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abacusmon?
I like this guy. My sentiments exactly.
GO MAVS!
abacusmon?
Like I said before game 6. Mavs with Terry=victory. Mavs without Terry=loss. Terry and Dirk are the mavs offense and the rest are just role players.
I agree. That's why I feel confident going in to game 7. I think we are the better team.
Mavs, Cuban hit where it hurts
12:24 PM CDT on Friday, May 19, 2006
It should've been no surprise that Mark Cuban ventured into the film business a few years ago. He's shown a keen interest in the visual arts during most of his time as Mavericks owner.
Ask Chris Webber. Shaquille O'Neal. Yao Ming.
All became subjects of Cuban productions in recent years, productions he was so proud of that he shared them with the league office. Wanted it to see how Webber dragged his pivot foot and the referees never called it. How Shaq always stepped across the free throw line before his shot hit anything. How Yao set moving screens that weren't drawing whistles.
The chicken came home to roost Thursday.
How else to explain the sudden unexpected suspension of starting guard Jason Terry for tonight's Game 6? The league announced late Thursday afternoon that it was benching Terry for punching Michael Finley during a scrum with seconds left in Game 5.
Finley was unusually agitated after the grappling. Terry wasn't assessed a foul on the play. No one seemed to see anything unseemly happen. A jump ball was called.
But the Spurs went Cuban on the Mavericks sometime after the game. They sent a tape to the league office that showed Terry landing a punch to Finley's groin.
It was an easy decision for league disciplinarian Stu Jackson, who earlier in this postseason tossed Miami's Udonis Haslem for a game for angrily throwing his mouthpiece in the direction of an official.
Cuban, not surprisingly, disagreed with Jackson's penalty. A fine was due, he said, but not a suspension.
Oh, well. Live by Netflix, die by Netflix.
Cuban isn't the only NBA team boss who sends the league office tape. He's just made his team one of the biggest exercisers of the practice.
Now the Mavericks' great opportunity to move past the Spurs in the playoffs for the first time is in great jeopardy. With Terry and the home court, where the Spurs haven't beaten the Mavericks in two games during this series, it seemed like tonight's game was theirs to lose. With Terry in civvies, it will be the Spurs' to lose. This will test coach of the year Avery Johnson and his staff like they haven't been all year.
What, after all, are they to do? Return Adrian Griffin to the starting lineup? Griffin teamed with Terry until it became apparent after Game 1 that the team was better with Devin Harris joining Terry in the backcourt and trying to run past the Spurs. Griffin hasn't even played the last three games.
How about starting Marquis Daniels? Johnson has had to defend Daniels as being one of "his guys" because he seems so often to have little patience for any Daniels miscue, as was the case early in this series, when he snatched Daniels after a horrible turnover and foul.
Or how about return Jerry Stackhouse to a starter's role and sacrifice all that microwaved offense he brings off the bench? The bench is short of scorers as it is.
WFAA-TV
WFAA-TV
Jason Terry, on the bottom of the pile, connects with a punch to the groin area of Michael Finley in Game 5.
Of course, the NBA conspiracy theorists among us are probably saying that this is all a grand scheme by the league to somehow ensure that the most-anticipated matchup of the postseason, which is living up to expectations and then some, keeps going until the deciding Game 7 in San Antonio.
But that's pure poppy . Don King isn't running this show. And the way these playoffs have been going, what with all the overtimes and buzzer-beaters and nail-biters and upsets, the league doesn't need to orchestrate any theater.
The bottom line is that Terry, one of a locker room full of good guys for the Mavericks, lost his cool for a split second and, as a result, got what anyone else who committed the offense he did would get: a game off.
It wasn't Raja Bell clotheslining Kobe Bryant, which Bell did foolishly in Game 5 of the Suns' opening-round series against the Lakers to draw a Game 6 suspension. It wasn't Ron Artest elbowing Manu Ginobili in the head in the opener of the Kings-Spurs series, which cost the historically feisty Artest a Game 2 appearance. It wasn't Miami's James Posey bum-rushing Chicago's Kirk Hinrich, which cost Posey a game in the Heat-Bulls opening-round series.
But it was a punch. The league doesn't tolerate it; can't tolerate it. Terry has no one to blame except himself – at least for losing his cool.
Having been found out, however, after no one saw anything untoward at first, is something Terry can share with his boss.
Had the fist been on the opposition's arm, you can bet a tape would've been overnighted from Dallas to New York pointing out the transgression and calling for justice.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcon...e.22121a6e.html
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