MAVERICKS VERSUS HORNETS GAME TWO: TUESDAY, 7 PM EST (TNT).

[darthska]

Man, this is mildly depressing.

Obviously, this series has nothing to do with the Lakers, and the winner of this series wouldn't even play the Lakersfor another 2 rounds (if the Lakers even make it that far).

But it's still mildly depressing to me, because Kidd is my man, man. And Chris Paul is... just... I mean, I know basketball. And I know that just becauseKidd is a 1 and Paul is a 1 doesn't mean that Kidd (and Kidd alone) is responsible for guarding Paul; I know that it's one team versus another team,and that just because Kidd and Paul are both PGs doesn't mean that it's all-of-a-sudden Paul of New Orlean's vs. Kidd of Dallas.

I get that.

But still, they are both PGs, so they will be measured against each other.

And Paul... is just...

---

Not that it's any consolation for this season (should you be bounced, Dallas fans), but I really think will be a force next season. I can see how this Kiddacquisition can produce unsatisfactory results this season, because it was midseason; you had already built an identity, established a way of doing things...and then that needed to be changed.

But I think that an offseason of preparation will work the kinks out and produce the results everyone was expecting with Kidd's second stint in Dallas.

Also... and I can hear the roaring laughter right now, and I already feel sorry for the keyboards and laptops that are about to be destroyed because of drinksbeing spit out all over them right now... but I really think that Isiah Thomas could get y'all back to championship form. This Knicks debacle was notentirely his fault, and I have never, not one time, said that it was. He was coaching a team that wanted to do their own thing; they didn't want to listento any coach. I believe in Zeke's basketball mind, and I think that he could mold a team as talented as you guys into a powerful force.







Like I said, sorry about your now-ruined keyboards.

 

[CP1708]

^
What he say?

Isiah?

Ska tryin to sabotage the other teams in the West.

 

[N41D]

Come on, Ska...

 

[darthska]

I didn't expect to get a lot of agreement on that.

It's not like I'm some huge Zeke fan or anything, but y'all can't tell me that...

... he does NOT have a great basketball mind.
... the Knicks players listened to him.

He DOES have a great basketball mind, and the Knicks players DIDN'T listen to him.

Y'all can't tell me that statement is false.



















Larry Brown?

No? Strike 2?



O.K., O.K., O.K.... Jeff Van Gundy.

 

[datznasty]

I somewhat agree Ska. I mean, an Isiah coached team wouldn't get mentally and physically punked the way this Mavs team has the passed few yrs. Hell, ifplayers won't have a level of "manhood," Zeke as a coach isn't even afraid of stepping out there and standing up for his guys.

This is where you like to have a Danny Fortson, a Ruben Patterson, a Kenyon Martin, an enforcer type dude to inject some testosterone, some moxy, some manprideinto your team. Granted preferably your enforcer "not to be #%!+*$" with guy would also have some skill too, but at this point I'd take whoever Ican get who has some balls if I'm the Mavs. It's down to the point of just pride. You may not be a good defender, a guy may be faster than you, jumphigher than you, etc. but there always has to come a point when just as a man you say to yourself, "He's not scoring on me this time," or"he's not getting this next rebound, I won't allow it," and with the Mavs you just don't see that. Figuratively speaking, they don'tresist at all. They just pull their pants down, bend over, and take it (too far? If so, I'll edit).

Mavs fans always harp on the, "well we have a bunch of good guys, guys you can leave your kids with, guys you'd like to live next door too,"card. That's great and you're right, I probably wouldn't drop my daughter off at Ruben Patterson's house for the weekend, yet I would feeltotally comfortable with my 8yr old or teenage daughter being babysat by Dirk and you know why, because I know he's not a threat to do anything, because ifhe did, I feel like SHE WOULD/COULD KICK HIS !@!. And that's not a good thing. So yes, if I need an NBA player babysitter I'm probably calling someonefrom the Mavs. But if I'm in a playoff game and things are getting chippy, I'm getting my manhood questioned by dudes tapping me on the cheek whiletalking !!$$, well somebody get me Ruben Patterson's number. Don't worry about the kids, I left them over at Dirk's house, but David West and thesedudes is talking !!$$, let's get'em.

