Musical Centers
 Bradley/Williams: View From The Top
Mike Fisher -- DallasBasketball.com - Posted: 2004-02-27 00:00:00.000


By Mike Fisher -- DallasBasketball.com
A view from the top – when Mavs centers Shawn Bradley and Scott Williams didn’t even know we were looking:
SPURS COVERAGE
MAVS-CLIPS BOX
Two separate nights in the past week. Two totally different players who are in fact competing for the same minutes. Two completely unrelated moments. … or are they?
Before one game, there is Dallas center Bradley, so amused by the teenagers who have dipped themselves in Maverick Blue body paint that, following the game, he invites the boys into the caverns of American Airlines Center to give them a private tour and autograph session.
Before another game, there is Dallas center Williams, scanning the audience for just the right kid. While Williams’ teammates do their stretching, shooting and casual visiting, Williams makes his way into the seats, where he pulls a kid, maybe 7 years old, onto the court. And Williams practices with the kid!
Williams receives feeds from the kid, showing him how to chest-pass and bounce-pass, and he gets in his pregame jumpers with the help of the little fan.
There are some issues with the Mavs’ collection of centers.

  • With Williams, the veteran owner of three Chicago Bulls championship rings, you know exactly what you will get: not much beyond error-free blue-collar effort.
  • With Bradley, the 7-6 lightning rod, you do not know exactly what you will get. His mild-mannered off-court temperament sometimes extends onto the court, and that isn’t good. His anger sometimes gets the best of him on the court, too, and that isn’t good, either. Shawn can sometimes offer a freak-of-nature impact on a game, and sometimes Shawn just offers a visual obstacle for season-ticket holders positioned behind the Dallas bench.
  • With Danny Fortson you get rebounding as a No. 1 strength, with not much else to finish No. 2. With Dirk Nowitzki spotting at center, you get an All-Star scoring forward who takes shots. With Eduardo Najera spotting at center, you get a former second-round pick who takes charges.
    Buy coach Don Nelson a beer and he’ll tell you all about the brilliance of former Celtics teammate Bill Russell, and how if Nellie was to assemble an all-time dream team, Russell would be his top pick.
    Nellie, you may have noticed, doesn’t have a Russell on this roster.
    So he makes due – and since the eve-of-February waiver acquisition of Williams, it’s actually worked, in a helter-skelter sort of way.
    Dallas has played nine games in that span. Nowitzki was the starting center in four of those games. Fortson has started three times and Williams has started twice.
    But along with Fortson’s three starts in the nine games are three DNPs. Along with Williams’ two starts are two DNPs. And Nellie’s strategic flip-flop can come in a flash: The night before Williams’ breakout start in Cleveland (16 points in 21 minutes), he got a DNP in Memphis. Shawn Bradley, after getting 16 and 19 minutes respectively against Detroit and Atlanta, got a DNP against the Knicks.
    In fact, the Knicks game was classic Nellie:Dirk started at center. Bradley, Williams, Fortson and Najera all received DNPs!
    There is a rhyme-and-reason to it. Bradley has traditionally fared well against Houston’s Yao Ming, so Nellie gives that a shot. When Bradley isn’t getting it done, he’s done – and so he finished with just five minutes of burn there. Against Cleveland, Williams’ Eastern Conference style figured to work well against Zydrunas Ilgauskas. It did; The Big Z was non-existent in that game. Against the bullish New Orleans front line, bullish Danny Fortson made sense on paper – and on the court, where he got 11 minutes and then gave way to a wave of teammates, Bradley and Williams each getting 13 minutes.
    Funny thing. On the season, Najera, Williams, Bradley and Fortson are all averaging almost identical minutes, all of them logging between 11.5 and 13.7 minutes. Statistically, it appears almost scientifically balanced, intentionally symmetrical.
    Of course, it’s not. It’s just happened that way, just worked out to be rather fair to everybody involved.
    It worked again Tuesday against the Clippers at American Airlines Center. Fortson shook off almost a week’s worth of rust to get the start so he could muscle Elton Brand. In the first quarter, Fortson did that and more, running the floor so he could contribute five early points and eight total. Meanwhile, Brand was not a factor, with just eight points of his own.
    Said Nellie: ‘I really liked the way Danny Fortson got a chance to play and start. He did a really good job on Brand, who is certainly the hot hand. We started Danny to see if he could match his strength. Danny played well and smart. He played 16 minutes and they were important minutes in the first and third periods.’’
    By the end of Dallas’ 116-91 blowout victory, Fortson totaled 16 minutes, Najera 15 minutes, Williams 12 minutes, and just to keep things confusing, Bradley got the DNP.
    And again, for the seventh time in nine games, the system worked.
    It gets frustrating to watch, though, this game of Musical Centers. It is more comforting to have a Tim Duncan in the post to root for, more exhilarating to have a Shaq in the post to root for, more promising to have even someone like Chicago's Tyson Chandler in the post to root for.
    But once you get a view from the top, a view of Bradley’s way and Williams’ way, is it kind of fun to root for them, too.