The Mavs’ revolving carousel of position gamers, and their pre-Nico tendency to stay with them for years, has had a predictable impact on Mavericks followers – the emergence of offended, rival camps of supporters and detractors. Virtually everyone agrees that Dorian Finney-Smith was a gem, however relying on who you ask about guys like Maxi Kleber, Dwight Powell, and even Josh Inexperienced you’re going to get very, very completely different solutions. I used to be by no means a Powell man, I can’t perceive how Josh Inexperienced can look so gifted (offensively) one minute and like somebody who has by no means performed basketball the following, and my beef with Maxi Kleber is simply that he’s been round too lengthy – he was a part of too many dangerous groups, and it will be finest, for my part, to exorcise him for the vibes. However I at all times favored Tim Hardaway Jr.
Tim Hardaway Jr. – THJ to his pals – got here to Dallas from the New York Knicks in 2018 at a time when the Knicks appeared to have massively overpaid him. On that Knicks crew, his $16.5 million bucks made him their third finest participant – roughly twelve million extra, by the way, than a younger Kristaps Porzingis. One of many soiled little secrets and techniques about contracts, nevertheless, is that they hold going up, and by the point he signed basically the identical contract to remain, in 2021, that was virtually a cut price for a participant of his presents. He was – let’s not gloss over it – immensely irritating as a participant. I used to joke that he was the one 80+ % free throw shooter who in some way went 1-2 each single time. The identical appeared true for his three-point taking pictures, the place he’d find yourself round 37% or 38% by taking pictures 65% one week and 20% the following.
But what occurred to Hardaway in Dallas just isn’t that his streakiness lastly caught up with him. It was a way more regular factor. Position gamers exist on what is actually a ladder. When they’re on the best rung, everybody talks about how nice and precious they’re. In the event that they go up, they get overexposed, in the event that they go down, they cease being efficient. For Hardaway, it was the latter. In some methods, you may say that what occurred is that his offense was an essential a part of the crew earlier than final yr’s midseason infusion of expertise, after which it wasn’t – and the field scores bear that out. Hardaway scored 19+ factors a sport in October, December, and January, and shot over 37% from three in October, November, and January, whereas enjoying roughly half-hour a sport. His January was notably spectacular, 19.2 factors on .445/.381/.880. However come February, he was enjoying 26 minutes, scoring 10.6, and taking pictures 34% from three and it simply bought worse because the season went on.
However then once more, the enjoying time wasn’t actually about his offense in any respect. In buying P.J. Washington, and Daniel Gafford at midseason, bringing Dereck Vigorous alongside, and fostering a Dante Exum and Derrick Jones Jr. renaissance, the Mavs had been in a position to assemble a wrecking ball of a protection, one which, from March 7th on, led the crew to 16 wins and 4 losses, 2 of which had been finish of the season concession video games, whereas holding opponents at 105 factors or beneath 11 instances. Nothing about THJ’s sport made him a possible candidate for a key cog in an aggressive, switching protection, he wasn’t, his enjoying time diminished, and his shot went with it. In different phrases, the Mavs merely moved away from a mode of play that would use what he did effectively to 1 that required what he did poorly.
Even so, of all of the position gamers talked about right here, THJ was in all probability the most effective. It’s straightforward for followers of the league to suppose that if any NBA participant got sufficient photographs, they’d scored 15+ factors on respectable percentages. But it surely simply isn’t true. As twitter consumer Michael Wei identified to me a couple of days in the past (https://x.com/michaelthewei/standing/1805704854083715311) virtually no person really shot so many threes at such an environment friendly clip whereas Tim was a Mav. When you evaluate his Mavs years to the profession of anyone like Buddy Hield, for instance you discover that Tim had worse percentages, however not so a lot worse – .414/.363/.816 to .434/.400/.860 – with a barely larger factors per sport. That was precious, till it wasn’t, and plenty of groups would discover worth in it.
And so – I don’t know if Detroit will play him or lower him. But when they play him, I anticipate him to be good for them, on offense anyway. Final yr, Mavs followers suffered via quite a lot of annoying nonsense about how Grant Williams was thriving in Charlotte, as a result of it fed into everybody’s favourite storyline – possibly Luka isn’t actually good? However nothing fascinating occurred for Grant when he moved out of Dallas besides that he climbed the ladder. A a lot worse crew wanted him extra, he was in a position to do extra, he did do extra. The identical might effectively occur to Tim. I hope it does! I recognize what he did right here, and I want him all the most effective.