 

[super noblekane]

Originally Posted by Mamba MVP

knightngale wrote:

---

dirk needs to demand a trade to the lakers

why so he can bring his getting punked attitude to the lakers, let him suffer in dallas, at least pau plays in the paint at 7 feet



dude come on now.... Dirk is a beast....

 

[datznasty]

I got a better one Ska, Paul Silas

 

[darthska]

^ That's definitely solid. I didn't think he was really given a fair chance in CLE, and I think that if he would have stayed, the Cavs would be more ofa force than they have been under Mike Brown.

You're right, man; you guys need someone that going to infuse so toughness, pride, and a hard-a__ spirit into your system. It's not necessarily aboutreplicating what the Bad Boy Pistons did, but you guys do need someone that's going to make sure his team is genuinely offended with getting wiped off thefloor, a coach that's going to have his team's feelings hurt for getting beat by 20.

 

[N41D]

You're right, man; you guys need someone that going to infuse so toughness, pride, and a hard-a__ spirit into your system.
The sad thing is, that's EXACTLY what Avery Johnson was supposed to do. He was supposed to be the guy that gave this team a shot of intensityand toughness.

This team needs a change. Badly.

 

[allen3xis]

Isiah, just no

He's a players coach, the players on the team DID like him before this season. They were listening and it didn't matter, he didn't have them playany defense. He is probably the worst motivator in all of basketball, think Avery is bad?? Isiah just sits with a smirk on his face ALL the time

He was a great basketball player, I refuse to believe he's a great basketball mind

 

[SneakerProSr.]

I just want a team that doesn't get punked at this point.

After last year all I wanted was a team that if they got beat it was because the other team was better and not because they folded.

These dudes are folding like cheap chairs.

I have been cool with the soft jumpshooting stuff because we have always been good but it's time to blow it up. We are turning into the Sacramento Kings.

I love Dirk, dude has brought us from a joke to the cusp but he just can't get it done and even if he can I think the scars are too deep at this point todo it in Dallas.

Bill Simmons said it best when he said that the Golden State series was like a family getting robbed and held hostage in their house. No matter what youcan't go back to that house, those memories will always be there.

It's time to blow it up. I would make everybody available for the right price, Dirk whoever.

I much as I hate to admit this but I think the softness of this team stems from it's best player. It might even be a subconscious thing hell I don'tknow.

But this I do know the worst thing in the NBA is to be mediorce because you can't win and you can't get a team changing draft pick.

So I say keep Bass and throw an atom bomb at this team.

 

[illscan]

On the afternoon of May 26, 2002, I thought Byron Scott was a complete joke. His New Jersey Nets had just blown a 26-point lead to the Boston Celtics in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals, had just staged the biggest playoff collapse in NBA history, and these were Scott's two strategic moves in response:
1) He slept until 11 a.m.
2) He canceled practice at 11:30 a.m.
Coaches are supposed to do a lot of things after their teams choke, but sleeping in and rewarding their players with a paid holiday are not among them.

With the Celtics holding a 2-1 series lead, I thought Scott was hopelessly overmatched. I figured this would be the day that ultimately cost him his job, anotion hardened by the confession of one of his stars, Kenyon Martin, who was already talking in the past tense.

"It feels like we lost the series," Martin said.

Somehow, some way, his wasn't a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Nets won Game 4, Game 5 and Game 6.

Scott declared himself as a head coach right then and there. He didn't care that he'd be ridiculed for giving his players a mental health break inthe wake of the Game 3 disaster, and for publicly admitting he repeatedly hit the snooze button rather than rise before dawn and watch that horror film of atape.

Scott felt the pulse of his devastated team. He thought it needed love, not war, and his choice landed a practical joke of a franchise in the middle of itsfirst NBA Finals.

