Boston is trading the newly acquired PF Raef LaFrentz along with next 6 1st round picks for Yao Ming. And Houston has accepted the offer. (This is just a joke to spice up the thread) It just seems that Ainge dislikes Walter so much that he is getting rid of him at all cost. Raef has a chance to be a excel in the weak East, and avoid playing out of position at center.
I can tell Mavs will be very sucessful in the regular season, because they are just too deep. Their key player will save a lot of strength and play less mins because their benchs are not so far from most of starters in other teams. That was why they won a lot of back to back games last season. However, I am not so sure how deep they will go in playoff, they lack players with killer instinct. Last year NVE provided that. It was him saved the Mavs in the last game against Portland and almost single-handedly beat Kings in the series. NVE was the Mavs' MVP last year. In playoff time, you need players like him. I don't see anybody in that team will do NVE job this year, yet.
Yao will dominate against Dallas if he can stay out of foul trouble on the shorter guys! Not sure how much this trade really helps Dallas?
Yao is far from enough for beating the Mavs. Perimeter / Transition defense is the key. You cannot have Yao defend every 3pt shooter. How many 3s Dirk, Finley and Nash hit against us last year? A heck of lot. I am not so optimistic this year also, you know the reason, our perimeter D s****.
How do you know what? Can you predict the future? There are many examples, like the wnba. The Shock with the worst record last season are now world champions this year. What were the Marlines record last year? And now look, there in the Wolrd series. Look at the Caroline Panthers, and the Minnisota Vikings, what were there records last year, and now look. Exactly.
the phoenix suns never won a championship with this model...though they tried hard. steady, balanced teams win championships. this mavs team has zero balance. they'll run through the regular season...just like last year...but get slapped in the playoffs...just like last year. Did they really get slapped in the playoffs last year? They were one quarter away from forcing a game 7 in the conference finals against the best team in the NBA, with their best player injured. I agree with A-Train. They are trying to become the St. Louis Rams of the NBA. Score from anywhere, anytime, any player. Who knows if it will work, but it will be a fun experiment.
I was listening to espn radio all day. Well the top of the hour updates, but the dumb jackass who was doing the Sportscenter update kept calling him Antonio Walker. At first, I was like who the **** is Antonio Walker?
lol... yeah...East really sucks now! What power forwards left? Kenyon Martin? Oh yeah..Jermaine O'Neal. Still no competition to Western conference. Kinda bad.
MadMax, Whether Dallas will make further trades or not, I still believe that if any team can defy the conventional wisdom (i.e. defense and steady offense win championship), they are it. As Major pointed out, last year, they were very close to getting to the Finals. They could well be if not for the injury of Dirk. Of course you can also say the Kings could have won it all if Webber didn't get hurt. But that just shows you that the difference between winning it all and getting beat in the playoffs is often not about how you play, but how lucky you are. You can't expect to win it all every year even if you are one of the best teams. You have to be both good and lucky. All you can strife for is to keep your team in champioinship contention year in year out. I think the Mavs have shown that they can go very deep into the playoff even with no inside presence and very mediocre defense.
ok...fair enough. i just don't think it's the recipe for a championship...and if you're not cooking up a championship, you're wasting your time in my opinion.
I don't care what others say, Jameson and Walker are better than NVE and LaFrentz both on court and in the market. The Mavs can now trade Jameson and/or Walker for the likes of Elton Brand, Kevin Garnett, Jamal Magloire, Ben Wallace without hurting their core. The Mavs robbed and looted, all they have to do is to wait for the right auction to sell their treasures and cash in big time while contending. Sh$t!!!
If you think Kenyon Martin abused Walker, wait to you see him have to play Webber and Malone and Amare.
Do you really believe this The Mavs can now trade Jameson and/or Walker for the likes of Elton Brand, Kevin Garnett, Jamal Magloire, Ben Wallace Please tell me you don't.
im sure if you could figure out a way to send jamison and walker for magloire NO would do it in a heartbeat
Well then you most also say that the Utah, Portland, Sac, Minny, Phoenix and of course any and all Eastern conference teams have been failures because none of them have been able to win a championship and none (with the exception of Utah) has had more play-off success.
