|
All Heart!!!
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Silk City, Jersey...
Age: 29
Posts: 6,060
|
Daniels Became A Mavs Spare Part...
Quote:
Daniels Became A Mavs Spare Part
Gil LeBreton
In My Opinion
The Mavericks have agreed to a deal that would send guard Marquis Daniels to the Indiana Pacers.
He'll probably get a tattoo to mark the occasion. If he has room.
Oh, it wasn't Daniels' uber-random body art that bothered me. Rather, it was the way that his confidence disintegrated once Don Nelson was no longer the Mavs' head coach.
No longer having Nellie to overlook his nest, Daniels seemed to be chronically hurt. His shooting weaknesses were painfully exposed.
The worst part about being traded, we were reminded this week, might be having the terms of your bad contract reprinted in the newspapers. If you read that Daniels' original, Nellie-induced deal called for six years at $36.8 million and didn't tsk-tsk, you're not a good Mavericks fan.
In the end, Marquis Daniels was more than overpriced. He was largely unnecessary, a fat check that coach Avery Johnson seemed to have little interest in cashing.
It says something about Daniels' raw talent that the Pacers apparently are willing to add another $19 million to their payroll. But as with Michael Finley, if the coach is not going to give quality minutes to a player, why let the player sit, wondering, maybe grumbling, on the bench?
Austin Croshere? A cheaper, maybe even healthier version of Keith Van Horn. He'll get the few minutes when Dirk Nowitzki has to go to the bench.
But Daniels never seemed to impress Johnson enough to merit anything more than token minutes. Nellie saw him as multi-talented -- the old "point-forward" fascination --but Avery needs role players. Specialists.
Daniels had his chances. Didn't Johnson go to Las Vegas last year, mostly to work with Marquis in the summer league?
If Daniels was going to impress Johnson, he lost much of that opportunity by missing 42 games over the past two seasons. It's probably not fair, but coaches are coaches, and Daniels always seemed to be mending from something.
As a scapegoat for the Mavericks' flameout in the NBA Finals, though, Daniels doesn't suffice. The collective fizzle was audible. Daniels' best moments in the post-season, ironically, came in Game 6, when he led a third-quarter surge that got the Mavericks back into the game.
But at $26.5 million -- the amount remaining on Marquis' $36.8-million contract -- that's an expensive panic button. The deal with the Pacers simply makes too much sense.
Daniels wasn't the first player that Nellie overpaid (see BRADLEY, Shawn), but he might have been the most curious. Teams ceased respecting his outside shooting ability, or lack thereof.
And when Adrian Griffin was plugged into the starting lineup and deemed capable, Daniels was mostly out of a gig.
I promised myself that I wouldn't turn this impending trade into a harangue against NBA tattoos, and thus I'll keep my middle-aged mouth shut. Daniels, however, will leave with the franchise record for body ink pushed to Ruthian heights.
He has 27 tattoos. I suppose 15 or so wasn't enough.
One of them was supposed to be Daniels' initials written in Chinese. But as The New York Times reporter Cindy Chang wrote a few weeks ago, after consulting someone who knew the language, the inked characters that Daniels wears actually read, "healthy woman roof."
Don't misunderstand. Nobody here is blaming Daniels or his tattoos for the Mavericks' collapse against the Miami Heat. On the contrary, Johnson and team owner Mark Cuban appear to be looking forward.
Drafting Maurice Ager from Michigan State was one step. Avery seemed more excited on draft day about seeing Ager play than he seemed about Daniels in months.
And while Croshere doesn't come cheap on a per-season basis, he has only one year remaining on his contract. The Mavericks, you may have noticed recently, are no longer in luxury tax jail.
It's time to move along. To retool for next season.
Might as well do it with players whom the head coach wants to play.
|
Link
|