By Mike Fisher -- DallasBasketball.com
Want to get insight into this summer’s Mavs talent-chasing blueprint?
Just look at last summer’s Mavs talent-chasing blueprint.
Not to take away the fun of wild offseason guesswork – wild offseason guesswork that has Mavs watchers speculating about Tracy McGrady at one end of the spectrum and … Cardinal at the other end of the spectrum – but it’s really not as complicated or as secretive as some are making it.
The top end: we have fantasy ballers giving us Tracy McGrady to Dallas! Kobe Bryant to Dallas! Allen Iverson to Dallas!
The bottom end: we have colleague Norm Hitzges attempting to fix the Mavs by acquiring the exact opposite of McGrady and Bryant. Uncle Norm wants Dallas to get somebody like …Brian Cardinal?!
The problem with the former idea? The teams that own the Tracys and the Kobes know they don’t grow on trees. The problem with the latter idea? Those Brian Cardinal guys DO grow on trees – and four or five of them have already taken root on Dallas’ bench.
Meaning no offense to Norm, or to the skills of the “role players’’ he’d like the Mavs to acquire, but let’s take a look at specific talents and the projected role of a guy like Brian Cardinal.
Brian Cardinal played 28 minutes a game for a bad Golden State team on which he was unable to secure a starting job. He is a 6-8 scrapper who has averaged 2 points per game in his career going into this season, when he contributed 9.6 per.
And you know who he is? Except for the fact that Cardinal has 3-point range, he’s Eduardo Najera, who does the exact same thing for a very good team that can’t find him minutes.
More role players? No, Dallas leads the league in role players. From Dirk Nowitzki (offensive freak) to Steve Nash (offensive point guard) to Antoine Walker (point forward) to Antoine Jamison (interior offensive weapon) to Shawn Bradley (shot-blocker) to Danny Fortson (awesome rebounds-per-minutes) to Najera (defensive energy) to Tony Delk (instant bench offense) to Jon Stefansson (designated Icelander), the Mavs ENTIRE TEAM is role-playing!
No, adding an 11th man is not a priority. And Tracy and Kobe are pipedreams. (Not to say that the pipedream shouldn’t be explored, and not to say that once all the dust settled, Dallas will acquire itself a new 11th man).
What is really key to the blueprint?
Recognizing that the franchise has the same exact hole it had a year ago – and Mark Cuban, Don Nelson, Donnie Nelson and Del Harris are all on record with us as saying they do recognize that – let’s simply look at last summer’s chase.
The Mavs went after Alonzo Mourning first. When that failed, they went after Brad Miller. What they have in common, of course, is that they are All-Star-caliber centers who bring a defensive presence, a tough-guy mentality and an ability to succeed without needing to shoot much.
This year’s closest thing to last year’s Mourning and last year’s Miller will be the targets. Boston’s Mark Blount? Utah’s Greg Ostertag? Golden State’s Adonal Foyle, or better, the Warriors’ Erick Dampier? Bulls old-timer Antonio Davis or young-timer Tyson Chandler?
Those are the sort of names – not as sexy as the names at one end, not as obscure as the names at the other – that Dallas figures to look at. We know that because those are the sort of names the big-man-hungry Mavs always look at.