IMO Dallas was the best team in the league before Caron Butler went down. And they still finished the season winning 30 of their last 40. (Or something close) I can't get over how Barea continues to get to the basket time and time again.
Well, perhaps the Blazers would have made it past the first round, with the confidence of winning a series. I thought you were advocating playing the Lakers in round one?
I wanted the Lakers because it would've gotten us a lot of national attention and they are my most hated team. I wanted to see my favorite team beat my most hated team. I felt the same way last year. I want revenge for 2000. But I was not an advocate of tanking to affect who we would end up playing. I always root for us to win the game in front of us.
Great. Lionel Hollins disagrees, as he proved by benching his best players against the Blazers in the last week of the season. Now go post another few threads about Zach's redemption by beating an overrated Spurs team, and juxtapose it with how tanking is bad.
Or maybe our team doesn't suck like so many think. We actually were very close to winning that series (Losing game 1 when we could have won it). BUT... I think we conditioned them perfectly for the Lakers. We were physical enough for them to get that much tougher. Good for them.
Name me an NBA champion that tanked into the playoffs. Furthermore, do you have proof that Hollins tried to lose those games? You're making an assumption. Maybe he just wanted his players to be rested for the playoffs, regardless of who they played.
I believe that the referees are still retaliating against Kobe for his insult of one their brethren. When watching you don't really see anything where you say "the Lakers really got screwed there," but you also don't see what we have come to expect in Lakers games (especially at home) "That was not a foul!". What I see is that in any ambivalent situations, where they might call a foul or might not, they are not blowing the whistle. I've seen a lot of those iffy situations in which in the past the Lakers would have got a whistle, and now there is just a hard silence.
LOL! We weren't physical at all! The Mavs pick and rolled us to death and got pretty much whatever they wanted on offense in about 75% of the floor time. The reality is that they are a good team (maybe even a really good team?) but that doesn't mean that the Blazers are on their level -- minus Roy having an outer-body experience in game 4, they were on a fast track to winning a 5 game series.
In other words, the Lakers are no longer getting the favoritism from the officials they have in the past. Good, let them earn it like everyone else. I've been watching most of the second round games, and over all, I think the officiating has been very good. About the best thing you can say about officiating is it's been transparent. When you don't really notice the officiating, that's a good thing. They seem to be letting the players play and calling fewer fouls than the first round, but aren't letting things get out of hand (notice how quickly Dirk got a T for the elbow to the back of Artest's head in game one and how quickly Artest got ejected for smacking Barea in the face). And, I haven't noticed any glaring biases, like the 4th quarter of game 1 of the Blazers vs. Mavs series. BNM
LA was kinda unlucky last night. FTA and FGM are pretty much even but LAL was 2-20 on 3PM-A (Steve Blake 0-5) and basically got no contribution from their bench. 3 point shooting and bench play will likely be key throughout the series and Dallas seems to have the advantage in both areas.
So Nate has made the playoffs with his teams 5 out of 11 seasons, advanced out of the first round once in his entire coaching career, and you mock those of us who think he is a poor playoff coach? He has a .412 winning % in the playoffs, compared to a .516 winning % in the regular season. In those playoff series, he has won only 2 games in every year but 1. Nate's teams have also declined during his coaching tenure in both Seattle and Portland. Everyone blew smoke up his ass when the team increased it's win total every year, but you same people don't say a word now that we have lost more gams than the year before in 2 straight seasons. Injuries happen, and that is not his fault, but the same thing happened in Seattle except for a 1 year aboration that saved his job.....(If you remember back, Nate was on the hot seat and was on his way to getting fired before that season in Seattle)
Man, Oh, Man. Has anyone dared to venture onto a Flakers message board? How is the meltdown? Epic, I hope? Or perhaps they are all in stunned denial? This is good. This is real good. I can't stand the sight of Dirk NaBitchsky, but it's worth it to witness a bewildered and demoralized Flakers team and fan base. Booyah!
