Slacking Off: Western Conference Finals Edition

With the Dallas Mavericks set to open the Western Conference Finals for the second time in three years, a long overdue episode of Slacking Off will go down tonight just after we all watch one of the worst playoff losses in recent memory. I am joined on the MavsMoneyBall Slack by fellow staffers at MMB, Matt Gilroy and Matthew Phillips—a Pacer meltdown for the ages.

Brent Brooks: We can talk Mavs in just a moment but wow, guys. Can you believe what we saw out of Haliburton and company in pressure moments? Benny Hill’s theme song was playing, I swear.

Matt Gilroy: I kept checking the score and then putting my phone away like “ah, Pacers are gonna win” and then they just kept doing worse and worse. Foul up 3, folks.

Brent: If you were watching it live, Siakam tried but by the he closed on Brown, JB was rising and he would have risked the ballgame at that point. He did the right thing in that split second, unlike a certain MVP finalist vs PJW.

I agree with something said in our Slack chat earlier, the Pacers are toast now. That was a must-win in Game 1 given their time and score. Would be shocked if they won 4 of 6 now.

Matt G: I haven’t watched a lot of Pacers this year, but I watched Rick coach the Mavericks for a decade plus, I wouldn’t rule out him pulling something out of a hat to make this closer than you’d think, but I’m also just a Celtics hater, so

Matthew Phillips: The Pacers choked. It happens, but this game showed that three-point variance makes that series much closer than people think.

Brent: I am not sure what is scarier in the finals, a great regular season team in Boston that is going to Boo the daylights out of Kyrie on every catch or…facing Rick. Would remind me of Nellie coming out of retirement just to mess with Dirk.

Matt G: I just saw a tweet about the Celtics being the playoffs’ worst pick-n-roll defense team and now I fear no man.

Matthew: Boston is infinitely scarier because they are better and have essentially the same strengths.

Matt G: not to look past Minnesota, of course

Brent: of course not Matt, let’s talk Wolves. I am up for hearing what you both think about starting the series.

Matt G: Going from the Clippers to the Thunder, I felt like there wouldn’t necessarily be a huge difference in approach, but with how much different Minnesota is built, this feels like a series that is going to require at least a bit of a shift.

Matthew: Shot creation will be at a premium because of the quality of both defenses. In that scenario, bet on the team with Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving.

Matt G: I think we’ll see fairly quickly if Dallas has the juice to outmaneuver KAT, Gobert, and Naz Reid.

Matthew: Also, the best players on Finals winning teams are almost always 27 or older. Doncic is 25 but given his international experience at a young age, he is much, much closer to matching that criteria than a 22-year-old Anthony Edwards.

Matt G: Jokic said himself the Wolves were a team built to beat the Nuggets, and Dallas is not the Nuggets.

Brent: A simple bit of analysis that should be so obvious from Matthew seems to escape the front-running national media types who simply back favorites 95 percent of the time. Conley is ok but not what he once was and we just saw how younger players can respond to crunch time in the Pacers meltdown. The Denver series for Minnesota – outside of Game 7 – was mainly blowout after blowout. In Game 7, Edwards was wildly inefficient. Why is this glossed over by so many supposed experts?

Matt G: Because when someone tries to bring it up the response is “even when he’s not hitting his shots he’s just a dog on defense.” Haha, I think that was Windy on his podcast. There’s always a backup for the media’s new favorite of the month.

Brent: Guys, why is the national media in such a hurry to crown this kid as Jordan, Jr.? Seriously. Why not let him earn it and then praise him after?

Matt G: It feels like it’s more an attitude thing than anything else. Ant talks the talk and for the most part, can also walk the walk. He’s great for TV and soundbites. The anti-Kawhi.

Matthew: He’s great. He is a good defender, a freak athlete, and legitimately fun to root for or against. And the unfortunate truth is that the American media loves having an American they can hold up as among the best players in the world.

Matt G: Trae, Ja, Shai, Ant – I think especially a lot of the last-generation players who have wound up as talking heads feel like Ant and players like him are more in line with the NBA they played in.

Matt G: And also, former players, by and large, are horrible evaluators of talent.

Brent: How do you think Dallas role players beyond the stars match up against Minn?

