How'd we miss on these guys?
In this case, it was universal. Stat geeks, pundits, scouts, whatever -- nobody was that keen on Dallas. But through eight playoff games, you can argue they've been the best postseason team. Only Miami, at 6-1, has a better postseason record, but the Heat have had five home games against soft opposition; the Mavs are 6-2 with five road games and have played two very good teams.
In particular, their offense has been majestic. Dallas leads all playoff teams in offensive efficiency and is second only to the Thunder in true shooting percentage. This mastery hasn't been more heralded largely because the Mavs played at a ridiculously slow pace in the Portland series.
So now, in 20/20 hindsight, it's time to look back and figure out why they've been better than anyone expected. Some of these are things the stat geeks missed, some are items the talking heads missed, but all of them are relevant to the Mavs' sub-radar entry into this postseason:
Dirk kicks butt in the playoffs
Because of the Mavs' unhappy playoff history, people are acting like this is the first time Nowitzki has ever done well in the playoffs. Ex-squeeze me? Baking powder? Nothing could be further from the truth -- Dirk has been monstrous in the postseason his whole career.
Apparently nobody remembers his annihilation of San Antonio and Phoenix in the Mavs' run to the 2006 Finals, or the shot over Miami's outstretched Shaquille O'Neal that preceded the Dwyane Wade-Bennett Salvatore shenanigans at the end of Game 5 of that year's Finals, or even the fourth-quarter eruption that momentarily saved the Mavs in Game 5 of the Golden State series.
For his career, Nowitzki is one of the rare players who has a better PER in playoff games than in the regular season, and sprinkled in there are plenty of huge fourth-quarter shots. He had a poor series against the Warriors in 2007, but go back and look at the last two months of that season -- he was struggling with something. Otherwise, he's been straight money his whole career.
Fun with point differential
Dallas' point differential for the season was an unimpressive plus-4.2, which was only the eighth-best figure in the league and hardly screams "contender" from the rooftops.
But a big chunk of that owes to a nine-game stretch that Dallas played without Nowitzki; the Mavs went 2-7 with a minus-5.3 scoring deficit. In their other games, their margin was plus-5.4, which is better but still not overwhelming.
But Nowitzki still struggled with his ankle when he returned; this was obvious both visibly and by a quick scan of his game log, which reveals he wasn't himself until the beginning of February. From that point to the end of the regular season, Dallas went 25-10 with a plus-6.2 scoring margin. Now, add in the 29 games before Nowitzki was hurt, when they were 24-5 with a plus-6.0 scoring margin.
Sum up the two and you're talking about a 49-15 record and the league's third-best scoring margin. Yes, I've cherry-picked all their best games, and you can do this exercise to "improve" a few other teams, too, most notably the Lakers.
Nonetheless, it's instructive when explaining why a team with an underwhelming 82-game résumé could be cruising through the first two rounds like this. Which is why I'm slapping my head over picking Portland in the first round -- as improved as the Gerald Wallace trade made the Blazers, Dallas also had ramped up over the final two months. From the beginning of February to the end of the season, Dallas had just one double-digit defeat.
Peja matters
I shrugged off this pickup as more replacement-level fodder for the end of Dallas' bench -- incorrectly as it turns out, because Peja Stojakovic had way more left in the tank than anyone expected. He is at 40 percent on 3s, posted a 15.25 PER in his late-season cameo and, more surprisingly, is moving well enough on D to garner 20-plus minutes off the pine.
Those minutes have been crucial, because they solved the Mavs' Achilles' heel -- the back of the forward rotation. Peja's minutes used to go to a motley crew of replacement-level scrubs (Brian Cardinal, Sasha Pavlovic, Ian Mahinmi, etc.), contributing to the Mavs' wild on-court versus off-court swings whenever Nowitzki left the game. When Stojakovic plays at least 19 minutes, the Mavs are 21-4 (including playoffs).
Beaubois' injury may have helped them
I'm a big Roddy guy long-term, and I figured losing him in the Portland series would really hurt the Mavs. It turns out that it probably helped, as the current four-man guard rotation has more options than the "we can go small and fast, or fast and small" variety offered by a Kidd-Beaubois-Barea-Terry quartet.
In fact, you can take this a step further. When you look at the Mavs' plus/minus stats from the regular season, the fact they're playing better in the playoffs isn't as big a surprise.
Dallas' three worst performers in that stat, according to basketballvalue.com, were Beaubois, Cardinal and Pavlovic. (I excluded Corey Brewer here, whose numbers were dragged down by his time with the lowly Timberwolves.) Not coincidentally, the three Mavericks who saw at least 100 minutes in the regular season and have seen virtually none in the playoffs are Beaubois, Cardinal and the since-departed Pavlovic.
Every team eliminates ineffective players from the rotation during the playoffs, but the combo of adding Peja and eliminating the three worst offenders appears to have done this in a particularly efficient way for Dallas.
All told, it's one of many subtle ways the Mavs are punching above their regular-season weight, and we all pretty much missed it. Of course, they still have to take care of business by winning two of the next five games to complete their unexpected triumph, but at this point they have an overwhelming advantage that almost nobody expected.
