Mavs Team Attitude

"We just kept playing. That just shows the character of this team. No matter how old you are, we understood how to play the game, by passing the ball and making sure that we didn't take shots where three or four guys are on you. We just made the extra pass. We didn't care who put the ball in the basket."

-Jason Kidd

Slapping Pride in the Face

“I could say I want to go for that 10th Gold Glove. … But sometimes you’ve got to slap pride in the face and all that individual stuff – the Gold Glove stuff – you can let that go. All I care about is winning. … If this makes the team better, I’m going to do it.”

-All-Star Torii Hunter on moving from CF to RF in order for the Angels to bring up a minor league prospect.

Marion's Breakout Game Helps Lead Dallas to 12th Straight Win

MINNEAPOLIS -- Just when Dallas needed it most, Shawn Marion returned to the high-scoring form that has been absent all season.

That's been the story of this remarkable run for the Mavericks.

Marion had a season-high 29 points and 14 rebounds and the Mavericks stretched the league's longest active winning streak to 12 straight games with a 125-112 victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Monday night.

"I've done that before," Marion said with a chuckle about his monster line. "That's easy."

What isn't so easy is the unselfishness he's shown this season. Marion has averaged at least 17 points a game seven times in his career, but he has taken a reduced role on offense this season in order to focus more on the defensive end. Marion entered the game averaging a modest 11.5 points a game and had a season high of 18 before Monday night's outburst.

"Every week I tell him how important he is to us and how much as a coach I appreciate what he's done this year in terms of changing his game around," coach Rick Carlisle said. "He's the guy that's made the biggest adjustment of any of the new guys that we've got and it's showing up in wins and losses."

On Monday, it was Marion's turn.

"I want to win," Marion said. "At the end of the day, you have to make sacrifices to win. ... Ultimately, I've done a lot of things in this league and I want to win a championship. I want to leave that as my legacy."

"It's been a true team," Carlisle said. "Somebody's down a little, somebody else picks him up. Guys are competitive. Guys have stuck together, cheering for each other in the games. When you get on a roll like this, those kinds of things have got to happen."

The Power of Unselfishness

From Boston assistant Kevin Eastman:

Two words that never seem to go together or work together are selfishness and winning. On the other hand, when we study the key characteristics of winning organizations we find that unselfishness is of paramount importance. It's a necessary ingredient that enhances other aspects of success in a team endeavor.

So why is unselfishness so important? What does it do to teams? It has been my experience with the Boston Celtics (and in particular, as a coach in our 2008 NBA World Championship run) that unselfishness alone was extremely important for us, but the ways this unselfish attitude created additional advantages for us was also very important to our success.

Below are some by-products of an unselfish approach:

• the sprit of our team was much greater

• the intensity of our play was much greater

• the willingness to move the ball created easier, high percentage shots for us

• it helped us plug holes in our defense; we covered for each other

• it created frustration in our opponents, as the power of the pass can never be underestimated

• it kept us juiced up for the next game (which is very important when you are playing over 100 games in a season); our guys wanted to come to work

• it gave us confidence knowing that we could survive a player's off night because the ball always found the open player (and therefore, the high percentage shot)

• it allowed us the feeling that one guy never had to carry the burden

• it gave us a sense that we could not be beaten because opponents had to beat all of us together -- not just one superstar on his own

• most of all, it gave us a feeling that we wanted to be out there on the floor every night and that we knew it was truly US against the opponent; we knew our backs were covered every minute of every game; simply put: we knew if we absorbed ourselves in the team that we would have a chance to succeed at the highest level!Is unselfishness important? Yes -- important enough that every champion has it as a vital part of its DNA!

Get out of your comfort zone

"I hear so many times guys say they want to win a championship, I want to be a winner, but what they're really saying is they want to win so long as it's comfortable for them,'' Rivers said. "You don't win by being comfortable. You win by doing things out of your comfort zone to make the team better."

-Doc Rivers

All about the team

"I never focused the light on just me. That's just who I am. To this day I'm all about my teammates. This is a team game. If I was a tennis player, it'd be a totally different story. But I've always liked team success over individual accolades."

How can I help my teammates?

LeBron James on 60 Minutes Sunday with Steve Kroft:

But of all the weapons in James' basketball arsenal, he thinks the most powerful may be his brain. Asked what the strongest part of his game is, James told Kroft, "The way I approach the game mentally. I think, team first. It allows me to succeed, it allows my team to succeed. Because I'm always thinking about, 'How can I help my teammates become better?' I've always approached the game that way, ever since, I mean, I was a kid."

Glue Guy- Stanley Burrell

From the 2008 all glue team, Stanley Burrell. A big reason Xavier reached the Elite 8 last season:

Three years ago, Stanley Burrell, a 6-foot-3 guard at Xavier, scored 12.7 points per game, making him just the third freshman in school history to lead the team in scoring. As a sophomore, Burrell raised that average to 14.4. Last season, it was 12.4. Now, however, Burrell is scoring just 9.9 points per game for the Musketeers, the fewest of his career. So he's having an off year, right?

Wrong. Burrell is having a great year -- and for all the right reasons. He has curtailed his penchant for careless passes. He has kept his emotions in check while still infusing his team with energy and leadership. He has honed his instincts for figuring out just what his team needs from him and then delivering it. Most of all, he has made himself into arguably the finest perimeter defensive player in the country. Earlier this month, he ended the conference season as the runaway choice as the Atlantic 10's defensive player of the year.

Heading into the regular-season's final weekend , Xavier was ranked eighth in the AP poll, its highest ever ranking this late in the season. The Musketeers have already set a new school mark for wins. With five players averaging double-figure scoring, the Musketeers have been an exemplar of teamwork and balance, and Burrell has stood out for his willingness to do whatever it takes to help his team win -- even if it means scoring less.

