Mavs 121, Detroit 91: Donut-By-Donut Analysis

Now that’s better, just the way any good taxpaying citizen of Dallas believes Detroit should work: They don’t get the bailouts, they give the bailouts. Credit the grabby Mavericks, who stuffed a 121-91victory into their account by following up arguably the season’s ugliest effort with its most gorgeous.

     DONUT 1: Before we get to Batman, let’s do Robin.

     All too often, Josh Howard has demonstrated a maddening desire to “get his’’ at the start of games. Thus, we see games in which he always takes Dallas’ first shot, keeps shooting whether or not he’s “on,’’ ends up starting 0-for-3 or 0-for-4, ends up taking five of the Mavs’ first 10 shots, stuff like that.

    Well, Lordy me!

    This time, J-Ho didn’t take the first shot of the game; he took the fourth.

    This time, Josh’s early offense wasn’t the result of step-back jumpers; three of his four first-quarter makes were layups or dunks.

    This time, there was a sort of deference from Robin to Batman, as Josh shot 15 times (making eight) while Dirk Nowitzki shot 20 times (making 12).

     Really, all we’ve ever asked of Josh Howard – and let’s forget that season-opening campaign from coach Rick Carlisle to proclaim J-Ho “our most important player’’ because while it seemed simply inaccurate then, it now looks like a velvet-gloved attempt to mollycoddle the guy – is to be Dallas’ second-best player.

     With 22 points, five rebounds, two steals, a blocked shot and an assist – oh, and with his opposite number Tayshaun Prince making just one basket -- mission accomplished for Josh.

     DONUT 2: Now to Batman.

     I’m not sure if Detroit coach Michael Curry had a good-enough view to notice this, but I did: Dirk was feelin’ it from the very start. He might as well have left Amir Johnson on Dirk, without bothering to go small to put Tayshaun on him, and without bothering to maybe ask ‘Sheed if he wanted to end his in-game nap and participate.

    Wouldn’t have mattered.

     When The UberMan has that fadeaway going – you know, the one that won the Philly game at the buzzer, the one where Dirk is leaning so far backwards as he releases the ball that you wonder how he avoids landing kidneys-first on the floor behind him – his defender hasn’t a prayer.

    Said Amir: “"I tried to take away his shot, but that ‘Euro-one-foot fade’ is tough to guard. I tried my best on him, but he's tough to stop."

    ‘That Euro-one-foot fade.’ Catchy.

    Nowitzki hit four of his first five and seven of his first 11. The first three of those were Euro-one-foot fades. (I guess the only thing Dirk didn’t do was get to the line. Great catch by MavsMoneyball, noting the ignorance of ESPN analyst Jon Barry on this subject.) By the 6:29 mark of the game, Dallas was in charge, Dirk had 26, and the best player on the floor was Batman.

     With notable help from Robin.

     DONUT 3: Dallas didn’t just close quarters right. (That’s been a concern, and the end-of-first-half fix is addressed below) It also opened ‘em with the hope of keeping their sneakers on the Pistons’ neck. What looked like a probable blowout at the end of the third turned into a rest-guys-for-Sunday real thing as the Mavs opened the fourth with a 9-2 run to go up 99-74 with 9:09 to go.

      Coach Rick Carlisle, noting that in Milwaukee his team had led by eight after one quarter, crediting his team with an awareness that, “Hey, we were  here the other night. We’ve got to make sure we don’t let up.’’

    But I would say it was Carlisle that sent the message.

    You will note that the standard practice of sitting KIDDIRK to start the final quarter has been suspended. KIDDIRK was out there to begin the fourth, along with Wright and Terry and Brandon Bass (who had 18). Carlisle wasn’t dickin’ around here.

     DONUT 4: Quote of the night, from Josh Howard, reflecting on rebounding from the previous game, the humiliation in Milwaukee: “That last game was motivation for us tonight. I've never been beat that bad in my whole basketball career, so to come back like this is pretty good.’’

     Maybe I’m being a sucker here, but those 28 words from that particular guy. … well, it’s about the only sensible, meaningful and gung-ho thing he’s said to the press since his Media Day Mea Culpa at the start of training camp.

     Oh, what if Josh isn’t just muttering the word “motivation’’ but actually meaning it!

     DONUT 5: We’ve wished for more stretches when multiple Mavs were at the tops of their games, and we got it offensively in the first half. Dallas shot 66 percent, and did it with Josh being Josh (15 points), with Dirk making his assortment of defenders look hapless (14 points) and with Jason Terry getting the better of his Sixth-Man duel with Rip Hamilton (Jet scored 14 by intermission, Rip had 17 for the game). That Big Three combined for 43 points in a half, and it was all in rythym, all in synch.

     Later in the game, the Mavs would be up by 18 to end the third and by 25 in the fourth. Dirk would cruise to his total of 26 points as Josh would to his 22. But that first half was the work of art because of the way standout players meshed. Dallas hit 13-of-15 shots during one first-half stretch.

