Friday Bolts – 6.3.11
The Mavs opened some old wounds with yet another comeback last night. John Hollinger of ESPN.com: “Fool’s gold. That’s my two-word analysis of the Miami Heat’s offense that got them a 1-0 series lead and 15-point edge midway through the fourth quarter of Game 2. With LeBron James and Dwyane Wade converting an unusually large number of bailout 3-point attempts and the Heat getting multiple easy baskets from their defense, it was easy to overlook the fact that Miami’s half-court offense was struggling to consistently generate good shots.”
Henry Abbott, with apologies to Shawn Marion: “List #1: Brandon Roy, LaMarcus Aldridge, Kobe Bryant, Russell Westbrook, Kevin Durant, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade — just some of the players Shawn Marion has guarded on the Mavericks’ 13-4 playoff thrill ride to this point of the Finals.”
Chris Mannix of SI: “Plenty of time to make a comeback. Fifteen points in the fourth quarter? Ask Oklahoma City if Dallas can rally from that. Miami had played brilliantly up until that point, but the Mavs refused to lay down. Rick Carlisle called very few plays down the stretch, instead letting his team pick-and-roll Miami to death and let Nowitzki (nine points in the quarter) and Terry (eight) pick apart a suddenly soft Heat defense. Miami fired three-pointer after three-pointer, 11 in the fourth and 30 in all, hoping a couple of timely makes would reignite the crowd and make the Mavericks quit. That busted left middle finger Nowitzki was playing with didn’t seem to bother him much: two of his last three buckets — including a high-arcing game winning layup — came off that left hand.”
The Thunder logo in sand. Hopefully not built too close to the water.
There was a lot of talk about Miami’s supposed celebration after a Wade 3 last night. I think that’s pretty ridiculous.
My good friend Rob Mahoney dropped a pretty awesome question on LeBron last night, but I think the guy in the lower left corner stole the show.
I saw this van in Miami late last night. Yeeeeeeeeeeeah.
Good tweet from someone to me: “You should change the title of your earlier blog post from ‘Learning from the Heat‘ to ‘The Heat learn from us’.” Indeed.
From Elias: “Dirk Nowitzki scored the Mavericks’ last nine points including a layup with three seconds remaining that gave Dallas a 95-93 victory in Miami to deadlock the NBA Finals at one game apiece. It was the fifth time in this year’s NBA playoffs that a player to score his team’s last nine or more points of a game, including the game-winning bucket, after only one player had done that during the previous seven postseasons. LeBron James was the only player to do so over that span (2004-2010), when he scored Cleveland’s last 25 points, including the game-winner, in a double-overtime victory at Detroit in the 2007 Conference finals. The others to do it in 2011 were Nowitzki (vs. Portland), Joe Johnson (vs. Orlando), Kevin Durant (vs. Denver) and James (vs. Boston).”
