ROSTER TALK: Mavs favs for Vogel if no HC job exists. Kyrie handshake deal?

[KillerLeft]

THAT is what Kidd should have been doing in the first 10 games, figuring out how to make successful lineups with his two best players.

Agreed. 

I was supportive of bringing Wood off the bench to start the season for all the reasons @"F Gump" illustrated over the past weeks. I bought all of that. 

But, either Wood has started the season on the mother of all hot streaks or he's CLEARLY more offensively talented than anyone on this team but Luka...more so than most NBA players, frankly. Seeing that, I'd say it's past time to rethink whatever strategy is limiting his court time. 

I may lose you here, @"Kammrath", but I'm slightly annoyed by Kidd's general attitude towards offense. He seems to believe that as long as the defense is top 5 or 10 or whatever, the team will be fine. I have a few problems with that:

1) The defense has been WORSE than it was to start off last year, so far, despite all of the lip service and choices being made to support it. 

2) I think that's kind of predictable, because in my long years of watching the league I've noticed that time and time again teams who feel good about how things are going on offense tend to try much, much harder on defense. 

3) The offensive plan seems to be "give the ball to Luka, set a pick for him to get the matchup he likes and space the floor." That's great at times, but not nearly as reliable as the Mavs seem to think. Why would a bunch of players who never get to touch the ball want to play defense? These guys are human beings.

4) To efficiently run a more sophisticated, beautiful offense that takes advantage of players' strengths, you have to work on it diligently with practice time. I assume this is being addressed, but the utter one-sidedness of the coach's attitude calls that common sense assumption into question a bit, for me. 

5) Even if, after all of the above, you do somehow have a top 5 defense...this isn't the NFL. A great defense WILL win you a championship, but ONLY if your offense is good enough to make you one of the top 10 teams. 

Bottom line, for me: Make Luka/Wood your starting point and go from there. If you have to win games 130-117 for a while, trying to teach this new version of the team how important defense is, so be it. Personally, I would feel like they were closer to success going that route than with what they're trying to do right now.