Art Garcia | Mavs.com

Posted: Nov. 10, 2007

PORTLAND – The compliment may have been tinged with a drop of selfishness. At least that’s how Jerry Stackhouse interpreted Jason Terry calling him the Mavericks’ best passer. 

“Yeah, he gets a lot of passes from me,” Stackhouse cracked Saturday night before facing the Trail Blazers. “I’m the best passer to him.”

It’s no joke. Stackhouse has been considered the best distributor of the basketball since coming to Dallas three-plus years ago.

“He’s the best passer on the team, by far,” Terry said. “That’s no secret. From years and years of him facing so many double teams when he was with Detroit and with Washington, he sees the floor extremely well. If you look, a lot of my baskets come from him in transition. He’s always looking [and] surveying the defense.”

Stackhouse isn’t the classic playmaker. He doesn’t bring the ball up and set the offense. He does his damage after getting the ball on block or around the foul line.

“If you can score, it makes you a better passer because you’re going to create attention from other teams that over the years expected you to be in attack mode,” said Stackhouse, who came into the game averaging 4.2 assists. “I take advantage of that and make sure I go to guys that are better shooters on our team.

“I tried to go at [the defense] and try to make them commit to what I’m doing and the next thing you know you’ve got JT wide open or Dirk [Nowitzki] wide open or Josh [Howard] wide open. That’s what we want. I still look to be aggressive, but I pick my spots.”

Stackhouse’s best assist average with Dallas was 2.9 two years ago. His average coming into Saturday was second on the team to Terry’s 4.8. (Dallas had four averaging at least 4.0 and the team’s 22.8 assists ranked seventh in the NBA.)

“He’s drawing a lot of attention,” Johnson said of Stackhouse. “He’s not getting baited into bad shots and he’s getting easier baskets for Jason and Dirk and Josh and DeSagana [Diop] like you’ve seen here early in the season because he draws a lot of attention. When he does that he’s also not getting those silly turnovers.”

A point of emphasis for Stackhouse this summer was catching the ball with both hands. He worked on it without a second thought. Though he’s an established veteran, he’s not above working on the fundamentals. That’s also why you never heard a peep out of him about not starting.

“Jerry has had a pretty celebrated career and now he’s coming off the bench for us because the only thing he wants to do is win a championship,” Johnson said, “and for us to win a championship, we need him to score and give assists.”

Johnson loves to throw out the stat that the Mavs are 20-1 in the last 21 games when Stackhouse records at least four assists.

“He thinks it’s scientific,” Stackhouse said with a laugh. “I tell him, ‘What’s our record when I get 25?’ It’s probably undefeated there, too. He ain’t listening to that one.”

Dampier getting closer

Erick Dampier’s return may be right around the corner. He hinted that it could come as early as Tuesday against Philadelphia or Thursday against San Antonio.

“It’s a possibility,” he said.

Dampier estimated the strength in his surgically-repaired right shoulder at about 70 percent. He’s benching 225 pounds without pain, though he normally lifts “a lot more than that.”

“I feel a lot better [and] stronger,” he said. “Of course it’s not going to be where I was before I got hurt.”

Dampier has gone through several full practices without any setbacks.

“Damp is good,” Johnson said. “He had a good practice yesterday. He was trying to send me a message and I heard it loud and clear. We want him stronger. We need Damp to be strong.”

Going deep

The roster isn’t completely healthy just yet, but once it is, Avery Johnson will have 12 NBA-tested players at his disposal. Can he work them all in? 

“It won’t be difficult,” he said. “The good thing about it is instead of us always having to stretch guys to 38 and 42 minutes, we sold our guys on whatever amount of time, whether it’s 10, 20 or 30 or 40, just play hard.

“Some guys who played a lot longer last year, we’re hoping they can play a little bit less this year and play harder. That’s what we’re trying to accomplish.”

Johnson would like to get the minutes down for some of his heavy lifters. Dirk Nowitzki came into Saturday averaging 35 minutes, Jason Terry 33, Gana Diop 30 and Jerry Stackhouse 27.

“We’re not the deepest team yet,” Johnson said. “We’re going to be a deep team when Dirk doesn’t have to play 38 minutes. We’re going to be a deep team when I can get 26 minutes out of Jet Terry, 26 minutes out of Devin [Harris], Stack can play 18-20 minutes.

“Then we’ll think about being a deep team and still being effective. And when I can split the time between Juwan [Howard] and Damp and Diop, and they can all go out there and play well. That’s when we’ll be a deep team, but we’re not a deep team yet.”

Starting 5 No. 4

The Mavs went with their fourth different starting lineup in six games against Portland. This change was in the backcourt again, as Trenton Hassell opened with JJ Barea. Devin Harris left the team Friday to attend to a personal matter, while Eddie Jones (sore leg) still wasn’t ready to play.

“We want to get to a point where we can get one lineup that we can depend on night in and night out,” Johnson said. “Obviously, injuries or in Devin’s situation, having to leave for family reasons, you can’t necessarily plan on that stuff. At some point we hope to have a string of games where can have the same lineup out there consistently.”

That may be Tuesday. Harris will be back and Jones may be ready to go then, too.