duncan228
04-24-2010, 07:50 PM
Mavs' choking tradition set to continue (http://www.statesman.com/sports/pro/mavs-choking-tradition-set-to-continue-616211.html)
Kirk Bohls, Commentary
For most of the second half of the most pivotal game of this Western Conference series, the Dallas Mavericks went small.
With their lineup.
To match their mindset.
No team in the NBA does this quite so often as Mark Cuban's maddeningly inconsistent club, which rarely comes up big in the big moments.
This is a franchise that plans the victory parade but forgets to win the championship. It's still haunted by that collapse in the 2006 finals after leading the Miami Heat 2-0.
Dallas has won exactly one playoff series since choking against the Heat, and that was a 2009 first-rounder against a Spurs team missing Manu Ginobili. Take away that series, and the Mavs are 5-14 in the postseason, including a first-round washout against eighth seed Golden State in 2007.
Now sitting at 1-2 versus the Spurs, the Mavs may be on the verge of continuing their postseason infamy.
In Game 3 against San Antonio, Mavs coach Rick Carlisle chose to go with a small, three-guard lineup for much of the game, relying on the ultra-quick and productive J.J. Barea and top sixth man Jason Terry. But the Mavs never made the crucial play of the game in the fourth quarter.
Terry misses wide-open shots. Barea travels. Jason Kidd misses his last two shots.
"It was working for a while," Dallas star Dirk Nowitzki said Saturday. "Maybe we stuck with it too long. But afterwards, you're always smarter."
Dallas fans may wonder when their favorite team is ever smart. If panic hasn't crept in, team divisiveness has popped up, although the players put on their best faces Saturday after Carlisle benched Caron Butler for the entire second half Friday and played Shawn Marion fewer than 17 total minutes.
In other words, Cuban pulled the trigger with a stunning midseason trade to bring Butler and Brendan Haywood from Washington. It took 21/2 playoff games before Carlisle pulled the plug and used the same bunch that lost to the Nuggets in last year's Western semifinals.
The second-guessing was rampant.
They blamed the refs for one-sided calls. Erick Dampier, Dave Stern on Line 2.
They blamed their coach for changing players' roles. Marion said he couldn't be effective "if I'm pulled in and out like a rag doll."
They blamed the basketball gods of bad breaks and bizarre bounces.
Hey, Mavs, invest in a mirror. It will expose your inferior interior defense, and your players' uneven performances and poor halfcourt offense.
The Spurs didn't sink a single three-pointer and still won. One of their stars breaks his nose and still drives to the basket. There's your mental toughness right there.
Mavs, you can't get five total buckets from four of your starters and win a playoff game.
It's as if they expect to lose.
The Mavs took out the Spurs in five games last season and went through them during their 2006 run to the finals, but San Antonio has more often been the black cat that constantly crosses Dallas' path.
It seems painfully obvious that Dallas is facing as big a psychological battle as it is a physical. But Kidd ain't buying it.
"I'm too old for that," he said.
Or is he too old, period? He's hit two of his last 13 shots as the Spurs go over the tops of screens and do not allow him to get set on his three-point launches.
Tonight's Game 4 at the AT&T Center looms as the biggest of the year for the pressing Mavs, yet another franchise-defining contest for a team that is fast developing a reputation as the Chicago Cubs of the NBA. Dallas must win to have a prayer in this series.
It's true that the Mavs won 55 games to earn the No. 2 seed in the rugged West and led the league with 27 road victories, and they'll never need that road-game resolve more than tonight. As Dirk said, "We've proven we can win in this building."
But where's all that offensive versatility that makes Dallas so hard to defend? Where's the huge size differential, when San Antonio gets as many rebounds and blocked shots as Dallas? Oh, right, on the bench.
After dropping two straight to the Spurs, the Mavs stand on the precipice of almost certain elimination, should they go down 3-1 in this best-of-seven series. If they fall, does Cuban blow up the team in the offseason yet again?
This team isn't imploding. It could have won Game 2. But it didn't.
Kidd has been practically invisible the last two games, making a single field goal in each of them.
Marion showed nothing offensively and then wondered out loud why his minutes were so significantly reduced.
Butler, channeling his inner Wizard, has too often disappeared, scoring just two points Friday.
In fact, were it not for Nowitzki, Dallas might be down 3-0 already. He's getting the stuffing beat out of him like a Fiesta piņata, but has hung in there. Dirk's getting almost no help. While these incredibly shrinking Mavs contend panic has not set in, it wouldn't take much imagination to spot it with another defeat.
"This ain't easy," Terry said. "If it was, we would have swept them by now. But we had a nine-point lead. A championship team holds that lead and walks away with it. These are two championship teams going at it."
