A Few Thoughts on Mavs 109, Pacers 112

[Dahlsim]

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Boban (6 minutes) got a few minutes in the first half. The Pacers managed to stifle even the scoring machine offensively, but Bobi did register 5 boards in his time on the court.

The refs did him no favors

Refs were criminal on him. Missed at least two more than clear fouls on him (one on offense, one while grabbing the defensive rebound) while blowing offensive foul immediately when all he did was try to go up. Looks like he is too big to play. Offensive fouls like this on bigs are ridiculous. You just have to put a smaller guy head first against the big and he has no chance going up, because he might touch that head in the process.

If the Coach doesn't give the player much of a featured role then he's a role player.  The refs don't give those guys the respect but yes in this case the refs were particularly bad the way they called the plays on Bobi.  

That said, we're talking about 6 minutes.  Six minutes!  Even that was not when the game was really on the line the Mavericks desperately needed just 2 or 3 buckets to preserve a lead and get the 'W'.   

Give the Pacers a lot of credit, Sabonis is an Allstar and they have a strong East coast style offense and defense to counter Carlisle's high powered shooters.   
No great offensive player is going to produce consistently in 6 minutes, especially when they're not even the focal point of your attack. 

Just posted about this in other recent games.  Mavs don't have the "Grind it out mode" they can switch to when they need to get counter physicality inside and get high percentage offense to hold on to leads. 
They have to have shooters hitting their shots or the offense can collapse a lead as quickly as they built the lead.  Bobi should have gotten more chances to help the team once they had a lead to protect.  We've said it before from other games.  KP has been great, is great, but his shot was off and that was clear.   He went 3 for 17.  What's the chances that Boban given lets say just 6 of those shots,  doesn't get some points on the board for Dallas? 

Can't you recognize that your shooters are off and make an offensive adjustment during the run? 

I think Coach C. like many coaches wants to win on defense but they haven't been as good at holding leads based on defense as they have at outscoring teams to they can't catch them.
 
Outscoring with perimeter players only works if shots keeps falling and defense only works if your defenders can stop all their scoring talent.  The top teams all have an ability to grind out a win.