It’s high time we jumped off the hottest new trend in the NBA – not talking about the Dallas Mavericks.
Much like their arch-rival Spurs, the Mavs just continue to win-win-win, while everyone covering the NBA just kinda takes it for granted.
(Mavs Moneyball aside, although even they have a semi-lax “business as usual” vibe to the whole thing.)
Just how good are the Mavs playing? Well, after their win over Indiana last night, they’ve now won 12 in a row for the second time this season. It’s all good in DAL, basically.
Speaking of the aforementioned Spurs…guess who is playing the aforementioned Mavs tonight? Yep, the aforementioned Spurs!
There’s so much aforementioning going on, it’s actually a little too hot in here to write about this game.
Actually, that’s not entirely true. You see, the Spurs, in sharp contrast to what we wrote earlier in this post, are actually struggling a bit lately. They know it, and are feeling the pressure of tonight’s matchup.
“It’s a game we’ve got to win,” Duncan said. “It’s a situation where we’ve lost two here in a row on the road. It’s a game at home where we’ve lost too many already. It’s a division opponent.
“There are so many reasons for it to be whatever you want to call it: a measuring stick, a good game, whatever. It’s a game we have to be focused and ready to play. It’s going to be big for us.”
We take no special joy in the Spurs’ drop to 4th in the West – in fact, we like it when they’re winning, if only because the comment wars between zack and (fake) Tony Parker get all the more heated.
Y’know, now that we think about it, we take no special joy in the Mavs success, either. Both these teams are kind of boring anymore, aren’t they?
Seems to us we’d have been better off just skipping right to the Lakers-Kings post and avoiding this altogether, since it holds no interest. By our count, we’ve told 14 separate lies in an attempt to appear enthralled by the Dallas Mavericks.
That’s wrong. People don’t like that. What’s in the box? Which word should be italicized in this sentence? Not ‘word’ – that was a mistake.
The game is on ESPN.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: If that weren’t enough good stuff going on for Dallas, owner Mark Cuban is featured in the new series of Blackjack print ads. Unless we’re totally off, they not only slapped a goatee on the man, but also trimmed about 20-25 pounds off him.
Okay, we’re obviously totally down with the Cavaliers beating the Spurs last night, but we almost wish it hadn’t happened.
Why? Because of the way it happened.
Cleveland had 44 points at the end of three quarters.
Not only that, but Gregg Popovich got himself ejected with about five minutes left, Larry Hughes got hot for the first time in like 10 games, and Tim Duncan spent a full 17 minutes arguing one call.
Basically, it’s the classic Cavs scenario where they’re lucky to win, and now they’ll assume they’ve done the “righting of the ship” thing, which means they’re all but guaranteed to lose at BOS tonight.
That’s not even the real issue, though. The real issue is Cavs Head Coach Mike liking the way this went down.
“We all showed mental toughness, we all showed grit. We won the game the right way.”
“[Larry Hughes] is a testament of the mental toughness and the mental grit that I’m talking about. He turned the ball over in the first half, he missed shots in the first half, but the one thing he stayed with is his defense in the first half. He got it done by being a vocal leader, and in turn, that shot was able to go down.”
Nice.
Hey, is there any possibility we can install an offense that doesn’t lead to sub-high school level scores, missed shots, turnovers, and boos? Wouldn’t that be the simpler solution than counting on Coach Gregg getting himself intentionally ejected?
We feel like an ass for bashing our own team when they just beat one of the best in the NBA, but there are no other options here. They’re doomed if they keep playing this way.
Not only that, but they’re largely unwatchable. That thing was torture last night, and not because of the tension of a tight game or anything like that.
By the way, any Boston fans out there that want to wager on the game tonight are welcome to bring it, but you have to let us take the Celtics.
Also, did you know that Eva Longoria is famous?
To those of you who were accusing Cavaliers supporters of “drinking the Kool-Aid” and such things, we hope you were watching ESPN last night.
There was this game on, and it was between the Cavs and the Spurs.
It was in San Antonio, and all this cool stuff happened.
Stuff like Cleveland’s defense, and Cleveland’s poise, and Cleveland leading the whole game, and Cleveland withstanding a late push by Duncan/Parker, and LeBron’s dominance, and Gregg Popovich not wearing a tie and looking like his mid-market sales job that he hated but was good at had just been made irrelevent by an advanced computer program, causing him to go on a sad, reckless bender, and like we said, cool stuff.