In other words, he has been the ultimate Glue Guy.

Burrell is a fitting standard bearer to carry the torch of the All-Glue captaincy. His role as defensive stopper has not come easily. According to Xavier coach Sean Miller, during his first three years Burrell took only one charge. So far this season, Burrell has 10. Miller did not explicitly ask Burrell to take on this role. Burrell simply sensed it needed to happen.

"As a freshman, he was lost on defense," Miller says. "He didn't feel comfortable taking charges. He'd just get out of the way. Toward the end of last year, I asked our team who was going to be our defensive stopper next year, and he just took it personally. Now, he's defending at the highest level I've been around for a perimeter guy."

There are an awful lot of prominent players who have mysteriously lost their shooting touch while being guarded by Burrell this season: Dayton's Brian Roberts (12-for-32 shooting combined in three games), Indiana's Eric Gordon (4-for-12), Tennessee's Chris Lofton (3-for-12), Cincinnati's Deonta Vaughn (3-for-11), LaSalle's Darnell Harris (2-for-9) and Virginia's Sean Singletary (5-for-12). After holding Rhode Island guard Jimmy Baron to two points on 0-for-7 shooting on Feb. 18 (he came into the game averaging 15.3), Burrell said, "I'm coming out to try my best and throw a shutout every night."

"I just want to do whatever it takes to help the team," Burrell said in November. "If it's guarding a guy one night and really trying to shut him down, or just coming out and being aggressive and looking for my shot or coming out the next night looking for my teammates."

Burrell is such a tireless worker outside of practice that Miller has had to ask him to dial back his individual work so he wouldn't wear himself out. Yet, he continues to wear his emotions on his sleeve. That was apparent last week when he ripped the league's coaches for not putting a single Xavier player on the league's all-conference first team, even though the Musketeers won the A 10 by three games. "This league is pathetic," Burrell told the Cincinnati Enquirer. "You've got the best team and nobody on the first team all-conference team? It's ridiculous. ... Those guys decided to be here and play team ball. And they get left out for that? For being unselfish? It's not right, man. I don't care what I got. That defensive player of the year? That's my team award."

Glue Guy- Garrett Temple

Another member on Seth Davis' all glue-team:

To opposing guards, however, Temple is simply a royal pain. With his size, his long, spindly arms, his lateral quickness and his intellect, he has fashioned himself into one of the most lethal perimeter defenders in America. Just ask Duke's J.J. Redick, who scored 11 points on 3-for-18 shooting while being guarded by Temple in the third round of the 2005 NCAA tournament, when Temple was a redshirt freshman starter on the Tigers' Final Four team. Temple has also shut down such big-time scorers as Texas A&M's Acie Law (four points) and Tennessee's Chris Lofton (two). Last week, as the Tigers scored their two most important wins of the season, he forced Florida's Nick Calathes and Kentucky's Jodie Meeks to shoot a combined 2-for-14 from three-point range as the Tigers won both games. No wonder he was named a defensive All-America last season by Collegeinsider.com.

Temple has been a four-year starter at LSU, but for the last three years he has played point guard. This year, new Tigers coach Trent Johnson switched him to small forward so 6-1 sophomore Bo Spencer could play the point, but Temple remains an invaluable floor general. He leads the team (and is ranked fifth in the SEC) in assists with 4.1 per game and he is first in the conference in assist-to-turnover ratio (2-to-1). He is also fourth in the league in steals (1.86), he averages 4.5 rebounds and he's making 84.1 percent from the foul line. That should tell you Temple is capable of scoring more than his current average of 7.2 points a game, but since he plays with two of the highest-scoring players in the SEC in Marcus Thornton and Tasmin Mitchell, Temple knows his job is to get those guys open shots, not take a bunch of his own.

Temple is just as impressive off the court. In 2006, he was named a member of the SEC's academic honor roll, and last May he graduated from LSU with a degree in business administration. He is currently pursuing a graduate degree in business. That has endeared him to LSU's first-year coach, Trent Johnson, who was hired away from Stanford partly to rebuild the program's academic standing. "I'm not the kind of person who pays lip service to academics," Johnson said. The new coach likes smart players, and he is smart enough to recognize a high-quality glue guy when he sees one.

"He has good leadership, and it's real. It's not phony," Johnson said. "He's at peace with who he is. He's a very secure person. When Garrett speaks or asks a question, he knows what he's talking about. That's good leadership."

'The Butler Way'

Good article this morning in the Chicago Tribune on the Butler men's basketball team, who despite being a 'mid-major' have made 8 NCAA tournament appearances in the last 12 years including 2 Sweet-Sixteen appearances.

So what is 'The Butler Way'? According to Matt Howard, who turned down several major schools such as Purdue, Indiana, and Xavier so he could be a part of Butler's program, it's all about accountability.

"It's just being accountable on every possession," said sophomore forward Matt Howard, voted Horizon League player of the year. "We feel like each guy has a job to do on every play, and you count on teammates to do that job every single time.

"The other thing is playing unselfish. You never let the 'me' get over the 'we.' It's so important, and that's a big part of what we do."

Says coach Brad Stevens:

"You just concentrate on recruiting the right people to represent you, not only on the court but in the classroom also," Stevens said. "There are values we try to adhere to, and you want people who are willing to think and work in terms of those values."

Words of Wisdom

"A mature team is willing to make the sacrifices it takes to win. It's willing to play a certain way. Unselfishness, diving after loose balls, taking charges, getting defensive stops at critical points in a game. The inexperienced teams are the ones that live and die by the jump shot. They tend to place way too much emphasis on the offensive end and not nearly enough on the tough things that it takes to win games"

-Dana Altman