     Said J-Ho: “Everyone was clicking tonight. Guys got to their spots and knocked down shots. Then on the defensive end, we were able to hold those guys to one shot and we were able to get back to our offense.’’

     DONUT 6: The Dallas backcourt of Jason Kidd and Antoine Wright is going to have some success if it matches up with foes the way it matched up with the Pistons’ backcourt of Allen Iverson and Rodney Stuckey.

     A.I. is of course one of the greatest waterbugs of all time, and in his recent seasons in Denver an impossible cover for the Mavs. But in this game, the 6-7 Wright proved versatile enough to stick with Iverson, one of the reasons A.I. was limited to just 11 points.

    Meanwhile, the Stuckey kid was in way over his head. J-Kidd toyed with him, helping to force Stuckey into five turnovers while he contributed 11 points and 10 assists.

     Kidd even earns style points here: That transition assist on a J-Ho layup was another one of those patented “8-ball-in-theside-pocket’’ English shots, and it came at just the right time, in the final seconds of the first half. And the hovering high-arching bankshot back-to-the-basket reverse layup  in the fourth was a keeper because it was both pretty and because. … well, because Jason Kidd made a layup.

    “I make the hard ones and miss the easy ones," Kidd said. “Did I jump as high as Doctor J?"

      DONUT 7: Another illustrative number, I think: Remember the win in Philly, in which the whole thing seemed like a sloggy midday mess, and each team committed 16 turnovers and that seemed like a bunch?

     Here, Detroit committed 13 in the first half alone. Oh, and the Mavs converted those into 16 points.

     DONUT 8: If you’re a plus/minus guy and a fan of that Kidd/AW backcourt, here’s one for the scrapbook: Stuckey was forced into a minus-22. Iverson was forced into a minus-20.

     DONUT 9: The Brandon Bass One-Handed Nasty-Blue-Mouthpiece Windmill Putback Dunk. I rank it third on the night's highlight reel, behind Kidd's pair of webgems. But here. Watch the highlights for yourself.

     DONUT 10: They can cling to that “Bad Boys’’ thing – it’s a resonant nickname – but at this moment, the Pistons look anything but gritty and tough. Pistons fans can reminisce about when the nickname meant something (late-‘80’s) or they can reminisce with a more dubious flashback (the '04-'05 season brawl, and Rick Carlisle was there and would wish to forget it). But they’ve got little to hang their hat on with this bunch.

     Really, next time somebody calls the Mavs “soft’’ – and they will – pull out this gamefilm and show them the Pistons. It’s typified, I think, by Rasheed Wallace, who seemed completely disinterested on defense (where he is on-paper quite capable) and on offense managed just four points on 2-for-7 shooting.

     DONUT 11: Part of what the Mavs envisioned with their SmallBall lineup comes with a sort of arrogance: They simply believed that along with the necessary execution, of course, that Dirk, Kidd, J-Ho and Jet with somebody (most nights, including this one, Bass) would have more combined firepower than the opponents. And that if somehow that opponent could be lured into SmallBall, well, advantage Dallas.

    There have been plusses at times with Howard as part of that group, and there certainly have been plusses with JJB. But rarely has it worked as well as it did to close the first half.

    With 3:06 remaining, the score was Dallas 51, Detroit 49. With 0:00 remaining, the score was Dallas 63, Detroit 51. The Mavs had outscored the home team 12-2 and hadn’t allowed a basket.

      DONUT 12: So how much does this impressive win take the Mavericks off the hook for previous indiscretions? Well, do you mean the 133-points-allowed indiscretion committed in Milwaukee on Wednesday? Or do you mean that a year ago, on this very same Palace floor on Feb. 3, what we thought was a damn good Mavs team lost to the Pistons while only scoring 67 points?

    I toss that out there as a reminder that while most of us agree Dallas is in need of a talent upgrade, a case of Red Bull and some hard-to-come-by consistency, what we are seeing so far this season from this 25-18 club is not that outrageous a version of the normal NBA ebb and flow.

   "We've had some inconsistency, but those of us who have been here for four months see areas of improvement," Carlisle said. "We just have to build on games like this and keep working on the things that rear their ugly head sometimes.’’

    (Sidebar: Carlisle loves to do that to the media. "Those of us who have been here for four months'' is Carlisle Code, his way of dismissingly putting in their places the media people who spent December chasing around the Cowboys and are just now warming to the NBA season. Not a good way to engender goodwill from columnists and TV anchors, but I don't think Rick cares much.)

    For all the issues in need of addressing, consider what you thought this road trip might be (at Philly which had won seven straight, at Milwaukee where the Mavs never win, at the “Bad Boys’’ and on Sunday at noon, at the defending-champ Celtics) and what it stands as now:

     A 2-1 record, at least a .500 swing, a chance at shock-the-world glory on national TV in Boston.

333am jan 24 2009