Nugs, Mavs, For At Least One More Game

Hell of a game last night. The Nuggets dominated pretty much all the way through only to let it slip away in the end--it happens. I would have been surprised if they'd won, suspected they wouldn't and am thus not upset that the two teams are coming back to Denver on Wednesday.

Not having Birdman in there was a big problem. Nowitzki had a ton of open looks, and he's just too long for most everyone else on the squad to guard. Carmelo played a fantastic game, but the Nugs missed too many open shots in the 4th quarter when they could have put it away for good.

Eh, no worries. My feeling is that this next game isn't going to be very close. As in, Denver will win by 20-30. I could be wrong...but after douchebag Dallas fans decided to act like their crybaby puss of an owner and harass Kenyon's family and Carmelo's wife to the point where security got involved, I have a small suspicion that, by the end of this upcoming contest, the Mavericks are going to be looking at the big hole in their collective stomachs where their entrails used to be.

Cuban, by the way, won't be at Game 5. What. A. Shock.

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Nugs/Mavs Recap, Two Days Late Just Like You All Asked For

By now, the sportiverse has thoroughly assassinated the ref who didn't call the foul on Carmelo before his game-winning three. I'm not going to chime in with some longwinded breakdown of what happened, or didn't happen or should have happened.

Just these few things:

1. Rick Carlisle started complaining about the refs after the first game, a contest that his team lost by 14 and wouldn't have won if Carmelo had decided to take a nap in the fourth quarter. So spare me this "woe, woe are we Mavericks, so ill-treated by the Powers" bullshit. The refs had Denver on lockdown that whole game--and it can be convincingly argued that the reason they *didn't* call that last foul was to give Dallas some home sizzle, because an off-balance 3 is hardly automatic and, if 'Melo had missed it, the game would have been over. This whole song-and-dance about cultivating the refs is for loser teams like the Charmin-soft Mavericks and their whinebag fans.

2. Mark Cuban is a fucking tool. Talking smack to Kenyon Martin's mom? Really? Dude, I know you're rich and full of yourself, but perhaps you'd like to take a step back and think about that one. It ain't Kenyon's fault that your team is staffed by a bunch of simpering flop-divas. Nope, it's yours. Wear it, Cubes.

3. 3-0. I imagine Dallas will win tonight and then we'll scrub 'em off the floor in Denver. Bring on the Rockets (please)!


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Smoking a Cuban

Right, yes, I've been neglecting my Nuggets playoff recaps. Whattya want? I'm unemployed and drunk. I sit around the house in filthy Hanes yelling at a picture of Dean Singleton. I ride my bike to the liquor store..good God, someone please hire me. I'm one shit-stained pair of dungarees away from standing at Broadway and Alameda with the "WHY LIE, NEED BEER" sign.

The last I checked in with some NBA goodness, the Nugs were still in the process of dismantling the New Charloklaorleanshoma City squad, which they completed in a tidy 5 games, the only loss by two points. That was expected. The New Charloklaorleanshoma Citians are basically only Chris Paul and the Dude Who Used to Be David West. So no real surprise.

Ah, but the Mavericks, our second-round matchup, that's a different story. One of the more dominant squads in recent memory, even if could never cash in on a title. Headed by likely the only highly drafted foreign transfer student who ever panned out, Dirk Nowitzki--don't be bringin' that Toni Kukoc up in this. Deep, deep, bench. Cagey veteran leadership in the form of wife-beater Jason Kidd. So the Nugs went 4-0 against 'em in the regular season, who really thought that would matter? The Mavs didn't have Jason Terry in any of those games. Playoff basketball is old hat in Dallas.

Plus, their owner is a huge fucking sideshow who browbeats refs and plays media mind games as well as anyone in major professional sports.

*Quick side note about Mark Cuban: back when he first bought the team, right after he sold his company for billions, before anyone knew who he was, my wife (then girlfriend), was at a tradeshow in Fort Worth. One of her clients--she's in sales--a nice old rich Texan, kept raving and raving to her about trying to hook her up with his friend, an internet geek who just sold his company.

She was all like, eh, have a boyfriend. But the dude kept coming back for every day of the tradeshow--he even recruited his wife to come sell her on going out with his buddy. 'You're his type,' they kept saying. 'He'll love you.' They even brought out the biggest gun of all: 'he owns the Mavericks!'

But she kept giving them the polite brush-off. Because she had no idea what the Mavericks were. When she came home and told me the story, she asked if I'd heard of them. I had. A few months later, Cuban married some corporate saleswoman. I, however, have never lived it down.*

But even with all of that, a funny thing happened in the opening matchup. The Nuggets pounded the playoff-ready Mavs by 14.

Sure, it's but one game. But all you really needed to see from this one was: Nene had 24 points. If Nene keeps on scoring at anywhere close to that level in this series, it might not get to 5 games.

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