Worth It All

The lost glasses -- currently on the old pair and have a nice tension headache -- the sore feet -- stuck in standing room only -- and the lost voice.

Technically, the Mavs clinched a playoff spot on Monday night as Memphis officially slid under the waves. But that wasn't what it felt like. Much depended on last night. The second seed. The chance of someone else taking care of the Lakers (please please let Portland get the eighth seed!). Getting some pride back after getting owned when the Mavs hit Denver last. Writing a new page after getting knocked out of the playoffs. The tiebreaker, just in case.

I was terrified. In an eighty-two game season, there are exclaimation points. The home game against Boston and the game in Portland were two of the most recent, and the Mavericks dropped them both for bad reasons. Surely not this night. But suppose . . . suppose . . .

It is my delighted pleasure to report that the Mavericks did not let that happen. Play down to an opponent missing their best defender and their head coach, playing their second night of a back-to-back? Nope. Let Carmelo do what he does? Nada. Let Chauncey put the team on his back? Niente. Let themselves get outphysicaled by a team whose defensive raison d'etre is to beat you up without seeming to? Nein. Let the bad/lack of calls mess with their heads? Hell no!

Pick your cliche -- the Mavs stepped on their necks, broke their backs, sent them home to their mommies, beat them up and stole their lunch money, reduced them to piles of bones and shredded blue cloth, nuked them back to the Dark Ages. It all boils down to a sixteen point win, in fine style. In amongst that, we get fine play from the bigs, a freed Roddy B, Jet shifting into overdrive in the fourth, and oh yeah, that Dirk guy -- TRIPLE DOUBLE!!!

I'm tempted to call it a throwback game -- since when does Dirk take more than one or two threes per game anymore? -- except it's not. MVP? Try Hall of Fame.

Props must also go to Shawn Marion and Caron Butler, who held Carmelo Anthony eighteen points (!!!) below his season average. It's easy to harbor a little bit of resentment towards Shawn, because his shot just looks so bloody awkward; you expect it to miss and overlook when it hits. But opponent megastars tend to have bad nights against Dallas, and Marion's the reason why.

So after last night, we're in second place (with Utah breathing down our necks, that's a problem) and in case of Dallas and Denver finishing neck-and-neck, we got the tiebreaker. That's something; it is, in fact, a great deal.

Denver Nuggets, this song's for you:


-BJ