The odds of Charlie Villanueva making a roster this year were, according to my computations, approximately zero percent. When even Detroit doesn’t play you, you know you have problems. There are general negative reactions around the league to poor-defense chuckers. Villanueva takes both aspects to their extremes. He shoots like a madman at all times, and plays no defense at all while doing it.
So, he made a roster. Insurance, I presume, for potential trades that the Mavs were already thinking about as the season began. That’s cool. Every team needs a 15th man who has alopecia unversalis. Dallas must have seen a sliver of something that no one else did.
That sliver turned out to be back-to-back double digit games, facilitated by the Rondo trade. The Mavericks haven’t been all that good since that transaction, and many may be quick to blame Rondo for the troubles. I’d say the fact that they are forced to play Charlie Buckets, and the underlying lack of bigman depth is the real problem. What happened to that Bernard James fellow?