Lie in it, Chachi Don't worry. This has been a long time coming. It's been in the cards. Hiding in the weeds, waiting to pounce.
The Dallas Mavericks just aren't that good. It's inconcievable. They win 53 games. They rule the road. They play well at home. They'll jump up and roll off eight straight and beat a couple of good teams along the way.
All the while, I sat and watched. And I wasn't impressed. I wasn't alone. There are real media types, folks who know the game a lot better than me saying the same things.
There was just something wrong. The Mavericks are flawed and apart from a catastrophic moment or a bout of luck, it will not get better. The Mavericks are not championship-worthy and will stay this way until that moment comes. The Mavs proved this with an awful, worst-than-it-looks 104-96 loss to the Portland Trailblazers.
Mark Cuban is not going to tear it down to build it back up. Not that he or Donnie Nelson know how to do this anyway. They will apply bandages and stopgaps for the forseeable future on the off chance that better teams will falter and maybe they'll luck into a Finals appearance.
They're soft. They can't shoot. They're old. Schemes hide their overly apparent defensive insufficiencies. They don't rebound (Dirk Nowitzki was outrebounded by Ian Mahinmi, Brendan Haywood, Gerald Wallace, Marcus Camby and LaMarcus Adridge). They needlessly turn the ball over. And, as always, they couldn't get to the basket if their lives depended on it.
It seems that we are all knee-jerking to a bad West Coast road trip playing the mighty Lakers and the troublesome Trailblazers. No. This is the exclamation point to a run-on sentence.
This is exactly what we've seen all season. Yet, those wins are turning into losses as things tighten up and everyone's looking to get into playoff mode.
Don't look now: The Mavs have a probable first-round date with the Blazers. There will be blood.
