OKC gets completely Dirk’d in Game 1 as Dallas wins 121-112

Thunderers, check out an outsiders perspective. Zards believes! http://zardsalards.blogspot.com/2011/05/fourth-reich.html

@ChilamBilam12
I wouldn't say Dallas played a near perfect game. Terry was hit or miss, Peja was cold, Chandler was okay, Marion threw up a lot of stupid shots and couldn't finish, Kidd hit one three, etc. I don't think either team played incredibly well, but Dirk and KD were awesome, as expected. I think Dallas kind of relaxed up 15 when OKC went to the four guard lineup. Peja and Terry both rattled out some threes that could've put that game away. Regardless, this is going to be a 6-7 game series.

@Mark!
They would put a small forward on him like Stephen Jackson and get in his jock. Bruce Bowen would guard Dirk in the same manner. It doesn't really work on him anymore. Dirk's become more versatile and physical since then, and will back smaller guards down, or just create a small amount of space and shoot over them.

JJJ :@kfmsooner
You’re right he did OK yesterday. I’m OK with it in short spurts, but not consistently. We have to change it up and get him uncomfortable.
Why would u start with Thabo on him?

Why would I start Thabo on him? B.C Thabo is wasted guarding Stevenson. Thabo prides himself on D and I think he could annoy Dirk. Let him slash and hack and Dirk for 5 minutes...It's not like it's a bad thing if Thabo gets some quick fouls...LOL

@cashion

I agree with this completely. If we are gonna get called for little shit, lets make it worth it and get some respect out of it. Dirk and JJ both need to be sent to the floor a time or two.

@justin

I totally agree with that one, Justin. I was thinking that last night, what difference it would have made if someone would had forced the pass over our defenders head and then have Ibaka slip in on the double team from the weak side and try to force turnovers.

Ivey needs to be wearing a suit next game. Aldrich needs to be activated because its pretty clear we need all the fouls we can get.

No need to freak out and play Ivey, that would be just as insane as playing Nate rob last night. We were in the game during the fourth quarter on the road. Dirk missed 3? shots the whole night, and his career performance was matched by barea. Hopefully game 7 Westbrook will make a motivated appearance, and so does maynor on both sides of the ball

There is a difference between saying that a game was poorly officiated and alleging a conspiracy. I don't think any (rational) fans are saying the later.

It was a poorly officiated game. When Durant, Westbrook, and Dirk combine for 61 free throws, the game is being called too tightly. And a tightly called game benefits the more experienced, less athletic Mavs (not to mention Dirk's unique skill set).

@kfmsooner

You're right he did OK yesterday. I'm OK with it in short spurts, but not consistently. We have to change it up and get him uncomfortable.

Why would u start with Thabo on him?

If Dirk catches the ball further than 18 feet he's far less effective. When you let him catch it 15 feet and in like he was doing a lot in game one, you're going to get in trouble. Same with Durant. I think the adjustments will be made and Dirk won't get the ball in his spots as often in game two.

The defense on Dirk was bad. KD said after the game they were too physical after Memphis. We have to defend Dirk the same way teams defend KD - get physical with him before he catches the ball. Push him off his spots. It's not like defending Randolph or Gasol...

@kfmsooner

Great idea, but Andrew Bynum already hit Barea about as hard as you can hit someone without having criminal charges pressed against you. The dude is just as fearless as they come, and he is not going to be deterred from trying to get to the rim... OKC has to make him shoot jumpers. If he gets to the rim, we will get torched.

kfmsooner :@CCH

I think Ivey on Barea is silly. We need our rotation players to take care of him. What we need to do to Barea is punk him. Hit him hard in the lane, just once or twice with Nazr, Nick or Perk, to make him think twice about coming in the lane. Then back off him and let him shoot, and for God’s sake, make him play defense. Attack him or that stupid zone they use when he’s in there. I promise you he does not want to play D.

totally agree with that. Not a cheap shot, just good hard fouls.

