With their 92-89 loss in Game 4, the Dallas Mavericks find themselves down 3-1 and facing elimination. This is hardly what owner Mark Cuban expected after pulling (expensive) trades for Shawn Marion, Caron Butler and Brendan Haywood in the past nine months and watching his new-look team win the #2 seed in the West. But the Spurs aren’t your ordinary #7-seed.
If you would have told Cuban that his Mavs were going to hold Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili to just 31 points on a combined 9-of-34 (26%) shooting in Game 4, I’m sure he would have felt pretty good about his team’s chances. But with George Hill’s 29 and Richard Jefferson’s 15, along with some old school San Antonio defense that held Dallas to under 42% from the field, the struggles of the Spurs’ Big Three didn’t matter much in the end.
With two of the next three elimination games in Dallas, the Mavs do have a chance to pull out this series, but they’re in for some tough sledding. Vegas now puts the Mavs’ odds of advancing at around 4-1, which sounds about right.
The question that Cuban doesn’t want to think about, at least not yet, is what does he do with this expensive lineup if it can’t even get past an aging Spurs team in the first round?
Part of the problem is that, at least against the Spurs, the Mavs can’t play their five-best players at the same time. Assuming Rick Carlisle wants his most trustworthy shot-maker, Jason Terry, at the two (alongside Jason Kidd), then that pushes Butler back to his natural position (small forward). So unless he puts Dirk Nowitzki at center, there’s no room for Marion, who spent much of the fourth quarter riding the pine. It doesn’t make sense to pull Haywood when he was doing such a nice job on Duncan, and Carlisle wisely doesn’t want Nowitzki guarding Duncan for long stretches. Regardless, the Spurs are controlling the matchups and forcing one of the Mavs’ best defenders to the bench.
If Dallas goes on to lose this series, we’ll be talking about what this playoff implosion means for a franchise that had a pretty good season. Cuban could elect to tweak the lineup around the edges, make a big change or two, or blow the entire thing up.
But, for now, he is just hoping that his team can win Game 5 and make this a series again.
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