<font face="Tahoma" style="font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span name="intelliTxt" id="intelliTxt"> The most frequently asked question during the Mavericks surprisingly brief appearance in the 2007 Finals went something like this:</p> "Why are the Mavericks trying to adjust to the Golden State Warriors game when they owned the best record in the NBA? Shouldn't the Mavericks be forcing the Warriors to adjust instead of the other way around?"</p> We really didn't get a satisfactory answer from Avery Johnson, who started Dirk Nowitzki at center in Game One - a move for which the Mavericks paid the price. Dallas lost that game 85-97 as the Warriors set the tone for the entire series.</p> Dampier was all but a no-show in the series. The company line was that the Mavs were trying to go with match-ups that gave them the best chance to win against a smaller, quicker Warriors. That sounded good, but the Utah Jazz wasted no time proving that the bigger, more methodical team can easily beat the smaller team in a playoff series. It seemed the Mavs were just unwilling to give it a try.</p> That didn't make sense, either. Avery didn't win Coach of the Year for being unwilling or unable to make the right adjustments on the fly.</p> Perhaps we can now begin to make some sense of it.</p> On Friday, June 15th Erick Dampier underwent surgery on his right rotator cuff. The injury had bothered him for some time, but the original diagnosis was that with a little rest Dampier could forego surgery. Obviously that estimation was wrong.</p> So what if the reason Avery went with a smaller lineup for most of his first round failure was because Dampier really was unavailable? As it is Damp played only 14 minutes in his high game, while logging an average of just seven minutes per game and failing to even get that in three of the six games. It seems Dampier was physically unable to go, and that was the real reason why the Mavericks didn't go big and punish the smaller Warriors for their lack of size. That's why Dirk Nowitzki has had to endure the treatment he received from the national media when he was named the NBA's MVP. That's why Avery departed from his career-long pattern of figuring out how to improve his team and give them an edge on the fly. He didn't have a starting center available to him.</p> It all makes sense now, doesn't it?</p> This is not the official story, and it won't come out in any team press release. But rest assured, as we look back at the 2007 playoffs as a retrospective history of the Mavericks organization it will become clear that the reason the Mavericks went small - essentially trying to beat the Warriors at their own game - it was because they simply didn't have the option to do otherwise. Dampier may not be all that, but he is an integral part of the Mavericks' system. Without him the team simply isn't equipped to stop small, penetrating guards. That's why the Warriors had a field day dancing all over the Mavs.</p>Link to story What do you think? </span></font>
No excuse for allowing your team to play like Pansies. They were going through the motions that whole series. I'm sure we could've created a decent strategy that didn't heavily rely on Dampier, especially against a team weak in the post anyway...
