Dallas Mavericks

Mavs End Spurs Streak, Go On To Beat The Heat

With a 5 game win streak and counting, the Mavs are showing what they got stored for possibly the contenders come playoff time. Along the way during this streak, the Mavs beat a few of the best teams, including the Thunder, Spurs and Heat.

They put a stop to the Spurs 12 game win streak. Then they hosted the Heat who have lost 17 of the last 18 regular season meetings. Makes one wonder about those Finals where the Heat won 4 straight after down 2 games. That’s another story we won’t get into though.

As for that super team, what’s up with them? They’re now 9-8 and have lost 4 of their last 5 games. Seems to me, money might not buy a championship team when you can’t afford a supporting bench cast and you got superstars complaining they have to play 44 minutes a game.

The Mavs are now 12-4, with a top ten defensive team in the league and it doesn’t look like they’ll be slowing down any time soon hopefully. Tyson Chandler is also now the go to guy for technical free throws.

Kings 102, Mavs 104

A game where the bench and supporting cast did their part to help the Mavs win, although it was by very little, it’s still a win and makes it the Mavs 5th straight win, missing 3 of their usual starters.

Terry and Nowitzki both had 20 points. Kidd and Humphries both had 15 points, Thomas contributed 11 points and 7 rebounds and Gooden came up with another great game with 16 rebounds in Dampiers absence.

Mavs Beat Lakers

This was surprising, I actually anticipated a loss, especially when the Mavericks play the Lakers at the Staples Center, their first win there since March 11, 2007. But the Mavericks dominated, maintaining a lead and never losing that lead after each and every period.

The final score was 94-80. Nowitzki scored 21, with Marion adding 18, Terry with 16 and Little Jose with 12. Kidd got 11 assists and Dampier actually stepped up with 10 boards.

Hopefully this is a game they can use to boost their confidence against big teams on the road.

The Mavericks play the Clippers tonight on Halloween, who have started the season 0-3, so hopefully this might work out to be an easy LA visit for the Mavericks.

What’s In Store For The Mavs

So there’s been a lot of happenings around Mavland. Lots of player transactions which resulted in a lot of familiar faces sticking around but a lot of new faces we’ll be seeing this coming season.

With the Mavericks already over the grand old luxury tax imposed by the NBA, Stackhouse, George and Bass are just a few of the familiar faces no longer with the team. The newcomers are Shawn Marion, Drew Gooden and Tim Thomas, along with Rodrigue Beaubois, Ahmad Nivins (still unsigned) and Nick Calathes (still unsigned) who were all draft picks.

Gerald Green, Ryan Hollins and James Singleton are all free agents. I honestly hope the Mavs can keep Hollins around, the others really wouldn’t make an impact to the team.

As for the starting lineup, we can probably count that it will be Kidd, Marion, Howard, Nowitzki and Dampier. Jason Terry will continue to come out as the 6th man and Drew Gooden will be a versatile player who can back up Nowitzki and Dampier.

Tim Thomas being a 3 point specialist could come off the bench in hopes to get some easy baskets in little time, as he averaged close to 8 points a game in 20 minutes on average playtime each game.

Little Jose will continue coming off the bench and maybe get some more starts as well to back up Kidd. Hopefully Kidd can continue to mentor Barea to possibly take over the PG role while Kidd deeparts from his playing days in the NBA in the next few years that he has left.

Overall I believe the players we picked up makes the Mavericks a better team than last year and even the year before. If Gooden stays healthy along with Josh Howard staying healthy and Tim Thomas can put up some decent numbers, I can see this team being a threat to the Denver Nuggets and maybe rebounding to be a contender in the tight Western Conference. I’m not even so worried about Denver any longer, everyone should realize that the Lakers just got better picking up Artest and retaining Odom, so that’s the team to beat this year.