Riding the Fence With the Mavs

As it stands here on January 12th (or the 13th, depending on when you read this post), your Dallas Mavericks stand as the 2nd seed in the West and division leaders in the Southwest with a 25-12 mark and just 3.5 games behind the defending NBA Champion, Los Angeles Lakers.

BTW, the Lake Show will be rolling into town tonight either with or without Kobe.

By all accounts, it's been a fairly successful campaign to this point. But I can't help but feel is also been a little unsatisfying at times.

Case in point, Dallas rallies from down 13 in the 3rd period Friday night to beat the Spurs down San Antonio way. They follow that effort up with a 111-93 loss to the Utah Jazz. And that's after the Lakers took them behind the ol' woodshed and kicked their asses to the tune of 131-96 back on January 3rd at the Staples Center.

Now granted, I'll gladly take this season over the start of last season where the Mavs stumbled out of the gate at 2-7, then recovered nicely to make the playoffs as the 6th seed, where they dispatched of the shorthanded Spurs in 5 games. And Dallas has gotten some surprise contributions from Drew Gooden and J.J. Barea this season. And they've beaten the Lakers and Spurs on the road this year

And, oh yeah, they have gotten something out of Shawn Marion that they haven't gotten...well...ever in the Mark Cuban ownership era.

An athletic big who can defend.

He can also score a little, though his PPG is down to around the 11 point mark.

Still, they've had some less than impressive close wins against some of the dregs of the NBA and had a season opening loss to Washington. Certainly enough to cast a shadow over the big wins against the Lakers and Spurs.

And there's still that whole thing in 2006 and 2007 that we never speak of around here.

And I think until the Mavericks can vanquish those ghosts much like the Cowboys vanquished the "Can't win in December and in the playoffs" ghost, that's just how it's going to be around here.