My apologies for Nowitkness. By my definition, he's a troll. I'm trying not to be, athough your mods seem to have an itchy trigger finger. So does mine at Dallas-Mavs.com. Its a tough job, thats why I don't do it.
Your team deserves props for effort, as they are so banged up. Dallas played the last 6 week of the season with 4 of the top 8 players hurt. We started rookies, lost home court advantage to the Spurs, but got lucky, and stayed patient and brought everybody back with no setbacks. Your luck has sucked. But in this series, the Mavs are making a lot of their own luck.
You get my sympathies, because we Mavs fans have been where you are. Our last title hopes crashed along with Dirk's knee against the Spurs in '03. This year we got lucky with Amare. Hey, no apologies for that, you'll have him for 10 years and we'll be scrambling trying to defend him. I've always seen this year as our window of opportunity before Amare and LeBron go Bird v Magic on the NBA for a long time.
To me, the biggest difference in this series is the Mavs effort, getting back and defending the fast break, getting out on 3 point shooters, and using Diop to defend the paint. The PHX offense is based on getting easy buckets, and the Mavs certainly shut that down in game 3. The Mavs didn't slow the game down by taking 20 seconds to shoot. They won by forcing PHX to take 20 seconds, instead of 4, to find a decent shot. That's all effort, and if the Mavs bring it every night, it will be very difficult for the Suns. Avery's biggest contribution to the Mavs is demanding consistent defensive effort on every play from every player. If he's outcoaching D'Antoni, its by doing that every day in every game and practice since he took over. The players believe if they do what he says, they will win.
There is always the chance of some 3 point magic. But game 3 showed the danger of waiting for that. Many of you are blaming the calls, but even if Dirk missed the rim, why didn't PHX get the damned rebound? This is the WCF's...you can't get a stop down by six and get out-hustled, expecting the ref to get the ball for you. Watch the KVH alleged walk and you'll see he lost the ball going up because the defender hit it. The ref is right on top of it and signals tipped ball. The bottom line is if you're down by 6 with 1:10 to go, you need to make your own luck.
I will be very interested in seeing what moves D'Antoni makes next. He pushed all the right buttons to win 2 7 game series. Maybe he just doesn't have the horses to do it again. I'd never count the Suns out until its over. They can get too hot and shoot too well. But with 4 games left, PHX will have to be better than the Spurs to win 3. Next year, they should be. But hey, the injury excuse is better than what we had against PHX last year, which was no excuse at all.