@kfmsooner

Right, this is what I was getting at. Perk would at least be able to body Dirk up and push him off his spots. I guess the danger with that, though, is if Dirk starts moving a lot off the ball and Perk can't keep up with him, allowing too many catch and shoots.

In all seriousness, (in otherwords no Mullens) would could Perk-a-Dirk and make sure he gets fouled nice and hard if he gets fouled at all. Ibaka can rotate over to cut off Dirk's drive to the rim.

@CCH
I think Ivey on Barea is silly. We need our rotation players to take care of him. What we need to do to Barea is punk him. Hit him hard in the lane, just once or twice with Nazr, Nick or Perk, to make him think twice about coming in the lane. Then back off him and let him shoot, and for God's sake, make him play defense. Attack him or that stupid zone they use when he's in there. I promise you he does not want to play D.

On second thought, you know who could bother Dirk's fadeaway? Byron Mullens.

Name one other player in a Thunder jersey who could 1) have a hieght advantage without giving up too much foor speed 2) provide some additional offense and 3) actually be as ugly as Dirk lol

kfmsooner :

JJJ :@sammasaaronPerkins is way too slow to guard Dirk on a consistent basis. With his knee injury, it makes him even more of a liability on Dirk. We want Perk to be an enforcer around the rim, and playing Dirk does the opposite because of his range. His value in this series is much lower than the previous series. A combo of Nick/Serge is prob the best option of bigs at this point

He guarded Dirk on 2 possessions last night and did OK. I think Perk should guard Dirk for short periods of time. Dirk does not want to drive. How many did he have last night? Just a handful. I’d like to see Perk body up Dirk and funnel him to Serge. Can’t be worse than just letting him shoot fall away jumpers and drain them all night.
Is Perk on Dirk the answer? No, but there probably isn’t an answer. I’d like to see Thabo get a shot early too…

I really like you're idea of forcing him to drive and funnel him to Serge. Easy to say, harder to do.

gr8ball83 :The sad thing is, it was an absolutely incredible game by Dirk, and this discussion takes away from it. He definitely earned plenty of free throws, its just the 10 cheapies that take away from the performance.

I agree. I think the box score shows the actual number of free throws was either close or even to OKC's edge, but that doesn't necessariliy account for the actual number of fouls called in the game over all. I think us Thunder fans are having such a hard time with the officiating last night becuase it is SOOO different from how the officiating was in the Thunder-Grizz series. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I believe the same rule book is used for every playoff game and series. There will always be a human element to officiating (at least I hope they never go to robots), but there has to be some consistency as to what a foul is in Memphis being what a foul is in Dallas and in OKC. Just blows my mind. Isn't Joey Crawford the guy that when he officiated Mavs' games, the mavs were 2-16? Maybe this was Stern saying "Joey, go show them that you aren't the kiss of death to the Mavs. Do it however you need to do it."

JJJ :@sammasaaron
Perkins is way too slow to guard Dirk on a consistent basis. With his knee injury, it makes him even more of a liability on Dirk. We want Perk to be an enforcer around the rim, and playing Dirk does the opposite because of his range. His value in this series is much lower than the previous series. A combo of Nick/Serge is prob the best option of bigs at this point

He guarded Dirk on 2 possessions last night and did OK. I think Perk should guard Dirk for short periods of time. Dirk does not want to drive. How many did he have last night? Just a handful. I'd like to see Perk body up Dirk and funnel him to Serge. Can't be worse than just letting him shoot fall away jumpers and drain them all night.

Is Perk on Dirk the answer? No, but there probably isn't an answer. I'd like to see Thabo get a shot early too...

@kfmsooner
I don't think at any point I argued that we lost the game because of the officials? I can't speak for others though.

@gr8ball83

And what have they been for the last 5 years? Sore losers...

Yeah I agree they might wanna try perk on dirk to start da game cause he mite b able to bother him and also dallas would pull dirk early and bring him back in with da bench and we never really adjusted to that. Also it may be stupid but I think they mite wanna give Ivey a shot at berea, he's only used for one reason so we mite as well use him for it.

