By Mike Fisher -- DallasBasketball.com
      ‘Melo & Nellie. And two supposedly factual NBA headlines clashing this weekend, both deserving deeper analysis:
      1) That LeBron James is clearly better than Carmelo Anthony; 2) That Don Nelson is somehow incapable of winning a title.
      Consider a second straight Mavs loss, this one at home on Saturday afternoon to the Nuggets, 107-102 in a game in which Dallas held a 20-point lead with 20 minutes to play.
      NBA game are, by nature, roller-coaster events. Trailing teams almost always make runs. But those runs usually fall short, coaches always say, because there isn’t enough gas left in the tank to finish making the final climb.
      After winning nine straight, Dallas has now lost two straight in large part because it couldn’t hold a late lead. It was eight points in Utah before surrendering a 14-4 run in a late three-minute span. Michael Finley (who finished with 37) had just single-handedly outscored Denver 20-16 in the second quarter, giving his team a 16-point halftime advantage, which became a full-blown 64-44 edge with 8:48 to go in the third.
      And the coach probably deserves some of the heat here.
      Dallas permitted just 37 first-half points; if we’re going to grant Nellie and the coaching staff some credit for that (and we do), then we’ll have to assess some responsibility for a second half in which Dallas allowed 70 points and 66-percent shooting!
      How does Denver scored twice as many points in the second 24 minutes as it did in the first 24?
      Said Nellie: “We let our guard down in the second half. They snuck up on us and then we got one of those cold spells and we couldn’t do anything. I’m pretty disappointed with our second half. We played so well in the first half and I keep assuming that it’s going to continue. Sometimes it doesn’t.’’
      We’ll also question Nellie for his decision to provide extensive rest time to the trio of Dirk Nowitzki, Steve Nash and Finley. The Big 3 sat out together in the second half, at a time when it was clear Nelson assumed he could afford to do so.
      In fairness, Nellie didn’t waste too much time in getting Nash back in the game for Travis Best. Also in fairness, it’s not like the other four guys in the game were stiffs; Walker and Jamison didn’t have good games, but they don’t suck. Josh Howard was needed as the only answer to Carmelo Anthony. Shawn Bradley had yet another competent offering.
      But frankly, we never feel very comfortable when The UberMan is sitting. And in the moments when it appears he lacks intensity (maybe a little too often this year?), we’d prefer he play his way through it.
      Each of the Big 3, to their credit, seemed to take this one hard.
      Nowitzki: We're not that good that we can turn it off and on whenever we want.’’
      Finley: It’s an illusion, he agreed, “when everything offensively is coming easily and you think that's the way it's going to be the whole game.’’
      Nash: “We played like the clock was going to run out and we were going to win."
      Anyway, there is a third and more pinpoint moment for Nellie bashers to exercise their lungs: Inside of a minute, Mavs down 3, a sense of urgency apparent. Nowitzki sets up on the right wing, beyond the arc, launches a 3 and. … is fouled! Nene (Formerly The Artist Known As Hilario) tried a veteran trick, nudging Dirk on the elbow to disrupt his shot in a way the ref wouldn’t notice.
      Oh, cripes. The ref didn’t notice.
      And Nellie kind of lost it.
      Some technical fouls serve as motivation for a team in need of a butt-heating fire. Other technical fouls are the result of a guy losing control of himself. Nellie’s was of the latter variety, because there was nothing to gain --except for Denver, which used the T to extend its three-point lead to four points.
      “We got the ball where we wanted it,’’ said Nellie of the team’s feed-Dirk mentality.
      We did take time to marvel at ‘Melo, who we recall as being a dominant interior player in his freshman season leading Syracuse to an NCAA title. He has already blossomed into a do-everything pro (what baseball scouts would call “a five-tool player) with a perimeter game so sound that the Mavs had to assign Howard to chase him.
      LeBron is more spectacular, but only slightly. LeBron might have a brighter upside, but only slightly. At this moment, Carmelo is the better player (though in the WWF-style front office of David Stern’s NBA, you can bet the duel will end with an improbable perfect split in the balloting for Rookie of the Year, ala the Kidd-Hill “coincidence’’ of 10 years ago).
      Anthony is proof again that it’s all about players. Denver’s roster is suddenly stacked with interesting talent (Camby, Nene, ‘Melo, Andre Davis, Rodney White, Boykins), a nice transformation from a few years ago, when, as the Fox Southwest team of Matt Pinto and Bob Ortegel noted with far too little irony, the Nuggets’ concept of a star was Tom Hammonds.
      Because it’s about players, we now remove for now our boot from Nellie’s throat. And we close with a recent quote from Nellie, who discussed with NBA.com how close the former Celtics player once came to going back to Boston to coach:
      “I had a chance at coaching the Celtics after Bill Fitch left, but I decided to stay in Milwaukee. Going there probably would have changed my entire career. I think I would have been able to win two to three championships with Larry Bird."
      A craftily-made point by Nellie, eh? He says, without saying it, that the reason he’s never won a title is that he’s never had the right talent, and that has he coached Bird, he would have, of course, long ago removed that monkey from his back.
      Nellie’s only error here? He misjudges us. Because for now, we don’t need him to win an NBA title. We just needed him to beat Denver.