Quote:
Originally Posted by Underdog
Another thing to consider is that Jason Terry played out of his mind with a consistency that we've never seen from him before - we need him to be that unconscious killer again if we want to make a deep run, otherwise all bets are off...
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I actually thought he was about as consistent as he normally is. Off the top of my head, he had mediocre-to-bad games in Games 1, 2, and 4 of the Portland series, Game 2 of the Lakers series, the entire Thunder series except Game 1, and Games 1, 3, and 4 of the Finals. That's about half the playoffs.
The difference for Terry last year was that the Mavs played in enough playoff games that he had
time to swing both up and down. Many, many people were saying last spring that he would never be good in the playoffs again--due to increased defensive intensity, or whatever--because he hadn't played very well in the playoffs for several years. But those people ignored that each of those playoff runs were very short. And it made no sense to aggregate them--each year and playoffs were different situations, different Mavs teams, different opponents, etc.
I was pleasantly surprised by some of the specific things Terry did--for instance, good defense throughout the playoffs and constantly beating LeBron of the dribble--but I thought his "consistency" was entirely in line with his career. This postseason, if the Mavs make a deep run, I'd bet he'll play very well in about 50% of the games.
This has always been my take on Terry: his highs are superstar-level. He was the best player in a Finals close-out game featuring 4 surefire HoFers and possibly another (Bosh). He had an ungodly closeout performance against the two-time defending champs. But he's not a superstar, so he's never going to be able to maintain that production consistently.