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Suns vs. Mavs WCF

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Dispatch

6/2/06

MAVERICKS 117 SUNS 101

Nowitzki scores 50 in victory

Dallas leading 3-2 as Suns head home

Friday, June 02, 2006

Jaime Aron
ASSOCIATED PRESS

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DALLAS — Down by seven points and feeling as if a tremendous season might be slipping away, Dirk Nowitzki turned to his Dallas Mavericks teammates during a timeout and simply said, "Let’s go."
They went all right — all the way to the brink of the NBA Finals.
Nowitzki scored 50 points to carry the Mavericks to a 117-101 victory over the Phoenix Suns last night and a 3-2 lead in the Western Conference finals.
"I tried to make something happen," Nowitzki said.
Did he ever.
The 7-footer led Dallas on an immediate 10-0 run after his third-quarter declaration, then personally outscored the Suns 22-20 in the fourth quarter.
"Pretty special," Dallas coach Avery Johnson said.
Nowitzki scored 15 straight Mavericks points during the fourth quarter and finished with 50, setting a club record for a playoff game and matching Kobe Bryant for the most by anyone in the postseason this year. Bryant also did it against Phoenix, but in overtime.
What makes Nowitzki’s breakout game even more impressive is that it comes after his worst game in months, a 3-of-13, 11-point effort that woefully showed how much Dallas depends on him. The Mavs lost that game by 20.
Nowitzki admitted after this game that Johnson "let me have it" during a film session Wednesday. It may prove to be the best coaching move by Johnson, who made plenty en route to being named the NBA Coach of the Year. Nowitzki was 14 of 26 from the floor and 17 of 18 from the line.
"Whatever he did yesterday in the film session worked," Nowitzki said, laughing.
The Mavericks also know their work isn’t done. Having let down after going up 2-1, they’ll head back to Phoenix for Game 6 on Saturday night for the first of two chances to make the Finals for the first time in franchise history.
"Hopefully, we got the bad game out of the way and now we can just focus on the goal," said Jerry Stackhouse, who scored 16 points. "We’re one game away from doing something this team and franchise has never done before. Hopefully, we’ll bring all that energy we need."
The Suns have been a resilient team all year, too, having already outlasted four elimination games. They overcame a 3-1 deficit in the first round and have gone seven games in both series thus far. So don’t expect a 50-point game by a superstar to break their spirit.
"It’s tough, but we’ve been there before," center Boris Diaw said. "It’s not something we enjoy, but we seem to play our best when our back is against the wall."
Josh Howard added 23 points and Dallas improved to 24-0 when he cracks 20. Phoenix’s Tim Thomas set a career playoff high with 26 but took — and missed — only one shot in the fourth quarter. MVP Steve Nash scored eight of his 20 points in the fourth quarter and finished with 11 assists.
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akronbuck said:
I wonder when the talks begin about him playing like a larry bird .
What he's been doing for years has been amazing but, this game put himself in a different league of players.
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I agree, if I am starting a team there are only 2 guys I am taking over him and that is James and Wade and Wade is only b/c he is younger.

He is such a mismatch problem for anyteam in the NBA.
 
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Dispatch

6/3/06

NBA

Mavericks thinking payback against Suns

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Eddie Sefko
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS

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History. For once, the Dallas Mavericks have a chance to make it, not be it.
There’s no question that the chance to make the NBA Finals for the first time in the franchise’s 26 seasons is the most important thing tonight in Phoenix.
It would be a big-time achievement, hallowed-archive stuff.
But the Mavericks are searching for a little more than that in Game 6 in the US Airways Center. Up 3-2 in the best-of-seven Western Conference finals, they know they have a Game 7 at home to fall back on, if necessary. But they prefer to take care of unfinished business on the Suns’ court.
"We remember how it felt for them to eliminate us last year at home," Mavs guard Darrell Armstrong said. "We’d like to give them the same feeling."
So add payback to the list of incentives tonight. And there are more motivating factors.
For instance, in spite of that security blanket known as Game 7, you can tack on desperation to the list. The Mavericks don’t want to tempt fate and the hoop gods with an all-or-nothing game Monday.
Just ask the Miami Heat from a year ago. The Heat went to Detroit in the Eastern Conference finals in 2005 with a 3-2 lead, were trounced by 25 points, then came back to the comforts of home and lost Game 7.
"Obviously, you don’t want to give any team still playing at this point any more life than they already have," the Mavs’ Jerry Stackhouse said. "We want to handle our business as best we can."
The Mavericks want to win their way to the ultimate series as a reward for Armstrong and Stackhouse, two players who have more than a decade of experience in the league.
"We haven’t stated it publicly," Avery Johnson said. "But that’s been one of our big things this year."
Johnson knows that the hardest game to win in any series is the one that ends the other team’s season. That will be especially true tonight. The Suns return home knowing they can reverse the pressure squarely onto the Mavericks if they can hold serve.
The Mavericks are aware that this sort of opportunity doesn’t come along often. In fact, it has come along only one other time in franchise history. The Mavericks were one victory from the Finals in 1988, only to lose to the Los Angeles Lakers.
"We may say it’s just another day at the office, but we know that’s not the truth," Johnson said. "Guys know what’s going on. Everybody knows what’s at stake."
For somebody like Stackhouse and Armstrong, this is a chance to cap a career with a crowning achievement. Stackhouse has been in the league 11 years, Armstrong 12. Both would like the chance to play for the ring. "It would be the climax of a lot of up-and-down seasons in this league," Stackhouse said. "I’m thankful. I don’t take it for granted at all because I’ve been on both sides. I’ve been on teams that, by April, we were going home. And there’s not a lot of difference between those teams" and title contenders.
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Dispatch

