From one finals to another

The last few posts I had, I was looking forward to the regular season ending and the playoffs starting. Then, I would have some interesting stuff to post about. Then finals happened. The couple weeks I spent wrapping up classes and working on finals took up most of my time and completely threw me off my rhythm.

Now that finals are over and I'm sitting in front of a computer for eight hours a day, I think it's time I try to get back into that rhythm. And you know what? It's a shame that I haven't posted for the last couple of weeks, because I missed out on some good stuff. Here are some things off the top of my head that I missed:

• Tim Duncan vs Joey Crawford -- I will be campaigning for this to be on the undercard of the inevitable De La Hoya-Mayweather Jr. II fight.
• Golden State Warriors vs Dallas Mavericks -- The series paved the way for the Spurs to have possibly their easiest route to the finals ever. And it gave me something to harass 50% of my friends about until November.
• San Antonio Spurs vs Phoenix Suns (or more specifically, Robert Horry vs the city of Phoenix) -- The most controversy the Spurs have ever been involved in. Before that, it was Phil Jackson campaigning for the Spurs to have an asterisk next to their 1999 title. For what it's worth, the rulings against Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw were unfair considering the circumstances, but they clearly violated a rule. As much as it sucks for the fans of the Suns and that series, the right ruling was made. The rule definitely needs to be addressed in the offseason.
• LeBron James vs Expectations -- LeBron knows what he's doing. He didn't care when people criticized the way he was playing in the regular season, when he was saving a lot of energy for the playoffs. Now he's four games away from reaching the NBA Finals against a team that he almost single-handedly beat in last year's playoffs. The Eastern Conference playoffs might finally get interesting.

Hopefully I'll be able to keep on track now that I have the time. We'll see. Enjoy the conference finals.

Me and Mark Cuban vs. Sam Smith

I caught wind of an article by Sam Smith, a columnist for MSNBC.com and the Chicago Tribune, today on SpursReport.com. Smith predicts that the Spurs will win the NBA title this summer and and claims that the Spurs are his NBA champion from last season. I'll repeat that again for emphasis. Sam Smith claims that the Spurs are the real NBA champions of 2006.

I don't repeat that because I'm proud to hear it or want to rub it in the faces of Heat fans or Maverick fans or fans of any team that got past the second round of the playoffs. I repeat it because it's ridiculous.

Let's get one thing straight, the Miami Heat won the 2006 NBA Championship. There's no doubt about it.

Smith claims that the Spurs were the best team during the playoffs last year and only lost to the Dallas Mavericks in the second round because Mark Cuban intimidated the NBA's younger officials during that series, giving the Mavericks calls that should have gone against them.

I agree that the calls seemed a little lopsided in that series, one of the reasons I have a personal vendetta against Steve Javie, but I don't think Cuban's presence and antics had much to do with it.

Smith also states that the Spurs are a classy organization and won't complain about or blame their losses on officiating (which is true), and wonders what the Mavs would have done if those calls went against them.

Well they did. In the Finals.

I don't know if Smith remembers, but Dwyane Wade scored about half of his points from the free throw line in that series.

(And if you're wondering, yes, I am going to break down all of Smith's points in his article and counter them. Or at least the ones I disagree with. Why? Because it's a beautiful day outside and I'm stuck at work on a Saturday with nothing else to do.)

The main reason Sam Smith attacks the Mavericks and Cuban so blatantly in this article is probably his running feud with Cuban.

Later in the article Smith gives his reasons for why he thinks the Spurs will beat the Mavericks and win the title this season.

1. "(Gregg) Popovich has quietly kept playing time down for the entire roster."
2. "This Dallas team is haunted by that Finals collapse." (Against the Heat in last year's Finals)
3. "What we saw (last year) was that the Spurs could play the Mavs' game and have success. The Mavs can't play the Spurs' game"

Those are Smith's three main points in his article.

The only one of those points I agree with is the first one. I have been keeping an eye on minutes this season because this is a veteran (a nice way of saying old) team. The Spurs would have had a better chance of beating the Mavericks last year if they were healthier and I attribute those injuries to age.

But the coaching staff has done an excellent job of monitoring the players' minutes this season. In the games I have seen so far this season, Avery Johnson hasn't done as good a job with his players' minutes.

I vaguely remember a game this season where the Mavs were up by a good twenty or so points for the entire fourth quarter but player his starters through the final minute. I don't remember who they were playing but I remember thinking that he should have gotten Dirk Nowitzki and his other starters out of the game earlier.

Last season the Detroit Pistons had a regular season much like the Mavericks are having this season, albeit in an easier conference, where their Flip Saunders mismanaged his players' minutes during the regular season, and they flamed out in the playoffs against the Heat. I don't know if the Mavs will have a similar fate, but who's to say they won't?

As far as Smith's claim that the Mavs are haunted by their collapse during the Finals last year, who knows? They may talk about it a lot, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are haunted. Oftentimes something like that leads to motivation, which could explain the Mavs great regular season. But who really knows what's going on inside the Mavs' players' heads other than the Mavs? Definitely not Sam Smith.

Smith's final point is one I disagree with to a point. The Spurs can play the Mavs game. The Spurs can play the Suns game. The Spurs can play any team's game. They are one of the very few teams in the league with the personnel to excel at any style of play. But they play the best when they control the pace and play the game under their circumstances. Just ask the Phoenix Suns.

I think that the Mavs can play the Spurs game. After all, who knows more about the Spurs game better than Avery Johnson, who guided the team to its first NBA championship? The problem is, the Mavs can't play the Spurs game as well as the Spurs.

Smith's only criticism of Popovich was that he had the Spurs play the Mavs game during the series instead of the other way around. The Spurs had no choice. The Spurs won championships forcing teams to play their style of play and play big because they had two dominant seven-footers in the paint to stop the ball at the rim.

In last year's Spurs-Mavericks series, the center combination of Rasho Nesterovic and Nazr Mohammed was so ineffective that Avery Johnson and the Mavs were able to play a smaller lineup featuring two point guards. Had Nesterovic and Mohammed produced at all during the series, we would probably be weighing the Spurs' chances at winning three NBA titles in a row.

But because Nesterovic and Mohammed couldn't produce, the Mavs went small. When the Mavs smaller guys produced and the Spurs' centers couldn't, the Spurs were forced to go small. When the Spurs went small they couldn't protect the rim as well because Tim Duncan didn't want to get into foul trouble (because he was the Spurs' biggest offensive threat).

This gave the Mavericks easier opportunities to score in the lane and rendered the Spurs' defense much less effective than it is when there are two big men in the lane. And that, in essence, was the series. The fact that the Spurs took it to a game seven and were in a position to win that game, only to lose in overtime, should be a victory in itself.

If Fabricio Oberto and Francisco Elson can protect the rim and rebound the basketball in the playoffs this year you can expect the Spurs to win their fourth NBA Championship this summer and prove Sam Smith right, but for completely different reasons than he'll give you.