Ejector Seat Reservation

We'll go ahead and get the bad stuff out of the way. Dirk, please come back. I don't know where your game went but please spend today looking for it. MVP does not stand for Mildly Valuable Player. For all the other Mavericks, let's try to work on those three pointers. Only hitting one three point shot in a game is sad.

Ok, now for the fun stuff. Fuck. Yeah. More than the actual victory, I am pleased as hell about the clear psychological effect the Mavs had on the Warriors. It's no secret that Nellie's biggest weapon in his arsenal is his acute grasp of mind games. His two big scorers losing their cool and getting ejected shows the cracks in the armor of Golden State and is a blueprint for the Mavs breaking them. Possibly even better than Baron Davis getting tossed for sarcastically clapping in the face of an offical after what he perceived to be a bad call was Stephen Jackson almost certainly assuring that he will be suspended from game 3 for refusing to leave after being ejected. Watching players that had 30 minutes prior been playing like the scrappy underdogs out to prove they can defeat a giant turn into bad-tempered louts was like that movie Blind Date where Bruce Willis takes a seemingly rad Kim Basinger out on a date only to find out that a few drinks turns her into a human tornado. The Mavs seem to slowly be gathering steam and finding ways to stop the Warriors' (or as Charles Barkley prefers, "those midgets") small but quick attack.

There is a chance that playing at home and being angry about the calls and ejections that sealed their fate could energize the Warriors. But I think it will instead leave them open to the possiblity of the Mavericks goading them into foul troubles and technicals. If the NBA would like to put together a reel displaying how to completely lose your cool, might I suggest it consist of the third and fourth quarters of last night's game.