The Dallas Mavericks are sitting in the NBA Finals, possessive of a 3-2 lead over a vaunted Miami Heat team that has been hyped more than even the 2007-2008 Boston Celtics. The Mavericks have downed LeBron James from the upper echelon of playoff performers, have made comebacks from absurd deficits, and have solidified themselves as a team capable of taking home the Larry O'Brien trophy on either Sunday or Tuesday. However, even with all these amazing accomplishments, they are capable of being better - much better - than they are right now. That is due to the scourge of those teams with great potential: injuries.
Think it over. The Mavericks aren't just getting by with Brian Cardinal and Ian Mahinmi eating up a lot of minutes; they're currently excelling. They're playing great basketball even though Shawn Marion and DeShawn Stevenson are eating the minutes belonging to Caron Butler, who is a superior scorer to both of them and is, by statistics, better than Marion on defense. In actuality, Marion and Butler are probably fairly close on defense. Butler is the Mavericks' prime small forward, and he may never play a game in these Finals. And they still have a good shot at winning them.
The Mavs are also missing Dominique Jones and Brendan Haywood. Jones is a guard who could at least have provided depth to the Mavs' wing. He didn't have a particularly good season, but if he was healthy for the playoffs, the depth he might have provided would have been valuable. Haywood has been active for much of the playoffs, but has just recently been injured. The Mavs have less of a bench presence down low without him, as Tyson Chandler can't play 48 minutes straight. A reappearance from him would have a large effect. Peja Stojakovic, a great three-point shooter who was performing well and getting large amounts of playing time earlier in the playoffs, could help the Mavs if he could regain his shooting touch. There is no injury here, only underperformance.
The second player on the Dallas squad coming from France or a country ruled by it (next to Mahinmi), Rodrigue Beaubois, is a valuable player who would make the Mavs better if he could simply perform. An article I read on ESPN.COM indicated he had been benched for underperforming. The man had stats that were fine...he's another piece of the Mavs roster that isn't making an impact, but certainly could in the future and would if he was playing well now. For the record, Ian Mahinmi is from France, and Beaubois is from Guadeloupe.
Just think now, for a moment. Missing are Caron Butler, Dominique Jones, Rodrigue Beaubois, Peja Stojakovic, and Brendan Haywood. This is a great cast of players, and although the Mavs are good now, think of how good they would be if all these players performed well and were healthy.
You can now think of next year, when many of them will be back and healthy. Perhaps we will then see the best the Mavericks have to offer.
Sources: NBA.COM, DALLASMAVERICKS.COM (This will redirect you to their website), The New Oxford American Dictionary, Jeff Van Gundy's commentary to spark my mind, ESPN.COM, YAHOO.COM, Wikipedia.org, http://www.caribbean-direct.com/, Google Translate
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