Another good deed that couldn't go unpunished: Scott returned the Nets to the Finals the following season, lost to Tim Duncan a year after losing toShaquille O'Neal, then didn't even make it to the next All-Star break before he was effectively fired by the future Hall of Famer Jason Kidd, whosechampionship aims are now being crushed by Scott's second team.

The New Orleans Hornets hold a 2-0 lead over the Dallas Mavericks because Scott's young point guard, Chris Paul, is embarrassing Scott's old pointguard, Kidd, who had ordered Nets president Rod Thorn to dump his coach in a different life.

Scott isn't about to comment for the record on the delicious irony involved. He's not going to play that game - not until this first-round series isover, anyway.

But he wouldn't be human if he wasn't savoring the prospect of eliminating Kidd after Kidd eliminated the Nets by turning on the same executive,Thorn, he convinced to turn on Scott.

New Jersey missed the playoffs with a 34-48 record after six consecutive trips because Kidd put his own agenda a country mile ahead of his team's. Hewanted to play with Kobe Bryant last year, then decided he would stand a better chance with Dirk Nowitzki this year. It looks like the worst kind of bet. Notonly is Kidd facing an early exit, but Scott is the one bum-rushing him out the door.

Turns out New Orleans is a far more legitimate contender than the Mavs, who have been overwhelmed by the Hornets' energy and athleticism. Under Scott,Paul has developed into an MVP candidate, David West has developed into an All-Star and Tyson Chandler has developed into the frontcourt force Chicago oncehired him to be.

For this, Scott should be named NBA Coach of the Year, no questions asked. It's a just reward for a man who was fired while in first place in New Jersey- as the most successful coach the Nets ever had.

Scott has shepherded the Hornets through Hurricane Katrina, through the back and forth between Oklahoma City and New Orleans. He has established a programthat gets better with time, winning 18 games in his first year, then 38, then 39, then 56. He has proven himself capable of seizing a division title whileliving in the same division with the mighty Spurs.

Scott has managed all of the above while embracing the same Joe Cool look and demeanor that defined his coach with the Showtime Lakers, Pat Riley.

"I'm always thinking about all the things Riles did and the speeches he gave," Scott once said, "because I've never had a coach likehim."

Confidence has never been a page missing from his playbook. When Scott was an Arizona State prospect asked to compare himself to an NBA player before the'83 draft, he said, "Magic Johnson, except I'm quicker and can shoot better from the outside."

Johnson and the other veteran Lakers barely spoke to him at the start, angry that their popular teammate, Norm Nixon, was traded for Scott'sservices.

"Guys were just trying to toughen him up and put pressure on him so he'd never be rattled by anything he saw in the playoffs," Riley once toldme. "And when we won back-to-back championships, Byron was the one who really rose to the occasion."

Scott has spent nearly his entire basketball life in the playoffs, so he knows the drill.

"It's like riding a bike," he said.

He rides it better than most. To defeat the Celtics in 2002, Scott put in new pick-and-roll plays for Kidd and Keith Van Horn the morning of Game 4 andwatched them work the way the Lakers' new plays worked against Boston following the Memorial Day Massacre 17 years earlier.

In his first series of '02, his first as a playoff coach, Scott answered a Reggie Miller dagger - a long 3 at the Game 5 buzzer to force overtime - bycalmly walking into the huddle and telling his frazzled Nets, "Don't worry. It will just take us an extra five minutes to advance."

Scott could've won the whole thing the following year if K-Mart didn't come up smaller than a referee's whistle against the Spurs. Hecould've stayed "on a path to a dynasty," in Riley's words, if Kidd didn't harden his reputation as a coach-killer extraordinaire.

But Kidd got his way and installed his man, Lawrence Frank, who hadn't made it out of the second round before he finished 14 games under .500 thisyear.

Frank and Eddie Jordan were the Nets assistants said to do much of the heavy lifting, with Scott merely in charge of dressing the part. Only now, Frank andJordan are hurting in the lightweight East while Scott is living large in the wild, wild West.

He has the Hornets playing defense and making life miserable for one of the great playmakers of all time. If Kidd offers to shake his hand at the close ofthis series, Byron Scott should do what Kidd used to do best:
Pass.