You guys have got to quit griping about the refs. We did not lose because of the officials. You know how Dirk got 24 FTAs? We kept fouling him...There were bad calls both ways and there will be bad calls in every game. What if the officials hadn't called so many fouls? Then Dirk would have been 19-23 instead of 12-15. It's not like he was missing when we weren't fouling him...If you think the officials caused us to lose, I think your Thunder boxer shorts are showing.

@GrimeyFrog
You mean you're glad Scotty didn't feel like being fined? I wouldn't complain about the refs if Stern was going to take $25,000 from me either. Its hilarious that you make a comment like that, against the Mavericks, who have been bitching non-stop about officiating for the last 5 years....

Also, let's make one thing perfectly clear: JJ Barera is not that great of a player. However, he is the perfect player to run PnR/PnP with Dirk. If you hedge, you leave Dirk open. If you go under, he can pull up. If you fight over, he beats you into the lane.

without someone like Ibaka (who is stuck on Dirk) to provide help, JJ gets an easy layup.

I think I'd try a box-and-one zone in short stretches, using Nick on Dirk, Ibaka in the middle, and three players at home on the perimeter. When they isolate Dirk, they clear his side of the court anyway, crowding all the shooters on the oposite side. If Dirk is outside, sag a perimeter player to help. If he goes post, send Ibaka.

@gr8ball83

Bottom line, b*tching about the refs in a game like this is just pithy and pathetic, and makes OKC fans look like sore losers. Especially when, like I said, the officiating did not benefit one team over the other last night.

I'm glad Scotty had the sense to look past it, wish more fans would too.

The sad thing is, it was an absolutely incredible game by Dirk, and this discussion takes away from it. He definitely earned plenty of free throws, its just the 10 cheapies that take away from the performance.

@GrimeyFrog
I don't even know what you're talking about. If you watched the game you would know that anytime a Thunder player touched Dirk, even when he was posting up and they were simply standing their ground, it was called a foul. I think its hilarious that you think they should have just "adjusted" to the way the game was being called. Adjusting to that officiating would have meant giving him wide open jumpers the entire game. You can't contest a shot if you're called for a foul every time you touch a player. So I guess by adjusting to the officiating we should have just gotten out of the way when Dirk had the ball, or played 5 feet off of him, because if he drove in to our defender it would have been a foul.

@sammasaaron

Perkins is way too slow to guard Dirk on a consistent basis. With his knee injury, it makes him even more of a liability on Dirk. We want Perk to be an enforcer around the rim, and playing Dirk does the opposite because of his range. His value in this series is much lower than the previous series. A combo of Nick/Serge is prob the best option of bigs at this point

No one on here said Dirk never got fouled. If you didn't see all of the fouls they called for a defender holding his ground, then you just weren't watching the game closely or objectively, one.

@gr8ball83

That was happening the entire game.

Listen, we are all homers to some extent, but after watching the NBA for over a decade, I can say that the officiating actually didn't bother me last night. The game was called way too tight, but that can probably be attributed to Perk and Chandler getting into it within the first 2 minutes of the game, and getting double-T's. The officiating did not benefit one team over the other, and that is about as much as you can ask from the NBA these days.

Dirk is gonna get his. OKC just can't expect to be able to get away with what the picture above shows (and what was happening all night) just because the defender on Dirk is undermatched.

@GrimeyFrog
congrats, you get 24 free throws for one foul, we get your point.

GrimeyFrog :@Caleb
Dude, look at the picture at the top of this article…
Is that not as “deserving” of a foul call as Durant or Russ taking it to the hoop and catching some contact?
Dirk is a pro’s pro, and if you want to b*tch about getting handcuffed, then don’t get caught with your hand in the cookie jar 10+ times, as this picture illustrates.

