(02-14-2021, 10:40 PM)hakeemfan Wrote: No one on our team was stopping Lillard anyway. So if Boban gets caught in a few switches, so what? Kanter is the same on the defensive end. Yet Stotts uses him. I am not even asking for Boban in every game. But against players like Kanter if he cannot get in, then as I said earlier the Mavs should just cut him today.
Same obvious comparison of course jumped out at me watching Kanter used effectively as well.
Of course Boban could not have hurt the team in so many of these situations where its obvious they are not going out defend or out 3-point shoot some of these teams that can play the same way Dallas does anyway and do it better. They can match Dallas shooter for shooter and then do other things too like hurt the Mavs inside with big guys like Jokic, Ayton and Kanter.
How could he hurt? An L would still be an L and some of these are obvious losses just watching the flow of the game such as against the Suns.
Your small guys and athletic guys and clutch guys were simply not better than their small guys and athletic guys and clutch guys. Once you got past Luka, you had no clear advantage to press.
Boban always has an advantage to press, even if he has a disadvantage.
At any rate its a philosophical issue. That way of playing simply doesn't have a place in Rick Carlisle's basketball world at this point. This same issue was actually present with other offensive minded and traditional centers in Carlisle's system pretty much since Tyson Chandler left, long before Boban arrived.
Guys like Kaman, Dalembert, Mejri, Pachulia, Javale McGee all were frustrated with inconsistent usage even if they played well in any game under Coach-Post-Game-Is-Dead-Carlisle.
Those last 2 centers actually left Dallas and won NBA championships with other teams who found ways to use them effectively.
Even when Carlisle plays Boban, he uses him like he's Willie Cauley Stein on offense rather than Shaquille O'neal or Tim Duncan. He would just as well not play him although Boban does often post a better +/- than other Mavs despite poor usage.
They should trade him for something useful and let the man see if he has a career left somewhere in the NBA. Heck even JJ Berea could leave and play basketball somewhere even if it's international.
I'm fairly certain that Kanter would suffer a similar usage fate if he played in Dallas.