The "Real" Mavs are coming

I asked Avery Johnson if he’s seen the real Eddie Jones yet. Johnson took the question in another direction.

“You haven’t seen the real Mavericks,” he said. “Put it like that. Forget Eddie, you haven’t seen the real Mavericks. How about that?”

Johnson’s 20-game evaluation of the team revealed as many questions as answers. Johnson has made some changes, taken some things out, added others and put a new set of challenges into place.

“We have to play some shorter games within games to challenge ourselves,” he said. “I thought we were coasting a little bit too much, especially defensively.”

He does expect to see the real Mavs at some point.

“Sometime soon hopefully,” Johnson said, “but the good news is we haven’t seen them hardly at all early in this season. You’ve seen bits and pieces. You saw a little bit of them in the first half of the Knicks. You saw them offensively against Utah. You saw them early in the season in a game against the Spurs.”

Johnson added that there’s plenty of room for improvement and the plan is a steady climb through the rest of the regular season.