Yeah – they won. So there.
“To see this type of poise against this kind of team in this type of environment is good,” Brown said. “No I didn’t see this type of poise this early. We were a new coaching staff and a new team. It’s a little different now because the whole nucleus is back. That comfort zone is there because we all know each other and we all know what each other is supposed to do.”
It was indeed what they were supposed to do.
Other things also happened that didn’t absolutely have to happen, but when they did, it was extra neat.
Things like LeBron taking off from WAY out and dunking over Tim Duncan in the first quarter. Seriously – WAY out. Like from the jumpball circle. It was a real wtf moment – go to ESPN and see it 50 times.
Hopefully tonight’s game against the Bobcats (With a Shannon Brown appearance? Please?) isn’t a letdown game – we’ll see. Every night seems to be a test for the Cavaliers this year – “Can they win against a great team on the road? Can they avoid losing focus after that big win?”
That’s what we meant when we wrote that this team would feel like it had something to prove during the regular season, and if you saw their focus last night, we think you could start to agree with us.
Kool-Aid for everybody. That’s what you critics don’t understand, by the way – we’re not drinking the Kool-Aid. We’re serving it.
(NOTE: Has that WNBA chick doing the sideline reporting been fired yet? Never, ever, ever have we seen anyone so awkward and nervous. We know it was unintentional, but we did like when she called Eva Longoria “Ava”.)
(NOTE 2: San Antonio is down with a LeBron-laden Finals.
Undeniably one of the best divisions in the NBA. Also one of the most interesting and the most boring. NO/OKC is worth keeping an eye on, but is anyone really expecting them to do anything? DAL/SA will be there, and everyone knows it. HOU will have injuries that result in averagocity. Memphis already has them.
Watch anyway. Learn something about taste.
Discuss.
We present this picture without alteration and without commentary.
Here it is.
Do with it what you will.
The story behind it.
(Thanks to MOM, our 145th most loyal reader.)
Watch this, then join us dans le below:
Here are our thoughts:
1) Scared now.
2) Never going to France now.
3) Just like what we imagine Tony is really like now.
4) Wondering if that isn’t supposed to be funny in France now.
Whatever the case, we’re guessing you’re watching that at least 5 times.
Okay, you win.
We’ve got all kinds of stuff cooked up for “The Crepes Are In the Oven” when the time is right, but our brain wouldn’t stop, and here’s the first t-shirt. Available now over at the YAYsports! Store of Purchasable Items
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Couple things of note on the store – that image you see for the back is now the back of almost all the shirts (except PAU!, Renaldo, and some of the Big Ben’s) – we finally figured out how to get a smooth high-res silhouette of Mamba himself. Therefore, if you’ve got an old-school shirt, it’s now a collector’s item.
We’ve also added a new Who Shot Mamba? shirt to stand proudly alongside the I Shot Mamba shirt. That one has a little different back – same Mamba outline, but an EXCITING, new way to tell gawkers the web address.
Lastly, we adjusted the pricing so similar models are actually the same price. We think we’ve lowered some, too. Who knows – just go look.
(Oh, and for the newer readers out there, this is what the hell we’re talking about.)
That sure felt like an impending disaster last night, but the Mavs managed to hold off the Spurs in OT, and 98.4% of the country walked away happy.
We’re not sure what makes us feel better – that we get to watch more Mavs, or that this cuts down the number of times we have to hear the “never underestimate the heart of a champion” by at least half.
The phrase was kind of special when Rudy T said it like 11 years ago. Does it truly need to be dragged out every time the Spurs or Pistons score a basket?
Anyway, Mark Cuban is happy as hell, and offered some analysis after the game.
“When they took the lead, we took back the lead,” Cuban said.
Words upon which billions of dollars were made, right there.
The big question becomes “where do the Spurs go from here?” The big answer, of course, is “who cares?”
We hate to say this, and hopefully it’s not bad karma, but we have an awful, awful feeling about tonight’s Mavs-Spurs Game 7.
If this continues to play out parallel to Cavs-Pistons, it means Dallas is going to fall on the road, and the Spurs are one round closer to the Finals matchup that ruins arguably the best playoffs ever.
In an effort to hype up the rivalry, Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is doing his team no favors by verbally trashing the city of San Antonio and then bragging about how fun it is on his blog. We added the “verbally” in order to make it clear Mark isn’t literally driving around littering.
