MAVS NEWS:

[Jmaciscool]

This team is very bad.

Extremely bad.

I've watched a lot of basketball over my years and this team is approaching the status of worst of all time. Ridiculous given the talent they have on this roster, but.... the the vibes are just all off. I cannot tell you from exactly what is the main cause, but you can feel it.

There is no offensive identity. There is no flow. There is absolutely nothing from possession to possession that makes me believe that any of the 5 players is comfortable being out there.  It shows. The Mavs are 30th in the NBA this season in basically every offensive metric. They currently have a 103.4 ORTG, which is behind other offensive powerhouses like the Washington Wizards and New Orleans Pelicans. But relative to the league they are about 12 points behind league average. That is the lowest in franchise history. Not even the teams in the 90s had such a bad offense relative to league average.

Its such a glaring issue that its insurmountable. And one can argue missing AD for 3 out of the 7 games hasn't helped (i don't count the one where he never returned) and could be skewing the numbers, but the teams' offensive rating with AD on the court hasn't changed. Its a systemic issue. In fact, the only player that has a marked difference thus far vs. being on the court vs. off has been DLo. Which I don't think its a testament to DLo, but rather to how piss poor this offense is that even a guy shooting sub 40% can make them look better.

Further, Cooper Flagg has disappointed me a bit. The talent is there, but the drive? The aggression? It feels as if he's already mentally checked out. He goes through 5-10 minute stretches of basically running cardio on offense. The guy at Duke had passion for the full 40 minutes. Cooper appears disinterested thus far. Its making the alarm bells go off a bit.


Defensively this team actually isn't that bad. They've ranked pretty respectably across most defensive metrics, notably being 8th in DRTG. I attribute having PJ, Flagg, Christie, and Naji on the wings is helping that.


I am just sad guys. This is a bad team. I don't think they are going anywhere any time soon. Nico's creation, as many believed in February, is doomed to fail. The quicker we eject and salvage some assets the quicker we can hope to get back to where we were with Luka. Cooper is the future. Hopefully someone with a modicum of power within the Mavs can see this.

I'm not worried about Cooper's drive at all. He's 18 and being forced to play out of position against the best players he's ever faced while on a losing team that he's the dedicated savior of. I think looking a little lost or hesitant sometimes is to be expected, especially in these early games.