Matthew: McDaniels will be dared to shoot. He’s essentially what Derrick Jones Jr has become. Conley is the type of small guard Doncic has historically hunted into oblivion and unfortunately for Minnesota, they simply have to play him for his shot creation.

Matt G: I think the Mavs are the deeper team. When push came to shove in game 7, Minnesota had 7 guys they trusted to play any minutes at all.

Brent: Who is the better player right now? Is McDaniels being overhyped vs Jones?

Matthew: McDaniels has a better track record and deserves more credit but Jones has caught him in my opinion.

Brent: Do you agree that Jones was as good of a free agent signing as JaVale McGee was a disaster? I feel like they are both equal distance from “meh”.

Matt G: The difference is the McGee signing was SO bad from the second it was announced while DJJ becoming a rock-solid player has been such a nice surprise. There were pretty low expectations of him to do much, while McGee I pretty much expected to suck immediately. So in that sense, Jones has been a MUCH better signing as signing a good player makes you a better team while signing a bad contract like McGee, you just bury him on the bench and try to lose on. Don’t lose out on much other than opportunity cost.

Matthew: The Jones signing is clearly better, because the McGee signing just didn’t matter

Brent: Jones is like finding a thousand bucks in the couch cushions or an older jacket and McGee was like getting mugged.

Matt G: I do feel like McGee stole my happiness. If there was anything last year to ever have been excited about I would’ve let it go but it pretty much just sucked the whole time so I’m holding on to it, lol.

Brent: What version of Luka will we get?

Matt G: On the one hand, it’s nice that we haven’t HAD to see the supernova version of Luka that nearly carried us past the Clippers in 2021 to get this far – this is a much better team – but I’d like to see it. Luka plays opossum a lot with injuries, but this knee thing I think has been bothering him.

Matthew: Luka has quietly already made it back. He averaged 30/10/11 on 57/53/90 over the last two games of the Thunder series while closing out a very talented team. It is only the expectations of his absurd talent that let people not realize how brilliant he has been.

Matt G: Yeah – he’s had to put up insane numbers that made him like the second-highest playoff scorer of all time just to move the needle before, so it’s nice that he can have a “down” game where he only puts up 22/8/4 or whatever.

Brent: Jason Kidd has turned his season and thus the team’s season around. How much has your perception of Kidd changed?

Matt G: I just don’t know what to think about Kidd as an Xs and Os guy. I don’t think he’ll ever really be that kind of coach. The turnaround this team had over this year is insane outer reach of the bell curve type of stuff. So I guess maybe, with the kind of talent this team has, namely guys like Luka and Kyrie who don’t need offensive schemes drawn up for them, he could be the man for the job. But he and Sweeney know what kind of defense they want to run, and good on them for saying whatever needed to be said to Nico to assemble the right guys.

Matthew: There is much talk of 82 and 16-game players. Kidd is a 16-game coach. Kidd is a massively underrated Xs and Os coach and his ability to work refs without exploding is an important counterbalance to Doncic’s vocal complaints.

Matt G: His mild-mannered approach has come as a shock after what was said about him in that book from his time in Milwaukee.

Brent: None of us wanted him to check out last year but he clearly did. He could see it was hot dogs and not steak last year. He has been fully engaged this season, especially after the deadline. Plus, he picked DJJ up off the ground and hurled him down the court in one motion. For me, that was the anti-drink spill moment from the Bucks era of his coaching career.

Matt G: lol, it really was the spiritual balance to the soda spill.

Brent: Anything else come to mind to chat about before we say goodnight?

Matt G: Can we just win a game 1, please?

Matthew: The Mavericks will need one unexpected contributor this series and I am hopeful that Dante Exum will rise from the dead and be that man for the Mavericks.

Brent: Since Matthew brings it up, where on earth did Jaden Hardy come from? I didn’t think he would find his way out of the Kidd doghouse but Exum made that happen.

Matthew: He looked like he was literally put in because he had better lob chemistry with Lively. Felt like he was always looking for it and he hit Lively with a couple of good ones. Getting easy lob points felt like something Dallas wanted to do more of later in the series. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. That makes him active and in a rock fight, that pure energy can be helpful.

Brent: So what you are saying is that Hardy brings anti-2022 Josh Green to the table – because that version of Green knew there were things he didn’t know.

Goodnight guys, thanks to you both.

Matthew: Sure thing, had fun.

Matt G: Go Mavs!