Post by FLCeltsFan on Jan 25, 2009 8:01:01 GMT -5
www.bostonherald.com/sports/basketball/other_nba/view.bg?articleid=1147624&format=text
Juan Barea a true Maverick
Undersized Northeastern grad keeps bucking odds in NBA
By Mark Murphy | Sunday, January 25, 2009 | www.bostonherald.com | NBA Coverage
Photo by AP
Rick Carlisle has had a few wit’s-end moments this season, when the Dallas coach realized that sometimes you have to juggle until the solution settles into your hands.
So during an emotionally draining game on Dec. 2, Carlisle had his Mavs go small like few other teams can, or would care to. He went down the stretch with a lineup that included 6-foot-4 Jason Kidd at small forward, 6-2 Jason Terry at shooting guard and the player who refuses to go away -- 5-11 Jose Juan Barea -- at point guard.
This lineup put together a 14-8 closing run that pulled the Mavs out of a hole that could have led to an unthinkable home loss to the Clippers. Kidd kicked the ball out to Barea, and the 24-year-old playmaker from Northeastern buried a game-winning 3-pointer in the 100-98 triumph.
These moments generally lead to the same inference -- that Barea is in some way an apparition or NBA oddity. Carlisle is tired of it.
“Let’s quit talking as if this is some new story, like it’s some guy that shouldn’t be doing this,” the coach said after Barea scored 13 of his 21 points in the fourth quarter of a double overtime loss to San Antonio on Dec. 9. “He should be doing this. It’s his job. Let’s get off the whole novelty thing. The guy’s a good player.”
Barea’s play was so impressive that night, Spurs counterpart Tony Parker compared his all-out dribbling style to Steve Nash. Tim Duncan talked about his ability to alter the pace of a game.
The prolonged absence of Josh Howard has forced the Mavericks, especially starved for shooters, to continue searching. They traded for swingman Matt Carroll last week. But Barea, an undersized point guard from Puerto Rico via Northeastern, continues to show that he is somehow part of the solution.
“He’s fearless,” Mavs captain Dirk Nowitzki said of Barea. “He gets in there. He’s small, but for some reason he’s a great finisher. He always finds the seams and gets to the cup. I just really like that he’s in attack mode.”
Said Donnie Nelson, the Mavericks’ president of basketball operations: “He’s 5-11 in heels, but he’s definitely an NBA player.”
And, as the Mavericks have found out, imperfections shouldn’t always be confused with impediments.
“We realized a while ago that this guy has brains and (guts),” said Nelson. “He’s a little undersized, but shoot, there are no perfect point guards.”
The novelty should wear off a little more today, when Barea returns to the place where, in many respects, it all started for him.
Boston, and NU’s Huntington Avenue campus, is where he first made a break from his proud and protective family in Puerto Rico. It’s where then-Huskies coach Ron Everhart handed him the ball and allowed the process to hit full speed.
Now he returns with a whole new set of testimonials, and one of the proudest alliances of his young life. Kidd has wholeheartedly supported Carlisle’s development of Barea, who signed a three-year contract extension last summer.
“It’s been amazing,” Barea said last week of his growing bond with Kidd. “When I was growing up he was my favorite player, and now he’s my best friend on the team. I’ve picked up both little and big things from him.
“Last year he came in at the end of the season and we all had to get used to each other. But this year we kind of clicked, and he’s been a great guy. He knows all of the right questions to ask. Just the way he makes everyone better around him is so special -- the way he gets everyone shots.”
There’s a bonus here. Barea is now doing many of the same things.
“He and Jason have a very unique relationship,” Nelson said. “It’s funny, because Jason actually defers to him. He lets him bring the ball up the floor, and lets him run the pick-and-roll.
“J.J. has really developed that floater, and I remember when coming up with that shot was really a big development in Nash’s career,” he said. “It took him a couple of years to get that down pat.”
Stepping up a notch
An NBA component has always been evident in Barea’s game.
Too many evaluators chose to overlook the signs.
