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Monday, May 13 Updated: May 13, 3:36 PM ET Deep down, Mavericks can't match Kings By Marc Stein Special to ESPN.com SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- As far back as February, Chris Webber had an idea what was coming in May. He pretty much figured his Kings, to get to the Lakers, would have to survive a World Series with the Mavericks. What Webber didn't know: How to handicap it. "They're deep," Webb concluded, "and we're deep." With apologies to the Pistons, whose starters and Alternatorz have largely stopped firing, the Kings and Mavs are the two deepest teams in the league. Fittingly, then, these depth co-kings were deadlocked as recently as last Monday, when the Mavericks visited Arco Arena and rode 30 points from Steve Nash and massive bench contributions from Nick Van Exel and Greg Buckner to dig out Game 2. Going back to Dallas, that made it Deep 1, Deep 1. Which, a week later, seems like years ago. Much has changed in Deep vs. Deep, this highly anticipated gathering of run-and-gunners from all over the globe, and no one -- not Webber or anyone else -- can claim they had any such premonitions. Summoning depth even the most faithful cowbell-toters in Vacaville couldn't have known they had, the Kings went to Texas and suffered only one loss: Peja Stojakovic. They beat the Mavericks in Games 3 and 4, playing without Stojakovic for all but 2½ quarters, setting the example for every other second-round matchup in the league, all of which now sit at 3-1. Deep vs. Deep? Now it's Deep vs. In Deep entering Monday's Game 5 at Arco Arena. "We are in big trouble," Mavericks coach Don Nelson admits. And that's because …
In the playoffs, no joke, who's better? Boston beating Detroit, assuming the Celtics hold onto their 3-1 edge, would be the first lower seed to win a series. Not the real upset, though. It has to be Sacramento, to date, going 2-2 at home and 4-0 in Utah and Dallas. Doesn't it? "If you put down that bet at the beginning of the season," Kings guard Doug Christie admitted, "I probably wouldn't take that." There's no probably about it. As recently as March 9, the Kings were a 13-14 road team. Openly dismissed as not mentally tough enough or sufficiently disciplined to win big games in buildings not named Arco. Remember? Probably not, because the Kings are a stunning 16-2 in their past 18 road games. That's a 12-2 road roll to close the regular season, after that one-point home loss to the Lakers on March 24 when Webber couldn't score on the baseline at the buzzer, added to the playoff road perfection. Kings president Geoff Petrie, the man responsible for acquiring every player on this roster, acknowledges that "until you win a title, there's always going to be some issue about your team." Petrie himself volunteers that, for much of the season, the Kings had a "road issue." Winning twice in Dallas, and without Stojakovic for the bulk of the trip, has made it less of an issue.
Laker Envy might be the official pastime of the NBA, but not in Nelson's office. Since October, and even since his big mid-season trade to annex Van Exel and Raef LaFrentz, climbing to the Lakers' level has never been Nelson's stated concern. He wants to catch up to the Kings first. "No one has a backup point guard like Bobby Jackson," Nelson said before the season started. "No one has a backup center like Scot Pollard." It's Nelson's belief that no one can play eight-man basketball with the Kings, not even the hallowed Lakers. Doesn't mean the Kings can beat the Lakers over seven games -- since LA still has Shaq and Kobe and a defense that actually stops people -- but Sacramento is more the sort of team Nelson would like to have. Eight guys who can all move the ball and score the ball. "They are disciplined when they need to be and free and easy when they can be," Nelson said Saturday after short-handed Sacramento had seized its 3-1 series lead by winning Game 4 in overtime. "We're trying to model ourselves after them, when you think about it. They have the experience and the years and the talent. Eventually I think we can have a team like theirs." Except for a Game 2 detour from their newfound discipline, when they raced into the lead and abruptly stopped going inside, the Kings have sized up to Nelson's fawning. Webber has been better than ever the past two games. And Mike Bibby, the one King who doesn't have an experience edge, has been the best guard in the series since the opening jump. The Mavericks' crunch-time execution has been sloppy, to be charitable, and their defense downright inexcusible. Bibby forced overtime and then scored the game-winning basket in Game 4's OT on driving layups. Meaning that Dallas is having trouble knowing when to foul someone hard, let alone make a stop. And at the other end, with a struggling Dirk Nowitzki drawing more coverage than ever, the Mavericks don't seem to know how to get good shots late, in spite of all the other scorers on the floor.
"I guess you can look at it that way," Van Exel said when posed with the One Year Behind theory. "We still feel confident we're right there with them, but they've been (together) a year or two already. They may have that little bit of an edge."
Unless the Mavericks dig so deep that they reverse their 3-1 deficit, something only six other teams in history have managed, it's impossible to conclude otherwise. So far, Quality leads Quantity 3-1. Coming in, Dallas had Van Exel to counter Jackson and seemingly three options off the bench to be guard Stojakovic: Johnny Newman, Adrian Griffin and Buckner. Nelson also thought Wang Zhizhi and maybe even Shawn Bradley (for a minute here and there) could spell LaFrentz against Vlade Divac. It certainly didn't help that Eduardo Najera broke his right thumb in warmups before Game 1, ultimately landing Van Exel in the starting lineup by Game 4, but Rick Adelman's Eight Men Enough has been the better unit. Amazingly, Adelman hasn't even used Pollard much, even though Pollard destroys the Mavericks every time he sees them. Adelman basically went with six players in Game 4, with Peja out, until Webber and Vlade Divac fouled out. Seems that those 20 games without Webber to start season, and the 11 sans Peja late, toughened up the Kings. "Our team," Petrie said, "has had a resilience about it from the beginning." "I think you see how deep they are," Nellie adds, "with all their injuries." So deep that they're winning in places they're not supposed to. In Dallas, twice in a row. And at point guard, three games out of four. That might be the biggest surprise yet, the reason Deep vs. Deep has digressed. Bibby is outplaying Steve Nash, the All-Star. And Jackson is putting it on Van Exel, the former All-Star. The Mavericks were exposed in countless pick-and-rolls by Minnesota's Chauncey Billups in Round 1, but Bibby and Jackson have proved much harder to guard and way more shrewd in their decision-making. "That's kind of the story of the series," LaFrentz said. Just one of the new storylines, actually. Marc Stein, who covers the NBA for The Dallas Morning News, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. |
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