Mavs’ Roster Changes Add Up To Mediocrity

It is a measure of Don Nelson’s whirlwind style that two weeks after he was hired as general manager of the Dallas Mavericks, he has become one of the franchise’s longest-tenured employees.

Let’s see, there’s coach Jim Cleamons, who left the security of an assistant coach’s seat next to Phil Jackson on the Chicago Bulls bench last summer for this maelstrom.

And there’s Samaki Walker, drafted last June and currently the senior player on the team.

And there’s Nelson, wheeling and dealing, trading his players for yours and then maybe trading yours for somebody else’s.

The latest wrinkle was a nine-player whopper with the New Jersey Nets that just about swept the roster clean. This, however, could be nothing more than an NBA version of Shakespeare’s sound and fury, signifying nothing. I give you my underachieving shooting guard, you give me your underachieving center. What does it all add up to?

That was the essence of the Dallas-New Jersey exchange of bodies. Included in the package acquired by Nelson was enigmatic 7-foot-6 Shawn Bradley who, in his last game with the Nets, managed to play 32 minutes without getting a rebound.

Now, if you’re 7-6, you ought to get rebounds by accident. You are, after all, starting only 2 feet, 6 inches, from the basket. Put your hands up and sooner or later the ball almost certainly will find them. It shouldn’t be all that complicated.

As part of the package, the Mavs parted with their own 7-foot mystery, Eric Montross. All you need to know about Montross is that Boston, without a big man after grandpa Robert Parish moved on, made him their No. 1 draft choice, then gave up on the project after two years. Montross wears No. 00, a fitting description of his NBA production so far.

The coming and going also included Robert Pack, Khalid Reeves and Ed O’Bannon to Dallas, and Jimmy Jackson, Sam Cassell, George McCloud and Chris Gatling to the Nets.

The trade came days after Nelson began his reconstruction of the Mavs by waiving jumbo Oliver Miller, generously listed as 280 pounds - probably before breakfast. The ponderous Miller, upset at some slight real or imagined, had punctuated a Mavs’ loss a week earlier by saying, “I don’t care anymore,” an observation that earned him a ticket out of town.

Next, Nelson turned to some front-office fine-tuning, hiring ex-Mavs vice-president Keith Grant as a consultant, then firing part-time equipment manager Ben Carter and replacing him with full-timer Chad Lewis.

Then he went back to work on the roster, dispatching Jamal Mashburn, an ex-No. 1 pick, to Miami for three rather anonymous types - Sasha Danilovic, Martin Muursepp and Kurt Thomas.

Immediately, some paranoid types in New York suspected that it was a get-even move by Nelson, who left the Knicks on less-than-warm terms a year ago. Could he be targeting his ex-employers by swapping the useful Mashburn to the Heat, the team New York is chasing in the Atlantic Division? Would Nelson be that devious?

That’s unlikely. There is no time for devious in Dallas. The Mavs have been wandering aimlessly through the NBA for a long time, never finishing higher than fifth in their division since 1990. They were sitting in their accustomed spot near the bottom of the Midwest Division when Nelson swept into town and started sweeping players out.

He found a willing partner in the Nets, another befuddled franchise that was going nowhere and getting there in a hurry. And before you decide New Jersey put one over on Nelson, consider that one of Dallas’ assistant coaches is Butch Beard, who spent the past two seasons coaching the Nets.