BRUNSON BURNER: to NYK for 4yrs/$104M (no SnT) | NYK docked 2025 2nd for tampering

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The Athletic's Tim Cato works hard to pour cold water on the Mavs. In his most recent article he writes that Brunson isn't really getting better, he's just getting more minutes. To make his case, he points out Brunson's per 48 stats are similar to last year and his efficiency is slightly down. 

Piling on, he says Brunson is just getting more minutes because the Mavs are forced to play him. Cato loves to dog the Mavs roster: "Brunson hasn't necessarily improved as much as he's earned more minutes and trust, which is both warranted by his play and out of necessity due to this roster."

If Brunson starts Cato thinks Kidd will have to bench THJ because Brunson and Luka also poor defenders. "it's difficult to justify those two and THJ playing together and maintaining any semblance of a high level defense."

I wonder, how much of a defensive liability is Brunson? 

"The thing about Brunson is he's really come a long way," Carlisle said. "It didn't just happen for him. He had to make a lot of adjustments. He's worked to change his body, his game and to adapt to the NBA 3-point line. Now he's an effective scorer at all three levels, and he was very much a mid-range player when he came. He's learned a lot about defense, and the work that he's done with the strength, body development and quickness has helped make him a very solid defender."

I don't mind Cato since he actually does work to get stuff out on the Mavs and he isn't a bad writer. But I think you're right about his generally negative opinion of the roster and front office. And he has no problem with mixing news and his own commentary, or just going straight commentary. 

In this case, why the need to take a small sample size of games to say "he hasn't gotten better" when he clearly just did something in a 4th quarter that he's never done before. He's had good fourth quarters, but this time he took one over, and had Luka just giving him the ball each time down. 

And Tim's opinion of whether Brusnon can start is an example of where he just issues message board opinions from the seat of News Man. Tim doesn't know whether Kidd thinks Brunson and THJ are too poor defensively to be on the floor together. It's just a straight up opinion that he doesn't even bother to support. 

In a message board folks say "and he's a negative defender" as if it's fact. Someone here might push back on our fellow poster, but it doesn't really matter, because we're all trying to squeeze in a post in between tasks at our real jobs. But Tim's real job is following the team, researching the Mavs and writing on them. He should be better than the message board thing of "he's a negative defender" without supporting it, or making statements about what the Mavs can or can't do that are just opinions worded as news. 

But that's journalism these days, in some circles. The real stuff is still out there, but there is a lot of Cato style mix of news and opinion writen like news.