I ate my own words last night. It was really uncomfortable.
Not only was I tied up and force-fed, but they went down about as smoothly as a day-old donair and rested twice as bad in my stomach. I felt like throwing up all night and hardly slept.
The Dallas Mavericks, and in particular Dirk Nowitzki, did what I couldn't have fathomed last night; sweeping homecourt from the Lakers with a decisive win that left the two-time champs reeling. Disco (and unlikely sidekick JJ Barea) buried LA down the stretch with a series of cold-hearted daggers; Kobe was beside himself, Pau was (predictably) helpless, hell Jack Nicholson was losing his cool. Boos rained down from the Staples center while the "favorites" put themselves in a crippling hole against, of all teams, the one with the most troubling past of playoff collapses.
Game 2 forced us all to wake up to the reality that these are indeed a new Dallas Mavericks; now fortified by likely the best defender they've had in the past decade, they've started to adjust and be able to win games without consistent scoring depth. They still have a decent corps of guns that can punish a sleeping defense (see: last night), but these Mavs have adopted a defensive toughness unseen in the past, and it's made them a completely different team in the playoffs. Their history was so deep that their playoff success was one of those "see it to believe it" type phenomena. Well...Believe.
The odds and momentum are heavily in their favor. We've seen this movie before, but there's likely a plot twist or two in store.
No comments:
Post a Comment