MVN - Most Valuable Network

Rick Carlisle: the answer, or a quick fix?

After about a week of waiting, the Dallas Mavericks finally made it official today that Rick Carlisle will be the team’s new head coach. Now, we all pretty much knew that this was going to happen eventually–after all, he was the only candidate Mark Cuban even bothered to interview. However, does this necessarily mean that Carlisle, with his 281-211 career record, will be the guy to lead the Mavericks to their first NBA title?

The jury’s still out on that one. In fact, before he can even begin to think about championships there are a ton of questions that need to be answered. For right now, though, Carlisle does seem to be the most qualified candidate for the job. He’s not the flashiest name out there (that would be Mike D’Antoni, who is reportedly going to be the new coach of the New York Knicks), but he’s a guy who knows both sides of the ball pretty well and developed two organization in Detroit and Indiana.

So what will be Carlisle’s first move as head coach? According to ESPN, he’s already brought in former head coaches Terry Stotts and Dwane Casey to serve on his staff. While neither guy was particularly successful with their previous team (Casey with Minnesota, Stotts with Milwaukee), they are at least both solid basketball minds. That seems to be the theme with the coaching staff currently in development: experience. The Mavericks took a gamble with Avery Johnson, hiring a guy with no coaching experience and giving him free reign on offense and defense. For a while it worked pretty well, but then Avery stopped giving his players a chance to call plays and forbid his assistant coaches from doing much. Carlisle will be much more willing to listen.

The next thing Carlisle must do is to establish a great relationship with Jason Kidd, for it’s the only way this team will be successful. During his time in Detroit and Indiana, Carlisle was never exactly known for running the open offense that Kidd is known for. That will need to change in Dallas, and thankfully it looks like some solid effort has been made to set this plan into motion. Carlisle spent part of last season’s training camp studying the Phoenix Suns’ offense with D’Antoni, and is still working to develop a more diverse offensive playbook. The main thing is to make certain the new head coach doesn’t become Avery Johnson 2.0, a contol-freak who alienated a good many of his players.

The roster

Coach Carlisle does come to the Mavericks at a time of great uncertainty, and it’s going to be up to him and GM Donnie Nelson to figure out exactly how they want to move forward. Only eight guys from the 2007-08 team are still under contract, which begs the question as to who to keep. It has to be a given that some of the older veterans such as Juwan Howard will be shown the door. However, decisions will have to be made about some younger guys such as Antoine Wright and JJ Barea.

It’s hard to even say what direction the Mavericks will go in. It’s assumed locally that Josh Howard is on the trading block after a terrible performance in the playoffs against the Hornets, and most of the other players (except for maybe Kidd and Dirk Nowitzki) could be moved as well. Dallas desperately needs some more scorers at the shooting guard and post positions. Getting a reliable backup center would also help–DeSagana Diop has said he’d like to come back to Dallas, but he’s not exactly the scoring threat the team probably wants.

It’s going to hard for Carlisle and Donnie Nelson to rebuild much of this roster over the next few years, since the Mavs are over the salary cap and lack a first-round draft pick. Could his connections with Indiana pay off? Rumors are constantly circulating about Jermaine O’Neal, who played for Carlisle back when the Pacers made it to the Eastern Conference Finals. Once the season is over, we’ll finally start to have a clearer picture of what each team wishes to do an which direction they’re headed.

For now, Mavericks fans, all there is to do is speculate. Joe and I will post any new information we have, and until then all we can do is watch some of the teams still in the playoffs and wonder what could’ve been.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 10th, 2008 at 1:40 pm and is filed under Showboating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.