No it's not. His only contact his chest to Dirk's back. That's not a foul. If he spins into his arms it is but most of those fouls it was chest to back. We held our ground so they called a foul. That is not the same as a guy taking it to the rim. We should be allowed to hold our ground if a guy is backing us down. We have as much right to that space as he does.

@bouzi4real
You can kind of tell how a game is going to go by looking at who is officiating, which is pretty ridiculous. Its hilarious that the NBA doesn't think there's a problem when there are refs that are famous for making terrible calls, having short tempers, personal biases, etc. And they continue to give these famous refs big games.

james1 :
I actually feel worse about game 2 than I did before. Dallas scored at will the last 3 quarters last night. We did nothing to show that we could even slow them down. They scored 101 point in the last 3 quarters. They just took turns abusing us. Dirk won’t score 48 every game but we didn’t show that we could slow anyone else down either.
I actually think Perkins is Mr. irrelevant this series. We need to play Ibaka off the ball, guarding Chandler instead of guarding Dirk. Have Sefalosha, Collison and KD guard Dirk and let Ibaka protect the rim. He’s going to shoot over Sefalosha but who cares, he’s going to shoot over everyone else too. At least we’ve got someone back there to deter Barrea at the basket and maybe Sef can get a steal or two if Dirk tries to dribble.
Make Barrea shoot outside. He hit a couple yesterday but he was shooting 21% going into this series. We can’t let him get into the lane.
On offense Westbrook needs to make his midrange shot. He can hit it, he just needs to relax and shoot it half a step earlier. He’s getting too deep. He REALLY needs to develop the tear drop in the offseason. That would be huge. He’s getting to the rim at will but he can’t shoot over their bigs. That tear drop would be big.

Hi guys, I've been reading and following comments for a while but this is my first post. Not knowing a ton about basketball, I'm curious why we don't just start with Perkins on Dirk and Ibaka on Chandler. As the previous poster said, Ibaka's biggest strength is help defense and he'll be near the rim on Chandler if Dirk drives past Perkins. Plus, I'm pretty sure there's no one on the team that's going to piss off Dirk quite like Perk will. And I'd hope Ibaka being near the rim would at least force Barea to change more of his shots if we're still letting him to the rim. Thoughts?

@bouzi4real

Again, dude, look at the picture at the top of this article...

That's a foul. No two ways about it.

@GrimeyFrog
Whatever you say Grimey. I think its pretty easy for Dirk to have an incredible shooting game when playing defense is a foul. Very easy for him to make shots, he is a jump shooter after all.

Heysloth :Yeah it was poorly officiated. Gotta disagree about it being equal both ways though… I really hate it when ppl point out that two players shot the same number of free throws. Dirk drew 16 fouls, Durant 10, Westbrook 9. I feel like that is the important number… the reason free throws are the same is because when Durant or Westbrook got fouled it was usually driving to the rim. Dirk got calls every time he got the ball. Dirk had a great game, but half his points came from the line. If the officials didnt completely neuter our defense I doubt he is that efficient, and if every miss wasn’t counted at 2 free throws he goes 12 for 20 for 35 points.
That said the reason we stayed in it was cause we got some terrible calls too… So my problem is not that we lost, i think with the way Dallas was shooting that we lose the game either way… but with the fact that I dont trust basketball officials. Can you imagine trying to teach someone how to officiate an NBA game after showing them a tape from Memphis and from tonight. They would look like two similar sports with completely different rules. This is the second series in a row where the officiating style has changed drastically and its really making me question the ability/integrity of the officials. Some of those missed calls tonight were downright inept/corrupt, anyone of us regular people who turned in a performance like that would be fired, or at least sent home for the day.

I have agree with everything you have said here. The NBA needs to implement some sort of offseason training system for these refs. It is way to drastic of a change from game to game.

When there is a 7ft in the post who is allowed to back you down but the you cannot fight back for position then something is wrong with the way they are seeing this game.

@gr8ball83

My point was that its bogus to say the refs were "handcuffing" OKC players when it came to guarding Dirk.

