his current contract expires.

You have some points, except you are forgetting that the Mavs nabbed Devin Harris in the draft last year.

By next season he should be a very good starting point guard for them.

 

[ASUCHRIS]

dude, don't ever type that again. we don't have amare. not for a long time. and we don't know how his knee will even respond. i mean, are you gonna type that after every loss? let's not go down that avenue this season. we got what we got, and that's a team that's gonna be hard-pressed to win more than 45 games.

Thanks for the info, I thought he was back next week. I also think you're wrong, I think we will win more than 45 games. Dallas fan comes and wants to talk, and the reality is that if we did have Amare, we would have killed them.

 

[Errntknght]

Well I finally forced myself to watch the last 20 minutes of the game. I agreed with the announcers that it is poor defensive strategy, in general, to switch small for big on P&R but they failed to mention that the Suns didn't know how to take advantage of it. One time we got the ball inside to Shawn but the rest of the time the other four guys just spectated from the three point line while Nash wore himself out going solo. I don't blame the players as much as D'Antoni's stupid offense - which comes as no surprise, I'm sure to the two or three people who read my posts. It's not a good offensive scheme even with Amare but without him it's ridiculous.

I said a couple of months ago that if the rest of the league was smart they'd defense the Suns exactly the way Dallas did and simply wear Nash out. I also said I hoped they'd do it right from the beginning of the season to give D'Antoni the maximum amount of time to see the folly of his halfcourt scheme. I doubt if they will even though Dallas gave a convincing demonstration on national TV... they'll probably coming away thinking the same way the announcers did, which was that Dallas was defending badly and managed to win in spite of it.

And even if they all do it, there's no guarantee that coach Mikey will figure out what to do about it. There's probably a better chance the players will do it on their own... Nash, Diaw, KT and Bell have the smarts and/or experience to know you have to have something going in the paint and with this team that's only going to come from good movement. As long as they keep launching 25 threes a game D'Antoni probably won't object - assuming he does notice they aren't strictly adhering to his scheme.