Barea was always the most active, explosive player on the floor in college, but most scouts saw only the preponderance of shots he hoisted -- many out of pure necessity.
But in this regard the Mavericks already had more insight into Barea than the rest of the league.
“We’ve had the Global Games every year here (in Dallas), and he came in every year with the team from Puerto Rico,” Nelson sais. “When he came here at first I was like, ’Man, he’s so small.’
“But he was always the guy who would win the speed contest. It was a speed dribble competition, where you’d have to touch the line and then come back to where you started. We called it ‘The World’s Fastest Man Contest.’
“But J.J. would win that annually against all kinds of other players.”
Barea was then an adolescent, and most scouts had the same reaction -- he needed to literally grow.
“I was like, ’Man, I liked him as a nice college player,”’ said Nelson, whose admiration continued to grow. “I thought a best-case scenario would be that you could get him into your training camp and he wouldn’t embarrass himself. Then, after college, we thought, ’Well, this guy might actually have a clue.”’
At issue was the fact that regardless of how high Barea rose in the scouting process, he didn’t lose any luster. He looked good against the competition, regardless of the competition.
“Then he’s having terrific games in Portsmouth,” Nelson said of the Portsmouth (Va.) Invitational, the first NBA tryout camp of the spring, generally for players who have little or no hope of being drafted.
Barea walked off with the camp’s MVP honor.
“I’m sitting there thinking that he might be better than we thought,” Nelson said. “He got the MVP and with that an invitation to Orlando (pre-draft camp). Now he was playing against the end-of-the-first-rounders and some of the top guys.
“He was more than holding his own, and I’m thinking that we might be lucky to get him at the end of the second round.”
Dallas was fortunate. Barea went undrafted, but started earning his keep immediately after being signed by the Mavs to a non-guaranteed contract.
It doesn’t surprise Nelson now that Barea quickly proved one of the stars of the Las Vegas Summer League and Rocky Mountain Revue.
As usual, Barea matched the level of his company.
The biggest assist
There can be too much of a good thing, which is to say that sometimes Carlisle’s three-playmaker lineup isn’t always a good fit. It’s not always the right choice, for example, against a big, physical group like today’s opponent, the Celtics [team stats].
Kidd, ironically enough, hasn’t always been the answer as a shooting forward, though the ball movement can be unparalleled -- a throwback to the style of Nelson’s father, former Celtics great Don.
“(Kidd) is having a terrific season,” said Donnie Nelson. “We’ve played him at the 1, 2 and 3, and he’s rebounding better than a lot of fours. We’re playing J.J. at the point with him, and it’s like ‘Nellie Ball’ all over again.
“(Kidd) will do whatever it takes to win. He’s seen and done it all in this league. He’ll guard Kobe (Bryant), be the assist man -- whatever is needed. He’s taken J.J. under his wing, and with Jason Kidd in his ear, that’s had quite an effect. I think (Kidd) was impressed by (Barea’s) intense energy.’
Barea, naturally, is in love with the style.
“We have three playmakers creating, and two of the best shooters in the league,” he said. “What we do best when we’re in that lineup is that we run more.”
Today he gets to show off that style. Barea has the floater that seems to mark maturity in the game of every young point guard. He runs the pick-and-roll, and gets into the lane at will, with the best of them.
That he’s back in Boston for his now-annual visit is important.
“I only had two (college) choices -- Northeastern and New Orleans -- and from the first day it just clicked,” he said. “Ron Everhart was a tough guy, but he started me as a freshman and I got better every year. Northeastern was the best thing that ever happened to me -- the city, my coaches. It made me tougher, a better person.
“I went to Celtics games. The Sox were winning, the Pats were winning, everything there was just about winning. I know the Celtics weren’t doing as well at the time, but look at them now. I knew they were going to get better.
“It’s where I grew up. I went to Miami for my senior year of high school so colleges could see me, but when I went to Boston that was really it.”
This is where it started. But as Barea shows with each game, it is by no means where it ended.
