iggymcfly

Pujols took batting practice yesterday! Hooray! The savior's on his way back! Hopefully, facing Midcard 4 Life will keep me in first for one more week until he returns.

$1000 on the series plus $250 on Game 6 plus $185 on the over on Dirk's points + assists. For the NBA/NHL playoffs as a whole though, I ended up up $100, due mainly to betting on Dallas in the WCF and Miami in the ECF.

I know. Jesus! He already made series winning/tying shots against Memphis and San Antonio. How many clutch shots have those faggots Iverson and McGrady made that won playoff series? Avery made rookie mistakes at the end of Games 3 and 6, pure and simple.

You people aren't getting it. It doesn't matter what the Nets do. The Mavs have an outside shot next year, and maybe the Suns. After that, D-Wade's just going to keep winning title after title until LeBron gets enough help around him to stop him. I say the Heat win the championship the next four years in a row before LeBron, playing for the Lakers finally beats him in 7.

I know Avery was a great coach for most of the year, but here's the thing, imagine this was a question on a coaching exam: Your two star players are Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Terry. Nowitzki is a franchise player, one of the top three in the league, and he's made two huge clutch shots to win series just this season and has been known as a clutch shooter for several seasons. Terry is a good player, who's come up fairly big in big games, but he's spent most of his career with one of the worst teams in the league, and he's never hit a game winner in a major game. Both players have been good three point shooters throughout their career. Dirk is 10-22 from the field this game and 1-2 from the three point line. Terry, on the other hand, is 7-24 from the field, and 2-10 from the 3-point line. Who do you want shooting a three-pointer to tie the game? Now, would anyone here honestly get this one wrong? Would anyone want someone who got this question wrong coaching their team? I mean I just don't get what happened here. It's not like they ran some deceptive play that looked like it was for Dirk and ended up giving it to Terry. Terry just dribbled the ball up the court and shot it. This shit drives me crazy. I mean why? Why, why, why, why, why?

I don't know about that. (Dallas being the favorites next year.) The thing is that at this stage of his career, Wade's just going to get exponentially better season by season. With the experience of getting a ring at the age of 24, he's going to be even more unstoppable next season and every season after that. This was Dallas's golden opportunity, and they just blew it. The idea of waiting 12 more months to even get another shot at Wade (and then probably losing that too) is just excruciating. I feel like I just got stabbed right now.

He probably will, but that's what's so frustrating about a young coach. They make stupid fucking mistakes where anyone with a little bit of experience would know better. Even though it's a terrible comparison, we had a first-year coach my senior year of HS football, and after two good plays, he decided that in the middle of the playoffs, he would overturn our whole offense and turn us from a running team into a passing team. Well, three interceptions later, we lost 21-7 to a team we'd already beat earlier in the season. It's the same thing with Avery. There are only about 4 guys like Dirk in the entire league, and you can't ignore them in crunch time, just because you think you have a cute play drawn up. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

Yeah, I guess that's Game 3 I was thinking of (besides tonight). There's not much you can do with 1.5 seconds from fullcourt, but the lob, and giving the ball to Terry were both TERRIBLE fucking decisions.

Was Avery even watching in Game 4 against Memphis? Game 7 against San Antonio? Seriously, I'm dumbfounded that he wouldn't even try to get the ball to Dirk for the key shot in Game 5 or Game 6.

I don't feel like finding the Avery Johnson quote, but whoever made it was 1000% right. If he just got the ball to his superstar, the Mavs would have just taken the series in 6. He does NOT deserve that Coach of the Year trophy.

Dirk would have made the god damn shot. I don't care if he had to take it trough a triple team from half court, HE WOULD HAVE MADE THE GOD DAMN SHOT! FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111

FUCK! Why couldn't they have gotten the god damn ball to Dirk on that last possession. He's one of the most clutch shooters in the league, and for the second game in a row, they completely ignored him on the play of the game.

If anyone on earth but Dwyane Wade does that, it's an offensive foul. That's FUCKING BULLSHIT!

I have to say, the officiating's been pretty even this game. Wade got a couple phantom calls early, but unless something changes down the stretch, it's going to be the players on the court that decide the game. Dallas has been doing pretty well with Shaq on the bench; it remains to be seen if they can keep it up when he comes back into the game.

God, this is a hell of a game. It's probably just the possibility of elimination, but it feels about 100x more intense to me than Game 5. I didn't really expect the Mavs to win Game 5, so I felt like it was kind of a bonus if they did. This game though, I've had my heart in my throat since just after the start of the 2nd half. The Mavs are coming on, and I still feel good about a victory, but I'm definitely into uber-nervous mode. Cocky mode left the building a while ago.

I've got that anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach. The good news is that the last time I felt like that was Game 5 against Phoenix, whe the Suns took a 9 point lead in the 3rd before Dirk took over and ended up with 51. Still though, the Mavs need to step it up now on the offensive end or else they're going to give away the season.

Dirk stopped being aggressive in the second quarter, while Stackhouse, Harris, and Howard decided that the solution was for them to take the defense on 1-on-5. Avery will get it fixed in the second half. They looked like they were in trouble against San Antonio and Phoenix at various points too, but they turned it on when they needed to.

Well, the "foul" on Daniels marks the third time tonight where Wade's got to the line on absolute bullshit. There was the flop where he wasn't touched, one time where he elbowed the defender as hard as he could and got to the line and then this last one.

I wasn't joking about this either. When the Mavs needs a big game, Dirk comes up HUGE. He is absolutely dominating this game thus far.

These are the real Dallas Mavericks. That 25 point margin I mentioned for the game is no joke.

Shit, I decided to punt saves before the draft. I'm 9-0-2 on holds so far though, so it's worked out pretty well.

I have too much faith in Dirk to get really pissed. I believe with all my heart that he's scoring a minimum of 40 points tonight (56 if I had to guess a number), the Mavs will dominate the Heat, and they'll eventually win the title. Pissed off Dirk is as good as MJ in his prime. He's like the fucking Hulk that way.

2-1! Didn't think that goal would count, but I'm glad to see that it did.

I hate to say it, but I think the Oilers are fucked at this point. That 2-man advantage was as good of a chance as they're likely to get for the rest of the game.

No way. When they get really pissed off is when they play their best basketball. When they were all pissed off about the Terry suspension, they came out in Game 7 against SA and played their best half of the season. Then, despite the referees putting Duncan on the line every time he touched the ball regardless of whether there was a defender within 10 feet of him, they made clutch plays down the stretch and held on to win the game. Here are my predictions for the rest of the series: Game 6: Dallas 112 Miami 87 Game 7: Dallas 102 Miami 101