A Few Thoughts On Mavs 107, Hawks 111

[Reunion Mav Old]

I've come to the conclusion the Mav's are treating this season like they are playing with house money.  They are way ahead of their own projections and won't be rushed.  This season they are operating a teaching hospital with hopes the lessons learned will pay off down the road.  Getting robbed by the ref's gets old.  But so does the over-the-top hand wringing that awaits any decision that doesn't correspond to our collective and individually superior basketball opinions.  If the team really cared about winning in Atlanta, they would have made some different decisions about who to play and who to sit.  That doesn't excuse the refs, but this is a game they win by double digits if they play just one of their stars.

In the final analysis, say six months from now, does it really matter if they win 47 games or 52 games?  Does it really matter if they win 1, 2 or 3 games in their first round playoff series?  Not really.  They've reset their trajectory and now its time to build around what they have.  Who are the keepers.  Who are the culls.  What kind of players need to be added and how.  What on-court combinations work.  Those are the things that really matter.  Continued .500 ball from here gets them to 47 or 48 wins.  That will get them the 7th seed in the west and the 18th or 19th pick.  Any single loss isn't going to change that.  Relax and enjoy the ride.  Beating some .500 team from the east by 20 doesn't make us a championship contender and losing to some horrible team from the east doesn't make us a lottery team.  We are what we are and that won't change without further growth from our stars and a couple of good personnel moves beyond the stars.

Dan's post is a great assessment of the Mavericks' overall strategic plan for this season. The method behind the madness, if you will. 

Fans who think the team should be in win-now mode will disagree with the strategy, and a case could be made for that point of view. However, there is still value in understanding what the organization's goals actually are. 

For example, this should be helpful to fans baffled by the FO's support of Carlisle, who they feel is obviously not making the best decisions to win as many games as possible. Rightly or wrongly, that is not the mission the organization has assigned to him. He has been tasked with honing and polishing this team for the long haul -- developing the squad. He would make different decisions if the overall strategy were to win now. Guys who are not part of the team's long-term future will only get situational minutes, even if they would play better at the moment than the guys on the floor. Carlisle intimated as much when he was explaining why Barea doesn't play many minutes, emphasizing that Rick HAS (his own accentuation) to play the young guards. 

Carlisle makes mistakes, as any coach does, and I'm not saying otherwise. He experiments, and not all of his ideas pan out. Some may not like his systems, or his style. But the front office supports him because he is doing what the organization wants him to do. When we examine the individual improvement of guys like Maxi, DFS, and KP, and the improvement in overall chemistry, it is hard to argue with the remarkable squad development. A similar analysis could be made of Donnie, who had a reason based on overall priorities for not giving up the team's young assets and future picks for an aged veteran who could have helped for the remainder of this season. 

Someone could legitimately disagree with the strategy, or with the tactics of Donnie/Carlisle. But we can't raise our level of understanding if we are all stuck in overly simplified analysis assessing all decisions that don't maximize short-term results as automatically stupid. Context matters. What the franchise is trying to accomplish in the big picture is important in evaluating their day-to-day efforts. Don't get me wrong, they may (and probably will, it being sports) still commit blunders. Knee-jerking can be fun, but our understanding will be much richer when we are able to appreciate the many nuances involved. 

Tl; dr    Fans who assign blame for the team's deficiencies to Carlisle, or to Donnie, may have a more complete picture if they take a look at the overall organizational plan. Neither the coach nor the GM makes decisions in a vacuum. Dan's post is a good explanation of the overall team priorities.

Thank you guys for providing some really good thinking. I too can get upset and disagree at times. Sometimes I even get down on a Mavs player. Thought: I hope we somehow win a first round playoff because I would love to see this team in Rick Carlisle all out win mode which we will absolutely be in the playoffs, with the one exception of long term health of one of our stars.