6/4/06

MAVERICKS 102 SUNS 93

Dallas discards Phoenix, sets sights on Miami

Mavericks erase 18-point deficit with 17-2 run, pull plug on Suns

Sunday, June 04, 2006

Bob Baum
ASSOCIATED PRESS

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PHOENIX — Avery Johnson put the "D" in Dallas. Then the coach put the Mavericks in the NBA finals for the first time in the franchise’s 26-year history.

Dirk Nowitzki shook off an awful start and the Mavericks’ defense shut down Phoenix in a second-half comeback, beating the Suns 102-93 last night to win the Western Conference finals 4-2.

Johnson, the NBA coach of the year in his first full season, focused on adding toughness and defense to a team known as a high-scoring, finesse squad.

"That’s the kind of defense we play under Avery," Nowitzki said, "and it won us the game in the second half."

Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, with the conference trophy perched atop his head like a crown, suddenly found himself in a place he’d never been — finals-bound.

"For the first time in my life," Cuban said, "I’m speechless."

Nowitzki, coming off a career playoff-high 50 points in Game 5, scored 16 of his 24 points in the second half and the Mavericks clinched a series on the road for the third time in three tries in these playoffs.

"We’ve been a good road team all season long, we believed in each other," Nowitzki said. "We went through some ups and downs this season, but the playoffs is all about showing heart and playing together."

Dallas opens the NBA finals at home against the Miami Heat on Thursday night. It will be a showdown of finals’ first-timers, the first time that’s happened since Baltimore played Milwaukee in 1971.

"Going into this season, nobody had Miami and Dallas in the finals," Johnson said. "If you did, you won a lot of money."

The Suns, trying to survive a fifth elimination game in the playoffs, appeared well on their way to sending this series back to Dallas for a Game 7: They shot out to a 16-point firstquarter lead and were up by as many as 18 in the second.

But the Phoenix offense withered in a flurry of foul trouble, and the Suns fell in the conference finals for the second year in a row.

"An 18-point lead isn’t all it’s cracked up to be in a pressure game like this, especially in the first half," Suns point guard Steve Nash said.

Dallas outscored the Suns 63-42 in the second half.

"It took a lot of energy for us to come back," Jason Terry said, "but it took a lot out of them to let us come back, and then we were just full steam ahead."

Josh Howard added 20 points and 15 rebounds for the Suns and Terry added 17 points, all in the second half. Jerry Stackhouse scored 19 for Dallas.

Boris Diaw had 30 points and 11 rebounds for Phoenix. Nash added 19 points and nine assists and Shawn Marion 13 points and 11 rebounds.

Dallas used a 17-2 outburst to claim its first lead since 2-0, 68-66 on DaSagana Diop’s rebound stuff shot with 9:42 remaining. Stackhouse’s threepointer with 5:01 left put Dallas up 83-77. Howard’s three-pointer at 1:29 clinched it at 93-83.

"This was a special night for us," Johnson said. "We were so bad in the first half and so good in the second half. The way we turned it on from the middle of the third quarter on into the fourth was incredible."

An emotional Suns coach Mike D’Antoni praised the character of his undersized unit, which was shorthanded even before Bell slightly tore a calf muscle in Game 1, then missed the next two games. He played the final three, but was never his old self.
"Raja is probably the most courageous guy I’ve ever seen, and he was playing on half a leg," D’Antoni said.
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