Dirk has been around for long enough to know that if the refs are calling the game tight, and if OKC players continue to reach and bump because they are undermatched, then he is going to capitalize.

In other words, Dirk's 24 free throws had more to do with OKC players not adjusting than it did with refs calling ticky-tack fouls.

@Joe, @Royce, Moderators, DELETE RyanOK

I actually feel worse about game 2 than I did before. Dallas scored at will the last 3 quarters last night. We did nothing to show that we could even slow them down. They scored 101 point in the last 3 quarters. They just took turns abusing us. Dirk won't score 48 every game but we didn't show that we could slow anyone else down either.

I actually think Perkins is Mr. irrelevant this series. We need to play Ibaka off the ball, guarding Chandler instead of guarding Dirk. Have Sefalosha, Collison and KD guard Dirk and let Ibaka protect the rim. He's going to shoot over Sefalosha but who cares, he's going to shoot over everyone else too. At least we've got someone back there to deter Barrea at the basket and maybe Sef can get a steal or two if Dirk tries to dribble.

Make Barrea shoot outside. He hit a couple yesterday but he was shooting 21% going into this series. We can't let him get into the lane.

On offense Westbrook needs to make his midrange shot. He can hit it, he just needs to relax and shoot it half a step earlier. He's getting too deep. He REALLY needs to develop the tear drop in the offseason. That would be huge. He's getting to the rim at will but he can't shoot over their bigs. That tear drop would be big.

@GrimeyFrog
I don't think anyone said that Dirk wasn't fouled a single time in the game...

@Caleb

Dude, look at the picture at the top of this article...

Is that not as "deserving" of a foul call as Durant or Russ taking it to the hoop and catching some contact?

Dirk is a pro's pro, and if you want to b*tch about getting handcuffed, then don't get caught with your hand in the cookie jar 10+ times, as this picture illustrates.

Bryan :

james1 :We have to play him physical to have a chance. Green was our best Dirk defender. Can I say we miss him finally?

Green was only good because he stayed in Dirks shorts. But he would have fouled out if he had played last night.

Maybe he would have but Green played Dirk better than anyone else last year when we beat Dallas.

james1 :We have to play him physical to have a chance. Green was our best Dirk defender. Can I say we miss him finally?

Green was only good because he stayed in Dirks shorts. But he would have fouled out if he had played last night.

divisadero :Sucks that the Thunder lost, but you can’t give enough credit to Dirk. He had a near perfect game.

That, he did. He's not going to shoot almost 100% in the next games, I suspect. How many did his miss? 2? Sheesh....

Daniel Hawaii :WHY DID NICK COLLISON PLAY ONLY 17 MINUTES???? Sure, he got in some foul trouble, but he finished the game with 4. He could’ve played a lot more. Did Brooks already forget that when Nick played 25+ minutes in the last series, we won all 4 games? P>

Nick fell victim to small ball. Not sure he would have made all that much of a difference.

I really thought we would win game 1. I'm disappointed. However, it wasn't the officials. Let's give that a rest. The calls were bad both ways. Dirk was great, shake his hand, move on. I don't think he will average 24 FTAs per game, so I think we are OK. JJ Berea is the guy we need to handle. Maynor/Russ/JH/whoever need to contain him. If he shoots a great percentage from 3, so be it. But keep him out of the lane. And if he drives the lane, Nazr needs to pick up a flagrant sending him to the court. If we take care of JJ, we probably win last night.

As for Dirk, I say we start Thabo on him. He can't do any worse than Serge did, and it will save Serge's fouls. Serge will have to guard Marion, but I think he can handle that for 10 possessions or so. Let Thabo push and slap and knee Dirk for 15 minutes a game (and 6 fouls) and then let the others step in. Plus, we won't have to watch Thabo guard Stevenson...

Plus, I'd like to see KP take his turn as well. Maybe Dirk can blow by him, but I don't think so. Again, not all game, but for a few stretches, let Perk push, bang and harass Dirk...