What is going on with the Mavs?

[SleepingHero]

SH, I have the impression that you are genuinely shocked at the condition of the Mavs, and that you think that blowing up the team four games into the season should be on the table. 

I am for sure shocked at how the Mavs have performed in the first 4 games. It's not so much as they lost the games that has me shocked, but more of how  they lost them that is leaving me nervous. Honestly, if the Mavs lost all their games by 5 or less points, and just were cohesive, I wouldn't be worried at all. Even if they were 0-4. But besides PHX, who if they actually made their shots it'd have been a blowout, the Mavs have been curb stomped in their losses. Besides Luka, everyone has been severely under performing in at least 2 or more aspects of their game. Everyone. And even then Luka has been underperforming overall compared to the standards he set last season as well. Given the career history of all of our personnel and how I basically want everyone to do a 180 on their performance, I'm not too sanguine about that happening. Trey Burke had a huge bubble/playoffs for us, but taking that out he's always been a bad to middling bench performer. THJ by far had an outlier year all things considered last season and so far this season he hasn't staved off my fear of his immediate regression to the mean. Looking at Powell's performances in the last 4 games, it's hard to be optimistic that he'll be anything more than a 3rd stringer for the rest of his career and yet he 6th most minutes played (2 mins behind Maxi for top 5) on this team so far. Brunson's ability to run an offense has seemingly vanished. He's made some great plays on both ends, but has also made equally terrible plays on both ends as well in all of his games. He can either turn the ball over 4 straight times or hit 4 impossible layups. And we're asking him to lead the 2nd unit? DFS has missed what seems like 50% of his shots that have been wide open, and makes me feel like his career year of 3pt shooting was a flash in the pan. I can go on but for the sake of brevity, we all see the players underperforming. 

Despite this. No. I do not want to blow it up just yet. Like I said in my last post you can't build a great team if you blow it up every time an inconvenience arises. There is a chance that all the Mavs role players adjust and actually start hitting their shots, despite my doubts to that happening anytime soon. We have yet to see how this team looks with our 7'3 unicorn who might tie this all together. So no, I don't want to make a trade just yet without seeing everyone play together. And everyone's favorite phrase to start this season is still true, it's a small sample size. 

I'm curious. What were you expecting? I am not taking a stand that one of us is right and the other is wrong, just wondering how you were seeing the picture before the games started.

Since we've gotten Luka and seen him flash a kind of savant transcendence in basketball that only comes around once in a while, I've been extremely high on the Mavs.  I'm a homer of course, so that plays into my biases, but I felt the Mavs have struck gold with Luka. This was only bolstered after we got KP. After that, I expected the Mavs to be a 50 win team from here on out. I guess Dirk has spoiled me, given that the Mavs has always been a 50 win team for a decade straight. I wanted them to come in and handle business. Like I said I would be a-okay if the Mavs would be 0-4 and lost close contested games. But they look off. The offense is stagnated. The players are making poor choices. The defense is lackadaisical and it seems like every game the entire team as a whole decides to give half effort in all areas of basketball and hopes to skate by. 

Maybe this is a big overreaction and the Mavs will look totally different against the Heat. But I've told myself that before each game and haven't shaken this feeling. How many times can we say that before the Mavs playoff hopes are in peril?