02-09-2021, 09:55 PM
I don’t think there’s any question “the corner” is far in front of them. There’s a ton of ground to cover before even reaching it, let alone turning it. I haven’t gotten the sense that anyone is arguing to the contrary, but maybe I missed some posts.
This is a young team that was already faltering to start the season. For whatever reason (we all have our theories) they were less prepared than some teams to start the season after an unusually small amount of preparation time (though they weren’t the only team who struggled to start the season). There were issues with identity, conditioning, health, etc.
Just as things were starting to look a little better, they lost more than half of their rotation players for almost a month. Frankly, there are unavoidable consequences to this - bigger consequences than simply playing games without those guys (although that sucked). They missed a month’s worth of conditioning, coaching, practice (what little there was), gelling on the floor, etc.
It’s incredible to me that anyone believed the team would instantly play well after dropping those guys back into the mix, actually. The second the Covid news hit, my first thought was “well, there goes this season.” I remember being really angry that the organization allowed such a collosal mistake to take place, and feeling surprised that others weren’t similarly upset. Maybe that was a slight overreaction, but I’d guess it’s going to take about a month to make up for all that the team missed out on while their guys were stuck in hotel rooms...for like a month. THAT is the problem. THOSE are the consequences.
There’s really no way to cut corners at the top level of anything competitive. I believe the Mavs will figure this out over the course of the next month, but they’ll likely lose quite a few more games we don’t think they should in the meantime. Maybe there’s still a chance to make the playoffs when the smoke clears, or maybe not. Maybe it won’t even matter because the best teams are so far ahead of them by that point. Not sure. Regardless, this is the journey we’re on as fans now, so we’d all better get used to it because complaining about it isn’t going to change anything.
Personally, I plan to enjoy every win I can get. This will almost certainly not be a banner season for our Mavericks, but it is what it is.
This is a young team that was already faltering to start the season. For whatever reason (we all have our theories) they were less prepared than some teams to start the season after an unusually small amount of preparation time (though they weren’t the only team who struggled to start the season). There were issues with identity, conditioning, health, etc.
Just as things were starting to look a little better, they lost more than half of their rotation players for almost a month. Frankly, there are unavoidable consequences to this - bigger consequences than simply playing games without those guys (although that sucked). They missed a month’s worth of conditioning, coaching, practice (what little there was), gelling on the floor, etc.
It’s incredible to me that anyone believed the team would instantly play well after dropping those guys back into the mix, actually. The second the Covid news hit, my first thought was “well, there goes this season.” I remember being really angry that the organization allowed such a collosal mistake to take place, and feeling surprised that others weren’t similarly upset. Maybe that was a slight overreaction, but I’d guess it’s going to take about a month to make up for all that the team missed out on while their guys were stuck in hotel rooms...for like a month. THAT is the problem. THOSE are the consequences.
There’s really no way to cut corners at the top level of anything competitive. I believe the Mavs will figure this out over the course of the next month, but they’ll likely lose quite a few more games we don’t think they should in the meantime. Maybe there’s still a chance to make the playoffs when the smoke clears, or maybe not. Maybe it won’t even matter because the best teams are so far ahead of them by that point. Not sure. Regardless, this is the journey we’re on as fans now, so we’d all better get used to it because complaining about it isn’t going to change anything.
Personally, I plan to enjoy every win I can get. This will almost certainly not be a banner season for our Mavericks, but it is what it is.