I enjoyed Sam Smith's (other) work today picking out Mavs quotes and suggesting how Bulls-like they sounded. A Dallas Morning News blogger was less than enthused:
Good point(?), but this season the Mavericks did try to move Stackhouse to the starting lineup for a handful of games displacing their version of Ben Gordon, Jason Terry, to the bench. I don't know how that experiment went, but I'll guess whatever advantages they gained by having the coveted 'big guard' were probably outweighed by Stack's 10.91 PER so far this season, and now Terry's back in the starting lineup with Devin Harris.
On the subject of the height disadvantage that makes everyone so sad, the Mavericks have a tall frontcourt rotation with Dirk, Dampier, and DeSagana. In their first meeting last season, the huge Dampier completely overwhelmed Ben Wallace. Lets hope Ben doesn't go into his shell after such a fantastic outing on Saturday. (How did he do that against Okafor and Brezec?!? They're taller than him!!). I wouldn't be surprised if they started Deng on Nowitzki to keep Tyrus out of early foul trouble, but a combination of Deng, Thomas, and Noah over the course of the game works for me. Nocioni, not so much.
Hopefully two wins worked out whatever horsecrap excuse they had for a horsecrap start to the season. It's not likely they'll beat the Mavs, but if they get blown the hell out at home it'll be a bad bad sign.
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