Then there are cities with zero sense of humor.
The worst? San Antonio. There isnt even a close 2nd. The bleacher bums have filtered down to the lower bowl and they are living up to their past.
Last week when we were there, there was a front page article about how much better San Antonio was than Dallas.
When I got the chance to return volley the other night during an ESPN radio interview, I certainly and happily did. The Riverwalk river is nasty. I know it. Everyone who lives in San Antonio knows it. I said it. I just know that on crowded nights, everyone who walks that thing is afraid to death that some drunk is going to stumble by and knock them into the water. Its that nasty.
That’s not the complete thrust of his statement – that’s just the San Antonio trashing part. He goes on to say that it’s all good-natured ribbing, and that what he’s doing is trying to make San Antonio-Dallas a rivalry that inspires national interest, like the NBA’s verison of Yankees-Red Sox.
It’s a great plan…with many flaws. For one, the Spurs are boring. Two, your rivalries alpha dogs are a German, a Frenchman, and Tim Duncan. Three, uninteresting is another word for “Spurs”. Four, you shouldn’t do this the day before your team plays a Game 7 on the road against the defending champs.
We love everything you’ve done for the NBA, but in this particular case, you’ve screwed things up for your team. You’ve turned yourself into the instigator/villian, which makes the Spurs the underdog, especially since they’re coming back from 3-1.
One thing you never want to do is make Tim Duncan the underdog, because we don’t know why. It seems like a really intelligent thing to say, doesn’t it? “Never make Tim Duncan the underdog.” Doesn’t that just sound like something meaningless a sportsradio host or guest would say? In fact, we’re so sure it’s a great definitive statement, we’re going to say it no less than eight times in five minutes tonight on AOL’s Sportsbloggers Live, regardless of whether it makes any sense or not.
Here are our thoughts after a night of not sleeping much. When we did manage, we were having dreams about Paris Hilton being our girlfriend. There was no sex or anything – we were like really in love.
Don’t know what that means. Anyway:
1) It sure seemed like the Cavaliers were set up for another dramatically positive finish…then they allowed four offensive rebounds in 50 seconds??? Credit to the Pistons for going nuts on the glass.
2) Horrible mismanagement of the game at the end. The players have to know to call a time-out there. That aside, LeBron screwed up – yeah, Flip was open, but Flip hasn’t made a shot in 6 games. (By the way, if you’ve been reading awhile, you know that we’ve said it since we got him – Flip is the poor man’s Ricky Davis.) Mike Brown took the blame, but this is on the players – as the ABJ’s Tom Reed says, they lost their poise, or brains, or however you want to put it.
3) Pretty much the whole fourth quarter was just bad. For some reason Z was sitting, and we went away from what had worked in the first half. The “have LeBron go 1-on-1 from 25 feet away” offense was reinstalled, the Pistons were all over it, and it was a series of turnovers.
(One of the first plays of the game, Drew Gooden cut down the middle of the key without the ball for like the first time all season. Dunk. God, we can’t wait until next season when there’s a key assistant coach installed who’s an offensive guru. Can you imagine LeBron playing in a system where people regularly move without the ball?)
4) We thought the game was over with the 2-handed LeBron dunk over the entire Pistons team.
5) Cleveland fans are doing the typical over-reaction, screaming that the entire team needs to be torn apart, and whining Shot/Fumble/Drive. This wasn’t one of those games, c’mon.
First of all, this isn’t over yet, although we fully expect the Cavaliers will be given a 0% chance by everyone tomorrow. Secondly, this wasn’t some “shock ending”. It was a hard-fought game by both teams, and the Pistons won. They made some tough shots and worked the glass at the end. Ball bounced their way this time, just like it bounced the Cavaliers’ way in the previous three games.
Game 7 should be a war, and it somehow seems fitting that if the Cavs are going to do this, they do it in that fashion. That’s about it – it was a tough loss, but it is what it is. Both teams worked hard, both made some key plays, and both made some mistakes. That’s what the playoffs are.
6) Since this is probably the only post we’ll do today…the Mavs. We pointed out the similarities in these two series yesterday, and it looks like they really are the same. Dallas mismanaged their game in the last ten seconds and took a tough loss at home.
That’s three Game 7s for Round Two! Fun for fan, okay! Yes, a-number one! Blue jeans!
