Posts Tagged ‘Jason Parker’

The King is Dead! Long Live the King!

Monday, June 13th, 2011

By Jason Parker

The King is dead.  Long live the King!

Or should I say The Kaiser?  King James, with a little boot in the backside from Dirk Nowitzki and a brand of defense the likes of which Mavericks fans have never seen, has abdicated his NBA throne to the “Ghost-Faced Drilla” from Wurzberg, Germany.  That’s right, the man so many had perhaps unjustly labeled soft and unable to lead a team to a championship now sits in the top spot of The Association’s monarchy. 

Mavericks’ legend Mark Aguirre paid Dirk perhaps the highest compliment, “Answer me this: If you switched Dirk with Wade, or Dirk with LeBron, would the Mavs be in the Finals?  No way.”

I must admit, during the first half of the series-clinching Game 6 victory, I was thinking I wouldn’t be able to publish this article; what with Nowitzki languishing in an unfathomable 1-12 shooting funk.  But like so many times before, when the stakes were highest, Dirk was at his best, shrugging off the slump to seal the victory with five clutch buckets in the last 7:22 of the game.

“We’re world champions,” Nowitzki said after taking a private moment to wipe away a few tears of joy in the locker room.  “It sounds unbelievable.”

It wasn’t always this way.  I’ve been an avid Dirk defender over the years, but there have been moments when he just wasn’t able to put this team on his back and lead them over the hump.  In the final three games of the 2006 Finals, Dirk went 20-55 and missed a number of key free throws down the stretch.  In 2007, his MVP season, Nowitzki shot 38% from the field (2-13 in the clinching Game 6) as the Mavs became the first #1 seed to fall to a #8 (Golden State) in a seven-game series.  2008 saw another first-round playoff exit against Chris Paul and the upstart Charlotte Hornets.  The next two seasons would end with second and first round losses, respectively.

This year, there was something different about Dirk.  Perhaps galvanized by past failures, Nowitzki would not be denied.  After a pedestrian regular season by his standards, Dirk turned it up a couple of notches once the playoffs started, playing his best basketball when it mattered most.  When the Mavericks needed a big bucket or clutch free throws to overcome a huge deficit or seal a victory, Dirk delivered.  He was clearly the best player in a postseason that culminated in a championship.     

LeBron's series was sub-par by his standards

Now on to the man Nowitzki supplanted as king.  Last season, in game 5 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals, Lebron James looked up and came to the perhaps premature realization that no matter how good he played, no matter how many spectacular dunks he threw down, he could never win a championship with the collection of talent around him in Cleveland—so he checked out of the series mentally, and the Cavaliers quickly followed suit.  Lebron will deny it, but if it looks like a duck, sounds like and duck, smells like a duck…

Fast forward a little over a year to the NBA Finals, and the situation is very different, but it’s also the same.  Lebron is a member of the most talented (if not the deepest) team in the league, yet he frequently distanced himself from the front lines of this pitched battle for the NBA Championship, deferring to Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh whenever possible. Actually, James’ fourth-quarter game of hot potato throughout the series was worse than deference, it was desertion.  Pat Riley, Wade and Bosh, are thinking of asking for a $14.5 million refund.  They’re thinking they recruited the wrong superstar.

James was not gracious in defeat, lashing out at his and the Heat’s critics:

“All the people that were rooting me on to fail, at the end of the day they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life they had before,” James said. “They have the same personal problems they had today. I’m going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want with me and my family and be happy with that.”

“They can get a few days or a few months or whatever the case may be on being happy about not only myself, but the Miami Heat not accomplishing their goal,” James said. “But they’ll have to get back to the real world at some point.”    

James’ latest big-moment disappearing act prompts us to reevaluate his motives for running out on his home-town-team instead of sticking it out through good times and bad, for better or worse (a-la a certain seven-foot German). Lebron claimed he joined Wade and Bosh in Miami so he could win multiple championships, but now there appears to be more to the equation than that.  It looks more like Bron-Bron couldn’t bear the burden of leadership, of being his team’s hoops messiah.  How else can you explain his habit of fading, no, sprinting into the background when the spotlight is squarely focused on him and him alone?

Compare this to the play of Nowitzki and his own teammate, Dwyane Wade, who combines physical brilliance with mental fortitude and inspirational leadership.  Wade demands the ball at the end of games and James is all too willing to give it to him, especially on the game’s biggest stage.  Confession:  I wrote two versions of this article; the one you are reading, and one proclaiming Wade king if the Heat had won the series.

To be fair, perhaps LeBron James never wanted this mantle that was foisted upon him at the age of 18.  He never dubbed himself “King.”  Whether he wanted it or not, as the most physically-dominant player this game has seen since Wilt Chamberlain, the crown was his to wear.  But now it appears that it was too heavy for those chiseled shoulders to bear.  Who knows, maybe by the time the Kaiser is ready to cede the throne in a few years, LeBron will be ready to take it back.  He need only look at the evolution of one Dirk Nowitzki to find a role model.

But until then, the Mavericks and their fans hope to win another title or two during Dirk’s reign.    

Jason Parker, Blogger for War Room Sports

Mavericks’ Road Back to NBA Finals Reads Like a Hollywood Script

Thursday, May 26th, 2011

By Jason Parker

Mavericks vs Heat (2006 NBA Finals)

You can’t make this stuff up.  Death Wish, The Crow, Gladiator, Man on Fire, nothing gets a guys’ heart pumping like a good revenge flick.  Could Mavs vs. Heat 2011 join the list of great payback pictures?  

