The way you folks have been keeping the comments coming despite my inactivity (I’m still tied up on something and this will be a quick hit) has been superb and deserves many kudos. I’ll have something up on the second-round playoff games, hopefully before they start, but if I don’t, the bottom line is Bulls over Pistons, Spurs over Suns, Cavs over Nets and Jazz/Rockets over Warriors.
Some thoughts about last night…
The emergence of AK-47 and the ongoing disappearance of Yao makes the Houston-Utah Game 7 a real tossup despite the Rockets home court advantage. Folks who have read me for years know I’ve been a Yao disliker (you can’t really hate on the big galoot) from the start, mostly because he’s been so enthusiastically overrated. This year, Yao raised his game a notch and I began to buy into a piece of the hype. No more. When the largest player in the entire league can’t keep 6-9 (at most) Carlos Boozer from scoring in the paint, that is a glaring deficiency. Yao is 9 inches taller than Boozer. If you’re six feet, imagine defending against someone 5-3 in the paint. And the thing that supposedly represents Yao’s upside–that he makes his teammates better–certainly hasn’t shown itself in this series. It seems like T-Mac against the world out there, and while I give Chuck Hayes a pass as a glue guy who isn’t supposed to step up, Shane Battier, Yao and Rafer Alston, plus Juwan Howard, have a lot of explaining to do if Houston blows this series.
On the other side, Sloan’s troops have to be feeling pretty good about things. Their two underachievers, Mehmet and Kirilenko, both seem to have their groove back and Boozer is in another zone entirely (who matches up with him if the Jazz get to Golden State?). Deron Williams hasn’t even had the kind of breakout series I thought would be an absolute necessity for Utah to have a chance and it is still 3-3. The blame for that falls to Yao and he’s got one game to atone. Meanwhile, if the Rockets advance to GS, expect Houston to play 4 on 5 much of the time in transition.
On to Golden State dispatching the Mavs. I’d love to defend Dirk Nowitzki, if only in transferral for all the unfair things said about Garnett in previous playoffs, but the comparison is apples and oranges. Nowitzki did not help his team in any way shape or form last night: 8 points and 2 assists? As bad as the 2 makes look, the 13 attempts, especially alligned with the 2 dimes, shows that he simply was not a factor on the offensive end. And, ah, nobody on the Mavs was a factor on D.
How badly did the Mavs get whupped? Well, did you expect Golden State to own the boards, 52-38? How about a 67-win team facing elimination shooting 34 percent through the first three periods (the blown out 4th quarter, when they shot 8-16, doesn’t count)? Baron Davis was huge, no denying that, but does this team win without Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes going off the way they did at least 2 or 3 times apiece in this series. And what about the job Biedrins did both cleaning the class and making himself available on cuts to the hoop?
I’ve said this before, but the biggest fallacy heading into this series, and the one we should have all realized more thoroughly, is that Dallas is not an up-and-down team. The fact that everybody said they were helped them believe it, and enabled Nelson and the Warriors to suck them into exactly the type of game that went against the strengths. They force-fed Golden State’s confidence and the collective explosion that ensued was as glorious as it will be fleeting. Seriously, does everyone expect Baron Davis to keep this up versus either the Rockets or the Jazz? Are we going to keep watching Matt Barnes go 16-11-7 while playing tenacious defense? Is Stephen Jackson going to keep his shit together being guarded by Kirilenko or Battier? Golden State should be praying for a Houston win this weekend, because they match up with the Rockets a lot better than they do the Jazz. How long can this magic carpet ride last? Hopefully enough for another series as fun as this last one, although that is asking for too much.
Back to Nowitzki: Isn’t it time to start naming the MVP after the playoffs are over? Seriously, who doesn’t realize that that how a player performs in the post-season is the biggest factor in determining their value? How silly is it to deny that variable in the voting? Sure, it will penalize fabulous players on non-playoff teams and provide enormous weight to playoff performance. Anyone have a problem with that?
It isn’t just Nowitzki who should be keeping his shades drawn for the next six months or so. Jason Terry was shown to be a second-rate third banana this series, and deserves a hefty fine for pile-driving Baron Davis in front of the Warriors bench in Game 5–tell me Stephen Jackson isn’t suspended for a month is he does the same thing. Devon Harris was the classic guy unsuccessfully trying to be a leader. Avery Johnson was outcoached the entire series. And Mark Cuban should have paid Don Nelson the 6 million dollars he owed him.
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