Thursday, April 26, 2007

Dirk Still MVP

Jeremy might totally disagree with me on this, but I say Dirk is still MVP, even though in Wednesday’s game he managed about the kind of performance you’d expect from Kurt Thomas on a good night. And even though on Sunday he managed about what you’d expect of Kurt Thomas on a bad night (at least scoring––he did have 12 rebounds, 4 assists, 3 blocks, and 2 steals.)

And the simple, often-repeated, reason is obvious: if Dallas gets through this series with the Warriors, they’re going to play Houston or Utah in the second round instead of San Antonio or Phoenix. And they took the first seed over a hot Phoenix team largely because Dirk was really good often enough to get it for them.

All that said, for the playoffs I love the attitude that Howard and Terry bring to the court. And wow––Devin Harris showed some guts on Wednesday too. Whatever the first two games looked like, this team is really, really good, and it’s going to be tough for any team to beat them.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree that Dirk is mvp, simply because that is an award for regular season performance, and nobody, imo, ourperformed Dirk during the regular season.

Playoff is a whole new game. And Dirk remains a question mark.

scoots said...

Yeah. I just hope Dallas gets out of this round (which I’m sure they will) so we can see what he’ll do.

Incidentally, anyone see that Houston only had four different players score in their loss to the Jazz tonight? Five other guys combined for 76 minutes without a point.

JKnott said...

I'm also glad to see that now no WC team will get a sweep (3 EC teams might). Nobody gets a nice rest. I may be speaking too early, but this playoffs may be even more competitive than last year's. And call me vindictive, but as long as the Heat don't win, I'll be relatively content.

scoots said...

And Elias thought the Houston-Utah game it was interesting too: The Jazz beat the Rockets 81-67, with only four Rockets players combining for those 67 points. There have been 2,954 postseason games in NBA history, and this was the first in which a team had fewer than five players score points. That's happened five times during the regular season, all before the 24-second shot clock was implemented in 1954.

scoots said...

@jknott: I can almost agree with you, but I need Phoenix to lose too.

JKnott said...

Why Phoenix? You would begrudge Nash a championship?

scoots said...

Nah. Amare and Diaw. There rarely have been two guys on the same team I liked less.

Unknown said...

you don't like amare?

i've already conceded that dirk is the mvp--but only by default. i would enjoy nothing more than seeing him prove that he actually deserves it.

just win, baby, just win.

Unknown said...

ha, jen's signed on my computer!

jeremy