After five years of exile to a barren wasteland, a trio of men returns to avenge the loss of their collective manhood at the hands of the evil NBA Empire.  Sounds like the tagline for a movie, but it’s befitting the scenario that has unfolded in the last forty-eight hours of playoff basketball in The Association.   Make no mistake, Mark Cuban, Dirk Nowitzki, and Jason Terry have been in playoff purgatory for the past five years after being emasculated by the Miami Heat in the 2006 NBA Finals.  For those that have been stranded on a deserted island for half a decade or so, the Mavs were up two games to none over the Heat, and were well on their way to a three-game lead when Dwayne Wade (and maybe an official or two) went out of his mind and carried his team to four consecutive victories to steal the championship.  What followed was a downward spiral of epic proportions: four out of the next five seasons ending in first round flameouts, and the other ending in the second round.  Inevitably, Nowitzki and Terry were painted as good, but soft players that wilted under playoff pressure.   And now here we are, five seasons later, and the Dallas Mavericks and Miami Heat (pending the formality of their inevitable close-out win over the Bulls), are preparing to cross swords for the right to hoist the Larry O’Brien trophy.  It’s Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Kidd leading their band of role players and refugees from the island of misfit hoopsters against the heavily-favored tropical triumvirate from South Beach.  It’s David vs. Goliath, Rocky vs. Apollo Creed, and Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Vader.   Most of those outside of Florida will be rooting against the Heat after Lebron’s unceremonious dumping of his hometown hoops bride, Cleveland, for better-looking trophy wife, Miami, last off-season.  Thus, we have our hero and our villain that everyone loves to hate.

Darth Vader vs. Luke

 

Rocky Vs. Apollo

You certainly won’t hear Nowitzki or Terry verbally acknowledge their thirst for retribution, but have no doubt, that fire burns within them.  It has forged them into a strong, polished blade with a keen edge that, in all honesty, was lacking in other deep playoff runs.  But will that edge be sharp enough to sever the grip Wade, James, and Bosh already seem to have on the NBA’s greatest prize?  Most will say no, but this Mavericks team has been proving us all wrong throughout the postseason;  first by beating the younger, more athletic Trailblazers in the first round, then sweeping the two-time defending champion Lakers in the second round, and finally by vanquishing the up-and-coming Thunder in five games.  Only time will tell if Dallas’ new-found mettle will prove strong enough to carry them to a championship, but we can all get our popcorn and soda,  and enjoy watching the underdog Mavericks try to defeat the villainous Heat in a good, old fashioned grudge match.  This writer can’t wait to see how the story ends.    

Will the Mavs win the next Trophy?

Jason Parker, Blogger for War Room Sports

Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Terry

Gladiator

Mavericks Fans Still Carry Scars From The Past

Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

By Jason Parker

Dallas Mavericks (L-R) Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Terry, Jason Kidd, Shawn Marion, Tyson Chandler

Like a jilted lover, long-suffering MFFL’s (Mavs Fans For Life) still find it hard to put their trust in this team.  Count this writer, a native “Dallas-ite”, among the jaded.  Despite promising signs of change, the ghosts of the past still haunt those who back the “Boys in Blue”. 

Dirk shoots over LaMarcus Aldridge in Round 1 of the 2011 NBA Playoffs

After a colossal choke job in game four of the first round against Portland had us all thinking, here we go again; the same old Mavericks, Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Terry – the only holdovers from the 2006 team that spit the bit when a championship was imminent – assured their fans that this Dallas team was made of tougher stuff than those of the past.  This brought about a collective “surrrrre” from all within earshot of this seemingly hollow rhetoric.  We heard similar promises after the number-one-seeded Mavericks suffered a historic first-round flameout against the Warriors in ’07, and again in ’08 after being upset by the Hornets in the opening round of the playoffs.   So when Dallas closed out the Blazers, whom many prognosticators had picked to upset the aptly-named “One-and-Done Boys,” in one of the most difficult arenas to win in as a road team, most saw it as an anomaly. 

Mavs sweep the defending champion Lakers in Round 2

Next up were the two-time defending champion Lakers.  Needless to say, the Mavs were getting longer odds than Buster Douglas had against the indomitable Mike Tyson some twenty years ago.  After Dirk and his band of NBA castoffs (Chandler, Marion, Peja, Stevenson) miraculously left the champ bloodied and broken, scoring what amounts to a first-round knockout, everyone chalked it up to some sudden dysfunction within the Laker locker room.  It certainly couldn’t have been anything the “Two-and-Through-Crew” did to earn the victory. 

The Mavs are on the cusp of another trip to the NBA Finals with a 3-1 series lead over Kevin Durant and his Thunder

Now here we are on the cusp of another trip to the Finals after an improbable five-minute, fifteen-point comeback in probably the second-hardest arena to win in on the road, and the national perception of these Mavericks, who have been known to fold up like a cheap lawn chair in the face of adversity, is slowly beginning to change.  This is evident when you listen to the national media talk about this team and its much-maligned, future hall-of-fame-leader, Dirk Nowitzki.  The “S” word (Soft) is only uttered in the past tense these days.  When discussing the sweet-shooting German, you are more likely to hear “all-time great,” or “man on a mission” than that four-letter epithet.  But let me be frank.  It will take nothing less than a championship to truly change how we as fans view our hometown hoops team.  We’ve been here before.  We all thought this team had turned the corner after vanquishing the Spurs in the loaded Western Conference during the ’06 playoffs; and we all know how that season ended.  So until David Stern begrudgingly hands Mark Cuban the Larry O’Brien trophy, I and every other realistic “MFFL” will stop just short of giving our hearts completely to this team for fear of having it ripped out again.

Will the Mavs fly out of Miami or Chicago as NBA Champions this year?

Jason Parker, Blogger for War Room Sports