Mavericks Lakers Summary

 

Best Player in the Series: Pau Gasol. This is not an easy one to explain, but this is the same analysis that gave me Chris Paul and Manu Ginobli in previous series, so I'm not backing down from trying. 

(Deep breath). 

In this series, the Mavs used Dirk as a scorer/playmaker/decoy, and drove-and-kicked the Lakers to death from distance. How bad was it? During the season, the Mavs shot 21.6 threes a game, making 7.9 (36.5%). In 4 games, the Mavs shot 26.5 threes a game, making 12.3 (46.2%). Pau was matched up with Dirk, who took less than 3 three pointers a game. So somebody else was responsible for the other 24 a game that went up, and mostly went in. Yes, Dirk scored at will on Pau, but we already knew Dirk was the NBA's best scorer this season. And yes, we know that Pau was a far less efficient scorer in this series than in his regular season. But if you forget conventional box score stuff, and compare the two starting 7 footers for LA, you tell me who's getting their fair share of the blame for this series:

Gasol: 143 minutes, -22 in total plus/minus

Bynum: 134 minutes, -59 in total plus/minus

Now, is this a convincing argument, based on the games I watched? Not entirely, no. But most of us watch basketball games and see a few things while missing most things. Some people even see most things, and miss a few. But there's a lot that happens on the floor that we don't see, don't remember, or can't explain. This series probably had a lot of things we didn't see, and if the Lakers are upgrading their talent this summer, I'd rather swap centers with Orlando than power forwards with just about anyone at this point.

Worst Player in the Series: Shawn Marion. In three out of the four games, he played 30+ minutes, and Dallas was outscored while he was on the floor. Game 2 was his only positive plus/minus game (+3 versus the team's +12). Given that he hardly ever drew the Kobe assignment, not sure how to explain this performance. Just plain bad.

Jerome James Award Winner: Jason Kidd. Over the course of the series, there was a lot of talk about the veteran savvy and know how he brought to the team in this series, with the added bonus of checking Kobe Bryant to some degree of success (note: there's nothing savvy about grabbing someone's jersey when they're running around, it's just irritating). Well, Kobe scored 0.949 points per shot on 24 shots, better than his regular season 0.935 on 27 shots. And, as far as plus minus, the Mavericks were better with him off the floor in all 4 games (+6 points in Game 1, +2 points in Game 2, +2 points in Game 3, +23 points in Game 4). If anything, he should have been the weak link to exploit for the Laker defense: not sure why people weren't going under the screen and daring him to shoot off the dribble, where even the Mavs will say his percentages go way down.