<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Devin Harris peels off his jersey and steps into the whirlpool after an early morning workout. His frame is more muscular than it was a few months earlier. A tattoo stretches the width of his shoulder blades, an addition coach Avery Johnson mentioned when the two had lunch recently. Some changes are obvious. But it will take several months for us to learn if Harris has added what he needs most. A consistent jump shot. There's no need to dance around the subject. Harris doesn't. Ask what he concentrated on this off-season and a slight smile creases his face. "Let's see," he says. "Jump shots, jump shots, jump shots." On this morning Harris worked out with teammates Jason Terry, Jerry Stackhouse, Erick Dampier, DeSagana Diop and Anthony Johnson. He finished the session with 300 or so jump shots. He will repeat that routine later in the afternoon. Harris estimates he has averaged 600 to 700 jump shots every day for the past month. He doesn't launch these from indiscriminate parts of the court. The point guard only works on shots he's likely to see in the flow of the Mavericks offense. The ball leaves Harris' hand differently than it did when he was the Big Ten Player of the Year at Wisconsin. The rotation is off. That is why Harris will work with Gary Close, the man he calls his shooting coach, before camp starts in two weeks. Close is an assistant with the Badgers. Before that he was an assistant in Iowa where he worked with B.J. Armstrong, who went on to sink a few jump shots while starting next to Michael Jordan for the Chicago Bulls. The Mavericks would not have gotten past San Antonio in the second round if it weren't for Harris. His speed changed the complexion of the Spurs series, but his impact waned over the final two rounds. Miami backed off Harris and dared him to shoot, something he did at a 36.4 percent clip in The Finals. When he did drive to the basket, he was greeted by Shaquille O'Neal, Alonzo Mourning or sealed on the baseline with no way to finish the play. "I had pretty much a great run at San Antonio, but the last two series I could have played better," Harris says. "The way Miami was playing me, it was almost like they were playing five-on-four. They weren't respecting my outside touch. "In the regular season, you may get away with it. But the further we went in the playoffs ... It frustrated me." Johnson didn't have to tell Harris to work on his jump shot this off-season. Harris doesn't want to be known as a one-trick point guard, someone with blazing speed who can't hit an uncontested jumper to save his team's life. If Harris can't make opponents respect his jump shot, he will find it harder and harder to drive to the basket. If Harris doesn't develop a jump shot his coach can trust, the starting job the third-year player craves won't materialize. "Am I going to come in and say something stupid like, we have five positions that are open?" Avery Johnson asked. "That's just coach's talk and sound bites, but no. Dirk [Nowitzki] is starting no matter what kind of camp he has. Josh Howard is starting. Jason Terry is starting. Now, we'll talk after that." Harris, Anthony Johnson and Greg Buckner will be given the chance to start next to Terry. Since Avery Johnson is committed to moving Terry off the ball even more this season, the competition will come down to Harris and Anthony Johnson. </div> Source
