Can Dallas Mavericks Topple San Antonio Spurs in Southwest Division?
The Dallas Mavericks have been firmly entrenched in their Southwest Division rivals' shadow over the last couple of years.
Before and ever since a glorious championship run in 2011, the Mavericks have been looking for ways to catch up to the ever-dominant San Antonio Spurs. After injecting some athleticism in the offseason, Dallas heads into this year's campaign with a reinforced roster, and the Mavs may very well give the Spurs a run for their money.
The Mavericks barely managed to secure the eighth seed in the Western Conference in 2013-14. Their reward was a first-round series against the eventual champions, a matchup which initially appeared to favor the Spurs. After all, San Antonio had swept their regular-season series against Dallas, cruising to a fourth straight division title.
However, all but one of their regular-season meetings were close games, and the Mavericks didn't have Shawn Marion in their only big loss. Regardless, the regular-season statistics were thrown out of the window as soon as the postseason tipped off.
The Spurs needed just five games to nullify the Miami Heat and dethrone LeBron James in the NBA Finals, but they struggled mightily to close out the persistent Mavericks roughly five weeks earlier. In fact, San Antonio obliterated every single postseason opponent last year, other than Dirk Nowitzki and Co.
San Antonio had a +3.4 net rating (offensive rating minus defensive rating) in their seven-game series against Dallas. The Oklahoma City Thunder offered some resistance and managed to snatch two games from the Spurs, but they still ended up with an abysmal -10.7 net rating.
Dallas presented a lot of matchup problems for the Spurs in the playoffs. They did a great job running San Antonio off the three-point line, while also disrupting their motion offense with a healthy dose of zone defense.
Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich ran a well-oiled destruction machine last season, and Dallas was the only real hindrance in that path of obliteration.
It was important for the Spurs to keep what was a functioning team together this summer, and they should be able to pick up where they left off. Dallas lacked a little offensive prowess and a reliable defensive big man to match their rivals, two areas that were addressed aggressively by the team's front office this summer.
Regular-Season Consistency
Both the Spurs and the Mavericks have been sitting on goldmines for over a decade. Tim Duncan and Dirk Nowitzki exemplify what every single team in the NBA hopes for when acquiring a young prospect: a durable superstar who remains with the team their whole career.
As it turned out, both players were just that and have yielded their respective teams a competitive edge over the years. The two stars are also similar in that they took recent pay cuts in order to help their teams win, and it's hard to find selfless individuals like them.
Sure, both Dallas and San Antonio have had their down years, but they've successfully reprieved the act of stripping down and rebuilding from scratch for well over a decade.
The Spurs, especially, may as well just be a synonym for consistency. Despite a lockout-shortened 2011-12 campaign, the Spurs managed to keep their streak of 50 or more wins in a regular season alive. They continue that trend to this day, having hit the 50-win plateau for 15 straight seasons now, an NBA record.
The Mavericks have stayed relevant even in their competitive rebuilding stages, but last celebrated a Southwest division title at the expense of their rivals in 2009-10.
Can Dallas Catch Up?
The Mavericks were close to bringing down San Antonio in the playoffs last year, and this is a team that certainly got better in the offseason. However, we're talking about the reigning champions here, who have cruised through the Western Conference under Popovich's tutelage for so many years.
One thing that is certain is that the Mavericks, if healthy, won't struggle to secure a postseason slot. What is a bit of a mystery is how high they can climb, and what their regular-season ceiling actually is.
Popovich is a wizard when it comes to limiting the minutes of his veterans while still winning games. He has successfully kept Duncan under 30 minutes per game in three of the last four seasons, and San Antonio went 6-2 in the absence of their 6'11" big man last year. The Spurs also managed to go 12-3 in the 15 games their floor general Tony Parker missed.
Rick Carlisle will be taking notes, as he is also expected to restrict the floor time of both Nowitzki and Tyson Chandler.
“I think we can find a way to get him from 32 minutes maybe down to 31 or 30 or maybe 29, who knows?” Carlisle told ESPN about Nowitzki's playing time. “A lot of it is the spacing and how you play him and how you rest him. He played some bigger minutes late in the year in some critical games. But the important thing was when we got to that point, he was fresh enough to where he could absorb it and do it."
Carlisle certainly has enough depth on his roster, which will provide him with the freedom to tinker with lineups and plug holes. However, he will have to be very selective when giving his key players games off, if he expects to win consistently.
One thing that will help the Mavericks in their regular-season meetings with San Antonio this year is their modified roster. The Spurs struggled against up-and-down offensive powerhouses in 2013-14, going 0-8 against the Houston Rockets and the Thunder. Dallas added some great athletes in the offseason who excel in transition, and that will be a plus.
Predicting specifics in the regular season is almost impossible. The 82-game ride contains a profuse amount of variables that are simply impossible to account for. That premise doesn't quite apply to the Spurs, as they are going into the year with an almost identical roster, and they should be setting the bar for other teams in the West.
Whether the Mavericks can spring beyond that bar will depend on a lot of those variables. Can they, still one of the oldest teams in the league, stay healthy? Will Carlisle find the right lineup combinations? Can the reserves provide sufficient two-way threats?
The Mavericks should be even more lethal offensively with Chandler Parsons on their roster, who would provide another mismatch when bumped to the power forward position. In their preseason game against the Cleveland Cavaliers, Dallas played almost exclusively zone defense, and they will have a whole regular season to polish those schemes in preparation for the playoffs.
The thought of the Mavericks developing a disciplined defense, versatile enough to play either man-to-man or zone, is scary. How good they actually get on that end will most likely determine whether they can close the gap on the Spurs. Their offense has looked almost flawless in preseason, despite having three new starters, so that will be no concern.
It would be silly to bet against the Spurs, who should breeze past the 50-win mark and beyond with relative ease. While the division title will most likely remain in San Antonio, Dallas could present a serious threat to the reigning champions in a potential seven-game series, should the two teams meet.
All statistics used are courtesy of Basketball-Reference and NBA.com, unless otherwise noted.
You can follow me on Twitter: @VytisLasaitis
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