No, Jason, the Spurs are the only team in this battle with banners at their arena. Four of them. The only thing amidst the rafters at Dallas' American Airlines Center is, well, rafters.
Kirk Bohls, Commentary
For most of the second half of the most pivotal game of this Western Conference series, the Dallas Mavericks went small.
With their lineup.
To match their mindset.
No team in the NBA does this quite so often as Mark Cuban's maddeningly inconsistent club, which rarely comes up big in the big moments.
This is a franchise that plans the victory parade but forgets to win the championship. It's still haunted by that collapse in the 2006 finals after leading the Miami Heat 2-0.
Dallas has won exactly one playoff series since choking against the Heat, and that was a 2009 first-rounder against a Spurs team missing Manu Ginobili. Take away that series, and the Mavs are 5-14 in the postseason, including a first-round washout against eighth seed Golden State in 2007.
Now sitting at 1-2 versus the Spurs, the Mavs may be on the verge of continuing their postseason infamy.
In Game 3 against San Antonio, Mavs coach Rick Carlisle chose to go with a small, three-guard lineup for much of the game, relying on the ultra-quick and productive J.J. Barea and top sixth man Jason Terry. But the Mavs never made the crucial play of the game in the fourth quarter.
Terry misses wide-open shots. Barea travels. Jason Kidd misses his last two shots.
"It was working for a while," Dallas star Dirk Nowitzki said Saturday. "Maybe we stuck with it too long. But afterwards, you're always smarter."
Dallas fans may wonder when their favorite team is ever smart. If panic hasn't crept in, team divisiveness has popped up, although the players put on their best faces Saturday after Carlisle benched Caron Butler for the entire second half Friday and played Shawn Marion fewer than 17 total minutes.
In other words, Cuban pulled the trigger with a stunning midseason trade to bring Butler and Brendan Haywood from Washington. It took 21/2 playoff games before Carlisle pulled the plug and used the same bunch that lost to the Nuggets in last year's Western semifinals.
The second-guessing was rampant.
They blamed the refs for one-sided calls. Erick Dampier, Dave Stern on Line 2.
They blamed their coach for changing players' roles. Marion said he couldn't be effective "if I'm pulled in and out like a rag doll."
They blamed the basketball gods of bad breaks and bizarre bounces.
Hey, Mavs, invest in a mirror. It will expose your inferior interior defense, and your players' uneven performances and poor halfcourt offense.
The Spurs didn't sink a single three-pointer and still won. One of their stars breaks his nose and still drives to the basket. There's your mental toughness right there.
Mavs, you can't get five total buckets from four of your starters and win a playoff game.
It's as if they expect to lose.
The Mavs took out the Spurs in five games last season and went through them during their 2006 run to the finals, but San Antonio has more often been the black cat that constantly crosses Dallas' path.
It seems painfully obvious that Dallas is facing as big a psychological battle as it is a physical. But Kidd ain't buying it.
"I'm too old for that," he said.
Or is he too old, period? He's hit two of his last 13 shots as the Spurs go over the tops of screens and do not allow him to get set on his three-point launches.
Tonight's Game 4 at the AT&T Center looms as the biggest of the year for the pressing Mavs, yet another franchise-defining contest for a team that is fast developing a reputation as the Chicago Cubs of the NBA. Dallas must win to have a prayer in this series.
It's true that the Mavs won 55 games to earn the No. 2 seed in the rugged West and led the league with 27 road victories, and they'll never need that road-game resolve more than tonight. As Dirk said, "We've proven we can win in this building."
But where's all that offensive versatility that makes Dallas so hard to defend? Where's the huge size differential, when San Antonio gets as many rebounds and blocked shots as Dallas? Oh, right, on the bench.
After dropping two straight to the Spurs, the Mavs stand on the precipice of almost certain elimination, should they go down 3-1 in this best-of-seven series. If they fall, does Cuban blow up the team in the offseason yet again?
This team isn't imploding. It could have won Game 2. But it didn't.
Kidd has been practically invisible the last two games, making a single field goal in each of them.
Marion showed nothing offensively and then wondered out loud why his minutes were so significantly reduced.
Butler, channeling his inner Wizard, has too often disappeared, scoring just two points Friday.
In fact, were it not for Nowitzki, Dallas might be down 3-0 already. He's getting the stuffing beat out of him like a Fiesta piņata, but has hung in there. Dirk's getting almost no help. While these incredibly shrinking Mavs contend panic has not set in, it wouldn't take much imagination to spot it with another defeat.
"This ain't easy," Terry said. "If it was, we would have swept them by now. But we had a nine-point lead. A championship team holds that lead and walks away with it. These are two championship teams going at it."
No, Jason, the Spurs are the only team in this battle with banners at their arena. Four of them. The only thing amidst the rafters at Dallas' American Airlines Center is, well, rafters.