The Mavericks have gone 3-5 since Amar’e Stoudmire joined the team after getting bought out by the Knicks. He did not take the veteran’s minimum to play for a team that’s floundering in a loaded Western Conference and said as much after yesterday’s 127-94 obliteration at the hands of the Cavs.
Per ESPN Dallas:
“I came here to win, and we’re [4 ½] games out of being out of the playoffs, which is unacceptable,” Stoudemire said after the Cleveland Cavaliers cruised to a 127-94 win over the Mavs at the American Airlines Center. “This is something we can’t accept. We’ve got to find a way to refocus. We’ve got to key into the details of the game of basketball.
“We can’t cheat the game. We can’t screw around in games and practices and joke around all the time and figure we’re going to win games. This is the pros. It’s the highest level of basketball. We’ve got to act that way.”
Unfortunately, there are a lot things at play besides the Mavs somehow cheating the game. They haven’t been great since Rajon Rondo came on board and cramped their stupendous spacing. But they were giving up more points before that happened, and it’s unclear whether their permeable defense was ever good enough to really contend in the West. At least now they can throw Rondo on the pu-pu platter of dangerous point guards out West.
But Stoudemire needs to check himself here. He’s only played eight games, and his 17.5 minutes per game isn’t a good sample size to look at on/off numbers, but we’re going to anyway. Stoudemire shepherds Dallas’ second unit, so he’s not usually going against world beaters. But when he’s on the court the Mavericks are giving up more points per possession than any other team in the whole league.
The Timberwolves have the NBA’s leakiest defense, giving up 108.3 points per 100 possessions. Again, the sample size is tiny, but when Stoudemire is on the court for the Mavs, they’re giving up 109.6 points per 100 possessions. That’s the highest defensive rating on the team, by almost two points (the next highest is second-round draft choice, Dwight Powell, at 107.7).
Yes, STAT also improves Dallas’ offense when he’s on the court (going from 95.4 to 100.0 offensive rating), but that’s not Dallas’ problem. Stoudemire’s like the opposite of Rajon Rondo, but they’re both awkward fits and what they do well doesn’t make up for what they do poorly.
Rondo can’t shoot, which means his defender has the free range to swipe at the ball in the post and go under high Dirk Nowitzki screens. But Rajon is a solid perimeter defender — if a tad slower than he used to be. Amar’e can fill it up on the offensive end — he was 7-for-11 against the Cavs last night — with a smooth mid-range jumper and a soft touch around the rim. But he’s borderline clueless on the defensive end, either fouling when he doesn’t need to, missing his rotations on the back-end, or generally making it too easy to score in the paint (teaming him with Tyson Chandler didn’t work in New York really either).
The Mavs are a mess in the West (but would contend for a top-three seed in the East), we’re just not sure Amar’e is the guy to so vocally smack them around after a bad loss.
Especially not in an outfit spawned from a Michael Jackson fever dream:
https://twitter.com/KirkSeriousFace/status/575662292110610432
[ESPN Dallas; video via Mavs Fanatic]