1n 2006....
George W. Bush was president. I couldn’t legally rent a car. Nicole Richie was not a mother. A gallon of gas cost anywhere between $2.50 and $2.75. The Patriot Act was renewed for the first time. Barbaro won the Kentucky Derby (ouch) and the Steelers won the Super Bowl. “Crash” won Best Picture at the Oscars, U2 won a Grammy for Best Album for some album that probably sounded like the one before it and kind of like the one that came after it too. Steve Irwin, Gerald Ford, Ann Richards, Sadaam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic all left this plane of existence. And the Mavericks and Spurs played each other in the playoffs. Of course, the Mavericks beat the Spurs in 7 games (seven bowel tightening games, I might add) to advance to the Western Conference finals where they would beat the Suns in 6 games and make it to Finals. Then I don’t know what happened after that. I fell into a deep diabetic coma and woke up and assumed that I missed the victory parade and carried on with my life as usual.
So here’s the part where you crucify me. Here’s the part where you remind me that this is NOT the same Mavericks team nor is it the same Spurs team and that nostalgia should not supersede the reality of this playoff series. And then here’s the part where I tell you to suck it. I went from not even having the hope to blog about the Mavs in the playoffs when it was looking like a Mavs-Lakers first round or a Mavs-Nuggets first round to watching them leap from #8 to #6 and seeing them defeat the Rockets in the final game of the season. Then I heard the Spurs-Hornets game went into overtime. Then I started getting the texts and IMs on my Blackberry. We were #6 and we were going to face the Spurs in the first round.
And so to all of you basketball nerds with your abacuses (I don’t know how to make the word “abacus” plural) and stat sheets and number crunching and logic, you say that I am reacting to this in a very childish and emotional way. You say that I just think that it’s about rivalries and 2006 and my schadenfreude at the Spurs not having Ginobli this time around and Tim Duncan not being 100% and the fact that the Mavs are trending up while the Spurs are on a downward trajectory. And you’re right. I do think it’s about that. Because wouldn’t numbers and percentages and stats surely lead one to believe that the 2007 Mavericks, with a 69-19 record and that year’s MVP, would beat the lowly Golden State Warriors in the first round of the playoffs. Can’t we just rely on the knowledge that while, yes, Baron Davis is pretty good, the Mavericks were better and this player could match up to that player and the Mavs could play small (note: THAT WORKED!) to counter the Warriors and everything would work out. There’s no way that the psychology of the Mavs meeting up against a team (or in this case, a coach) with a direct emotional and psychological connection that was still open and raw could affect the outcome of the series. Oh wait….
I guess this is where my basketball fandom gets irritated. I don’t care who can match up who to who. I don’t sit here and think how Barea can be quick like Harris was and who is going to slow him down on the Spurs and what we are going to do to stop Parker. And maybe that is what makes me a bad basketball fan. I want rivalry. I want stupid Spurs fans to complain about officiating at the American Airlines Center. I want Tim Duncan to get a technical for laughing from the bench. I want to see Eric Dampier and Michael Finley shake hands before the game then tear at each other like rabid dogs with gravy-covered pork chops tied to each other for four quarters. I want this series to go to 8 games even though it’s not possible. I want quintuple overtime in Game 7. I want this first round of the playoffs to still be going on as I am giving birth to my fourth child (current child count: 0). Because the headline on ESPN.com today is “Unavoidable Conclusion” under a picture of LeBron and Kobe standing side by side. So, you see, it’s been pre-determined that the Mavs will not make it to Finals. Or maybe even out of the first round. This might be the Finals.
That’s not to say that I don’t have hope for this team. I like these scrappy Mavs. I like the fact that Jason Terry has said that they might not even deserve to get out of the first round if they play like they have some nights (see also: nearly losing, if not for Terry’s shot with mere seconds left in the game, to the Timberwolves) recently. I like that better than Entitled (But Ironically Title-less) Mavs. I have eaten crow over my wrongness about Jason Kidd (Jason Kidd, I owe you one pizza pie. Sorry.) so many times this season that I might have to buy a rotisserie oven soon. I like these Mavs. I haven’t liked the Mavs this much since six years ago when I made buttons for the playoffs with Van Excel’s face on it that said “Van Sexel” and one with Steve Nash’s face on it that said “The Jordan Catalano of Basketball”. Because other than being my favorite basketball team and being something fun to do crafts about, I didn’t expect much out of them. Playoffs? Those are neat. Let’s go to those. Just being there is fun!
And I feel like that again. If I had a button maker, I would be making buttons right now. So all you real basketball fans can type into your graphic calculators all you want and laminate your shot charts but I’ll be the girl making voodoo dolls for my Santeria hexes out of the exquisite locks of Fabricio Oberto. Also, I took a lot of cold medicine before I wrote this.
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