Dallas Mavericks

[palami]

---

2010 NBA Playoffs - First Round - Spurs vs. Mavericks - ESPN

[palami]

Playoff edition:
25. Bill Russell (2,673 points)
26. Dirk Nowitzki (2,472 points)
27. Richard Hamilton (2,467 points)

[mark cuban]

I've been cynical about Dallas' contender status ("Really?" Mavs nation says, "You don't say?"), but the Mavs played much better over the final 10 days of the season and ended up with a respectable point differential over the final quarter of the season. The Mavs also are 23-7 since trading for Caron Butler and Brendan Haywood, which is superior to San Antonio's 20-11 mark in that time.

The difference is that San Antonio played one of the league's most difficult schedules over the final quarter of the season, while Dallas played the league's second-easiest schedule over the final quarter. Of the Mavs' final 21 games, 12 were against lottery teams, two others were against the lottery-esque Bulls and one was against San Antonio's scrubs -- plus, 12 of the 21 games were at home. So only six of 21 were against playoff-caliber competition, and they lost four of those games (and two others).

Meanwhile, San Antonio faced a murderer's row over the final month. Eleven of the Spurs' final 17 opponents won 50 games, and two others (Memphis and Houston) were respectable, plus 10 of the 17 were on the road. In that time, the Spurs beat Cleveland, L.A., Orlando, Denver, Boston and Oklahoma City, and posted a better scoring margin against the brutal schedule than Dallas did against its parade of softies.

What I'm saying is that the records deceive -- by most advanced measures, San Antonio appears to be the better team.

[palami]

DIRK Video: The UberBoy playing in high school ...



DIRK Video: The UberBoy playing in high school ... - Mavs and NBA Talk - Mavs and the NBA - DallasBasketball.com Boards - Message Board Yuku

Dirk as a high-school player in Germany. In some ways, The UberMan hasn't changed a bit!

[skeptic_rob]

good luck bro ugma nga dula

[palami]

Mavs-Spurs Preview: Can Carlisle Out-Pop Pop?

Analyzing The Coaches, As Dallas Sustains First Loss - Rick's Voice

By Mike Fisher -- DB.com




Since the final game in February, the Spurs have gone 18-8 while beating eight playoff teams: Phoenix, Miami, OKC, Cleveland, Boston, Orlando, Lakers and Denver.
Good, right?
“The last two months of every season that I've been in Dallas, they've always turned it on,’’ said an admiring Jason Terry. “You've got to give Pop a lot of credit. He knows what he wants out of his team, and he gets it.”
Credit given.
But ...
During approximately that same span, the Mavs played 29 games. The Mavs went 23-6 while beating Phoenix, Orlando, Miami, Lakers, Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Chicago, Denver, Portland and San Antonio.
That’s 11 late-season wins over playoff-bound foes.
So how about some credit for Rick Carlisle ... who essentially spent the last two-plus months of the season out-Popping Pop?
We preview Sunday’s Game 1 by breaking down the starting point of the Mavs-Spurs positional matchups: the coaching position, where Carlisle is already behind in at least one category: After Saturday’s practice, he’d lost his voice, too hoarse to speak at length. …


Gregg Popovich does have those skins on the wall: He’s one of just five coaches in history with four or more NBA titles. He wins playoff games (at 102-62, his career winning percentage is .618 is the fifth best in NBA history and his 102 playoff wins are the third most in NBA history. But does that have anything to do with this series?

Popovich spent Wednesday night at the AAC (before, during and after San Antonio’s regular-season-ending loss to Dallas) trying to gain some psychological footholds. He yelled at a Dallas-based cameraman, he tried to be coy about why he benched Duncan and Ginobili, he arranged for those two stars to participate in the pregame layup line ... and then sent them to the locker room for the night.
Clever ... but were the Mavericks fooled, distracted or affected in any way by the shenanigans?
No. An hour before the game, a Dallas source told me that the locker room knew SA “might lay down.’’ And that’s yet another piece of evidence in support of Carlisle’s approach.
Carlisle is 35-37 all-time in the playoffs, having accomplished the deeds by helping the Pistons, Pacers and Mavs to successful seasons. He has completely overhauled the Mavs’ approach multiple times when the situation called for it: When he felt Kidd was ready to full take the reins, when he believed the Mavs needed to be full-up-tempo, when the Wizards guys came over ...
Carlisle has broken his reputation as “unbending’’ and instead has applied his instruction to player (“Be Ready’’) to himself. The result? A “Mavs Makeover’’ that the franchise hopes can allow the 2006 Finals loss memories to fade while building on the confidence merited by Dallas’ second-seed finish this year.
Carlisle is never caught unready. He’s combined precision (all the way down to Dallas’ routine inbounds plays, the Mavs are light years ahead of where they were under his predecessor) with flexibility. And while Pop is getting all the pub for his Thursday “surprise,’’ it is actually Carlisle who by design holds the unpredictable cards ... because he holds them so guardedly.
Especially as of this moment, when he couldn’t express them publicly if he wanted to.
We tend to think of these games, all the way up to the coaches, as “Us vs. Them,’’ or better, as “Mars Invades Earth.’’ But in truth – especially when it comes to the coaches – most of the people involved are from the same family trees. There is nothing new under the coaching sun ... nothing Pop knows that Carlisle doesn’t also know ... and the fraternal sharing is such that Cleveland coach Mike Brown (maybe the favorite on the other side of the NBA bracket) is a former assistant to both men.

It is difficult to imagine anybody getting “outcoached’’ here. Pop’s got to make decisions regarding the level of play of Tony Parker vs. George Hill, and he’s still on that endless search for a way to stop Dirk Nowitzki. Carlisle is charged with properly assigning the right “Manu-stopper’’ at the right time, how to handle minutes for Haywood/Dampier/Najera, and maybe whether Roddy Beaubois can elevate the Mavs.

But overall, the respective talents of these two coaches are more similar than you might think. (And as illustrated above, what you might think is that “Popovich gets them ready to finish 18-8’’ without realizing that Carlisle must’ve gotten his guys “ready’’ to finish 23-6.)
Pop’s done it longer, and in part because he’s been blessed with the presence of a horse like Duncan, he’s done it better. This series is unlikely to be defined by whatever few differences there are between the coaches.
It’ll be determined by the horses.

[mark cuban]

games 1 and 2 are crucial. we need to win both.

[mark cuban]

[skeptic_rob]

mao gud ni naka among sa future sa spurs..

[palami]

good luck bro ugma nga dula