RealGM

I am no longer faithful about this season as long as:

1. Kidd coaching
2. Maxi seeing floor with THJ together

The bigs got to play better and be more confident. Gafford had his worst game as a Maverick, got bullied by Zubac and didn't rotate quick enough. Lively did okay defensively but offensively he was rushing everything, shying away from the ball and looked like a rookie basically. Maxi played pretty well defensively but looked like a scared puppy on the offensive end.

Luka was noticeably frustrated with all 3 of them all game.

We should have setted the tone for the series in this game without Kawhi, that's embarassing.
Really embarassing.

I'm really curious about Kidd press conference, but ehy he can just watch the game.

Green had a nice spark at the end of the game. Wouldn't be surprised if he takes most if not all of THJ's minutes next game. He may also take some of DJJ's minutes as well. Even though DJJ has been playing well defensively, offensively they're giving zero respect to his shot and it's pretty much clogging the paint and not allowing any drives.

Maverick41 wrote:Green had a nice spark at the end of the game. Wouldn't be surprised if he takes most if not all of THJ's minutes next game. He may also take some of DJJ's minutes as well. Even though DJJ has been playing well defensively, offensively they're giving zero respect to his shot and it's pretty much clogging the paint and not allowing any drives.

I said to Dirk at the half they'll probably need more Green to fire this thing up... well, at least he brings energy and hustle, THJ brings missed layups and dumb 3v1 fastbreaks that result in his own TO.
Weirdly enough, Green was team high +11 in 9 mins aswell. Sure he makes mistakes with his drives sometimes and has problems navigating multiple screens but he plays hard and hustles. Mavs needed that badly.

GermanFan120 wrote:I am no longer faithful about this season as long as:

1. Kidd coaching
2. Maxi seeing floor with THJ together

Kidd should be fired. Whoever performing better, Kidd sends to the bench. I have to believe that Kidd takes bribes and bets against the Mavs. Kidd is not even better than Rivers who's really awful as a coach.

I'm so tired of Jason Kidd man

Harden scored 28, he averaged 16 on the season.
Zubac scored 20, he averaged 11 on the season.
Mann scored 13, he averaged 8 on the season.
Westbrook scored 13, he averaged 11 on the season.

If you're going to tell me that all of those guys are going to score above their seasons average for the rest of the series the Clippers are probably going to win the series even without Kawhi. I don't see that happening though. First half was the worst half of Mavs basketball I've seen in some time, but then in the second half we scored 67 points. I think we have a great shot at winning Game 2 and stealing HCA, then this game doesn't matter much.

Darren wrote:

GermanFan120 wrote:I am no longer faithful about this season as long as:

1. Kidd coaching
2. Maxi seeing floor with THJ together

Kidd should be fired. Whoever performing better, Kidd sends to the bench. I have to believe that Kidd takes bribes and bets against the Mavs. Kidd is not even better than Rivers who's really awful as a coach.

Clippers were up like 15 and then Harden flopped and got 3 free throws from a 3 point shot and he wasn't actually touched. No challenge. That's 3 free points when the opponent is already up big because he did nothing. There was never going to be a better time to use a challenge, what was he doing?

Not a good weekend for those that have been coaches in the Mavs organization (not just head coaches)

Kidd lost
Mosley lost
Carlisle getting destroyed

Well no road team has won yet and the Pacers are losing by 20 points in Milwaukee with no Giannis. If it makes anyone feel better.

Mavs go deeper and Kidd for another 3 years vs. Mavs exit early and Kidd fired without knowing next coach, your choice?

dygaction wrote:Mavs go deeper and Kidd for another 3 years vs. Mavs exit early and Kidd fired without knowing next coach, your choice?

I don't know there's a guarantee Kidd is fired if we lose this series.

ChipotleWest wrote:

dygaction wrote:Mavs go deeper and Kidd for another 3 years vs. Mavs exit early and Kidd fired without knowing next coach, your choice?

I don't know there's a guarantee Kidd is fired if we lose this series.

It is a hypothetical question leaving something to be desired...

ChipotleWest wrote:Harden scored 28, he averaged 16 on the season.
Zubac scored 20, he averaged 11 on the season.
Mann scored 13, he averaged 8 on the season.
Westbrook scored 13, he averaged 11 on the season.

If you're going to tell me that all of those guys are going to score above their seasons average for the rest of the series the Clippers are probably going to win the series even without Kawhi. I don't see that happening though. First half was the worst half of Mavs basketball I've seen in some time, but then in the second half we scored 67 points. I think we have a great shot at winning Game 2 and stealing HCA, then this game doesn't matter much.

Those were exactly my keys to Mavs win that i wrote before the match. Don't get outhustled and outplayed by guys like Zubac. Don't let some random scrubs get hot aka Russ suddenly start hitting 3's like he's Bird. Make it hard for Harden, etc... Mavs did none of that right and got burned.

Bright spot is that they showed they can still play defense but they can't afford to come out with no urgency in the next few games. And i'm 100% sure Gafford won't have another horrible game like this.

Bad spot is the fact that Kidd is still the coach.

I hope in G2 we put DJJ mostly on Harden instead of PJ. Not an indictment at all on PJ who I think did a good job 1v1 but he's not slithery enough to get around screens which allowed Harden to get any switch he wanted, particularly in the 1st half. DJJ is known to be great at getting screens and being the POA defender, not PJ. PJ should be on Paul George.

The most worrying aspect from the game is that the Clippers didn't do anything unexpected.
Harden P&R with step backs and rollls from Zubac and PG ISOs, and they didn't have some devious defensive plan, Luka missed few 3s and they packed the paint and gave everyone space.
Way too soft on both ends, just totally unprepared, not something that we didn't see in any of the 3 series under Kidd, 1st game was always weak, but this one was the weakest.
Clippers attacked the DHO with physicality, but after the DHO they either switched with tons of space or recovered, there was barely any blitzing, even the Plumlee minutes weren't taken advantage of.
Luka deferred too much and they totally lack energy and effort.
Luka failed the team and Kidd was his usual hands off self, they are the biggest culprits in this, THJ shouldn't have played a single minute and the big lineups with Maxi at the 4 were a disaster.
On to game 2, hopefully they some more prepared and hopefully Luka asserts his dominanace...

My observations:

1. The Mavs shot alltime bad and only scored 8pts in the 2nd quarter.
2. Do the Mavs always play bad in early games? Before 5pm. They seem like play better in the evening. Any know our record?
3. I think they had too much time off and just looked totally out of sync.
4. The funneling some of LA players to the baseline put us in scramble mode and we gave up a lot of open 3's. Maybe we should chase them off the 3point line? Harden got a lot of open looks. That cannot happen again.
5. The first game was hot garbage but everytime we're about to give up on this team - something great happens. I want to see what adjustments Kidd makes and how we play the next game. I expect Luka to come out super aggressive as well as Kyrie. Let's go from here and return the favor.

Another point is that the players need to be more aggressive attacking the basket. The only guys willing to attack the bucket were Kyrie and Exum. The latter in Exum was out of control and forcing things but at least he tried. Luka was content with mid rangers. PJ was telegraphing his floaters. DJJ kept losing his handle. All 3 bigs looked scared to get the ball in the paint. You would think there was prime Mutombo in the paint, scaring these guys away. It's just Zubac. Attack him.

Surprising to see Lively and Gafford have only 2 fouls combined. They really need to be more physical on defense and make the refs call those fouls. They're not going to call them all.