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Anything to get your mind off the Laker asswaxing is ok with me brah!
what if the spurs, pistons, and mavs all had the exact same record at the end of the season BUT the spurs owned the season series w/ the mavs, the mavs owned the season series w/ detroit and detroit owned the season series w/ the spurs??
who gets HCA in the playoffs?
Anything to get your mind off the Laker asswaxing is ok with me brah!
lol. mouse just when i was done ing about the spurs pathetic play against the lakers you had the BRING IT UP AGAIN!Anything to get your mind off the Laker asswaxing is ok with me brah!
thank you Amuseddaysleeper for asking questions I am to scared to ask, I was wondering the same thing also
your welcome hooters girl
i'm thinkin that HCA will only matter should the spurs/mavs/pistons end up facing each other in the playoffs and then they'd simply look at the season series to decide.
Since we a are doing "what If's?" what if, Dirk never got hurt in the Spurs vs Mavs semi finals?
Simple. If the Mavs/Spurs played, Spurs get HCA over them. If Mavs face Detroit in Finals, Mavs have HCA, and if Spurs/Detroit meet, Detroit has HCA.
As simple as that
next question: Why did the NBA change the rules after the Spurs won the 1999 NBA Championship?
To keep the spurs from a repeat!
Why did they change the defensive rules after Detroit won the 04 le?
I would like to go toe to toe with Stern!
There can't be 3 teams in the finals.
So it's really a moot question.
And in the 2-3-2 format, just how much of an advantage is HCA anyway?
To my way of thinking it is possible the team with the best record could win the first 2 on their court, go on the road and lose 3 and suddenly find themselves pressured to come up with two wins in a row. In that scenario, I think you throw HCA out the door.
Detroit, in 2004, was the first team EVER to win the middle three at home in the 2-3-2 format. Since only one team has ever done it, it stand to reason that you are going to drop one of those three. That means that to win the series, you have to take one of the first two AND one of the last two, ON THE ROAD. HCA in the Finals is HUGE.
I assume you're referring to the 2003 Western Conference Finals. I've argued about this over and over and over again with my loser friends from Dallas, so I'll go through my side of it with you.Since we a are doing "what If's?" what if, Dirk never got hurt in the Spurs vs Mavs semi finals?
To preface, this argument is mainly statistical, since you can't really get anywhere by throwing out unsubstantiated assertions like "the Mavs played better without Dirk that year" or "the Mavs would have still thrown up a 4 point fourth quarter even with Dirk on the court" or whatever...you can just never know. So here are some stats:
Game 1
Dirk: 38-15
This was the game where they started doing the Hack-a-Bruce in the second quarter, made a big comeback, and won on a Finley layup over Robinson in the waning seconds. Dirk was a beast in this game. Finley had 26, Nash had 22. Final: Mavs 113, Spurs 110.
Game 2
Dirk: 23-10
Spurs blew out the Mavs. Finley had 29, Nash had 12. Spurs win, 119-106.
Game 3
Dirk: 15-9 in 40 minutes
Leading scorer for Mavs was NVE with 16. Mavs shot just barely over 40% from the field and 66% from the line. Another Spurs win in a monster defensive effort, holding the Mavs to 83 points, 20 below their season average. Spurs win 96-83.
Game 4
Dirk: hurt
Finley and Nash had 25 each. NVE had 22. Spurs win, 102-95.
Game 5
Dirk: hurt
Finley had 31, NVE had 21. This was the game where the Spurs were up 19 in the second half and then blew their huge lead (as they had done so many times that season), and Finley and Nick annihilated the Spurs with wild jumpers that somehow managed to go in (as they had done so many times that season). Final: 103-91
Game 6
Dirk: hurt, likely coming back for Game 7
NVE had 19, Walt Williams had 17, Finley had 13. Spurs win 90-78. One word perfectly describes this game: KERR-ching! Dallas scored 9 points in the 4th quarter, but 5 of those were in garbage time when most of the fans had already left and Cuban was there on the bench looking like he was at the Antiques Road Show and just found out that the "heirloom" he dropped $2 mil on is a fugazi that you could buy in Time Square for 20 bucks.
So here are a couple of facts about this series:
1. Against the Spurs, Finley was a better Mav than Dirk. Losing Dirk in '03 was more comparable to losing Derek Anderson in '01 than it was to losing Duncan in '00. They look even when you consider that Finley scored 36 against the Spurs in the regular season when Dirk missed the first game, whereas Dirk scored 34 against the Spurs when Finley was out for the third. But notice that Dirk's production over the first three games of the series was steadily declining, while Finley was much more consistent. The Spurs developed a defensive answer for Dirk in the set offense in the playoffs (just like they have this year), but had no answer for Finley. Remember, Finley was also the work horse who brought Dallas back to win those come-from-behinds in Games 1 and 5...it definitely wouldn't have been _irk. Without Finley, this series would have likely been 4-0 or 4-1. Without Dirk, you can extrapolate the same 4-2 finish.
2. The Mavs played the Spurs tougher without Dirk than with Dirk. The Spurs were 2-1 against the Mavs both with and without Dirk. However, the Spurs were a net +23 in the first three games against Dirk, but only +7 in the last three games without him. Putting control of the team in the hands of Nash and Finley was what got them that game 5 win, but it's also what got them that game 6 loss.
Now obviously I'm not saying that the Mavs were a better team without their best player. That would be silly. That was the kind of stupid that Barkley actually tried to convince us of on the TNT boredcasts. But what I am saying is that Dirk's presence wouldn't have changed the outcome of that series since the Mavs actually were MORE successful against the Spurs without Dirk than they were with Dirk and they STILL lost in 6. Of course, it's all just speculation, but the numbers don't support the claim that losing Dirk was the bad luck that kept the Mavs from winning a le that year. As good as the Mavs looked against the Spurs in the regular season [asterisk], come playoff time they just didn't have the experience or coaching needed to win in the third round
[Asterisk] - Mavs lost twice to the Spurs (once without Finley, once without Dirk) and beat them once in a meaningless game at the end of the season (with Duncan and SJax sitting). The other Mavs victory came in mid-season with both teams healthy and it was a blowout (despite the 7 point margin of victory).
Last edited by conqueso; 03-12-2006 at 02:59 PM. Reason: grammar
Then there'd be even more evidence of what a choker Dirk is in the playoffs.Since we a are doing "what If's?" what if, Dirk never got hurt in the Spurs vs Mavs semi finals?
Anything to get your mind off the Laker asswaxing is ok with me brah!
I'm sorry but for you mavs fans that complain about dirk getting injured the question SHOULD be "what if CHRIS WEBBER never got hurt in SECOND ROUND?" then it'd be the spurs beating the KINGS in 6
san antonio was simply the better team that year and nothing has changed since
Bingo. Amazing how Mavs fans convienently choose to forget this fact.
Then again, given that they are just following the lead of their Fearless Lead Whiner, it's not amazing at all.
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