Hey everyone! Won't be here for long, just wanted to give an update on how our offseason went and how the players have adjusted throughout training camp. As always we'll take a few questions at the end.
I'll quickly go through what our goals were going into the FA period and how we feel we about those goals now. Our obvious #1 priority was to retain the talents of Keith Van Horn. He wanted to test the market a bit but we always felt his heart as in Dallas. But if for some reason we lost him, we were definitely prepared to go in a different direction. Well it ended up that we got Plan A and Plan B. A being Van Horn and B being Nicholoz. That takes care of our starters and the rest was simply obtaining as much depth as possible. We ended up with Adrian Griffin, Anthony Carter, and Ernest Brown. All of whom we are very excited about and think will provide excellent depth and defense off the bench. So I know many have been asking how do we plan on utilizing everyone. Well going into the season we will be experimenting a tad. Our starters will be Biedrins(C), Van Horn(PF), Jamison(SF), Smith(SG), Williams(PG). Obviously the experiment I am speaking of is moving Van Horn to the 4. With Keith's size, talent, rebounding, and simply all around great game we feel he will fill this role very well. If this works the way we'd like we will have some amazing depth at the PF position. He can play the 4 and also spell for Jamison when needed. We think this will not only work but cause huge mismatches for the larger, more nonathletic PFs who will have to guard him out to the 3 point line. So as I said this will be somewhat of an experiment, but it is one we feel good about.
Onto training camp...Below is how the players fared in this off-seasons training camp and workouts. The letter in () is what the grade was before TC.
Dallas Mavs Training Camp
Andris Biedrins B(B-) C- D(D-) A- A-(B+) A
Ernest Brown B- C- D+(D) A-(B+) B C(D)
Darko Milicic B- D+(C-) C B- C+ C
Brandon Bass B C C- B B-(C+) B
Nickoloz Tskiti B- C C(C-) B- A- C(B)
Antawn Jamison A C+(B-) C- B C+ C
Keith Van Horn B- B+ D+ B B C
J.R. Smith C+(B-) B+(B) C C+ D+ A
Adrian Griffin C B C+ B+(A-) C C
Deron Williams C+(C) B+ A(A-) B(C+) D+ A(B)I think Deron heard his GMs disappointment and vowed to get better.
Anthony Carter C C+ B+(B) A- D+ D(C)
As you can see we had a great off-season. Our young guys worked really hard and it has definitely showed. And they aren't done either. I know Biedrins, Bass, Smith, and Deron all want to get a bit more training in before the season gets underway. So needless to say we are looking forward to the start of the season. We have very high expectations this year. We have no reason to believe that we can't climb our way to a top 3 seed in the West once again.
Go ahead with the questions......