With Steve Nash and Dwight Howard joining Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol and Metta World Peace, they have the game’s biggest and most skilled starting lineup, but also its oldest and least athletic.
It’s not a good sign if the Mavs, looking like a fantasy team minus its first, second and third-round picks with rotation players from seven different teams last season, led by 15 in the fourth quarter and weren’t even challenged.
Issues, the Lakes have a few.
Take the starting lineup… please.
On the bright side, everyone it in has been an All-Star, with a total of 33 selections.
On the other hand, unless they show they run something with a high degree of efficiency, their size and skill may not make up for what they lack in quickness and energy.
Why not bring Pau off the bench?
It wouldn’t be fair to him but, if nothing else, would end the concern about points off the bench.
Meanwhile, Jordan Hill would add energy and physicality to the starters.
After that, it gets tricky. Big, slow, old teams don’t need 6-7, 260-pound, 32-year-old small forwards like World Peace. Nevertheless, unless Devin Ebanks is readier in his third season than he was in his second, they don’t have any athletic, young replacements.
Oh, and what’s the story with that Princeton offense?
Following Phil Jackson is impossible unless you win a lot more than Brown, who’s an OK coach, but has made dubious choices in the face of more resistance from players than people have heard about.
For reasons best known to himself, Brown junked Jackson’s triangle when he had point guards Derek Fisher and Steve Blake, who couldn’t run anything else.
If few noticed, Bryant covered up teammates’ dissent. Only a few bubbles reached the surface, like Andrew Bynum turning punky with Brown and unnamed players suggesting a return to the triangle.
Unfortunately, Brown had never run the triangle.