By Mike Fisher – DallasBasketball.com
This is about sins. And about Nellie’s wish that they be forgotten.
Outside of Dirk Nowitzki, they are getting nothing from their veteran stars, with Nash, Finley, Jamison and Walker all choosing an awful time to go south together. A basketball sin. They are relying on rookies in the clutch. A basketball sin. They shot 32 percent Tuesday. A basketball sin. They are asking Eduardo Najera, who started all of seven games this year, to counteract Sacto’s best player, Chris Webber. A basketball sin.
And the Mavs are down 0-2 to a team they believe they are equal to. That is a basketball sin.
But, reminds Nellie, pointing to Saturday’s Game 3 in Dallas, “One game just means a ton of difference. You get one win in the playoffs and all your sins are forgiven.’
Point taken.
This is no time to gnash teeth over the free-agency future of Steve Nash (is he costing himself millions by being out-dueled by Mike Bibby?) This is no time to wonder what Nick Van Exel might be doing right now (didn’t he lead the Mavs in scoring in six of their 14 playoff outings last year?) This is no time to wonder whether Nellie’s stay in Dallas will continue (how’s the weather in Maui this time of year?)
Says Nash: "As we saw last year in all three of our series, momentum switched with every win. It's a very fragile thing in the playoffs and that's why you have to stay even keel."
Despite the panic in the Dallas streets – and maybe in the competitive mind of owner Mark Cuban, who is wisely taking a cooling-off work day in Las Vegas, where he’ll stay at the Palms, owned by Sacto bosses the Maloof brothers – the Mavs themselves need to wash themselves of their sins, need to maintain an even keel, need to continue copycattng what has worked for the Kings.
Consider the fact that Sacramento ended the regular season in shambles, with back-to-back losses to underdogs Denver and Golden State, with 10 losses in their final 16 games. One game later – Sunday’s Game 1 of this series – Sacramento had put the regular season behind it.
Two games later, you can’t convince a King there even was a game that mattered before this week’s.
“Everybody has forgotten about that,’‘ says Nellie, enviously.
There are still signs of life here. The Kings team that choked down the stretch? These are the same fellas. The Kings team that struggles on defense as much as Dallas does? They may be kidding themselves, as evidenced by Vlade Divac’s quote, “"Obviously we are a much better defensive team than they are, so we took advantage of it." (Obviously? Really?)
The Kings team that is so great at home? They can be matched in the next two games by a Dallas team that is even greater at home.
So maybe the sins can be washed away.
Mavericks, start scrubbing.