Quote:
Originally Posted by Thebo
At the same time I think Mavs road to the title was helped by easy matchups. Portland? Lakers? Mavs were lucky to avoid Spurs and Grizzlies. Lakers played then like they didn't even deserve to be in the playoffs. Even Chris Paul gave them a run for their money. OKC was also still rather young that time.
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Easy matchups? Really???
First Round Portland: LaMarcus Aldridge, Andre Miller, Gerald Wallace, Wes Matthews, Nic Batum, Brandon Roy. Sure that's not last year's Golden State Warriors, but seriously that is a very solid team that easily make it to the Finals.
Second Round Lakers: Kobe, Gasol, Bynum, Fisher, Odom, Artest, Barnes, Luke Walton. The Lakers were #2 seed and well on their way to another post-Shaq dynasty. Yes the Mavs dismantled them but I give that credit to the Mavs (Carlisle?) rather than discredit to the Lakers. And the Lakers handled New Orleans pretty easily 4-2 in the previous round.
Third Round #4 seed OKC: They were young? Yeah, and? They still had their Big 3 1/2 of Durant, Westbrook, Harde, and Ibaka. That was a stacked, young, athletic team. That team beat Memphis 4-3 in a tough series.
Yes, we "avoided" the Spurs, but we also defeated the #2, #4, and #6 seed teams. We beat the team that beat the Spurs. Period. The Mavs put everything together at just the right time (Carlisle?), stepped up at key moments when needed (Terry? Stevenson? Peja?), had quality leadership at key positions (Kidd? Tyson?), and had a Hall of Fame player to carry us through to a championship over a much favored team/players (LeBron/Wade/Bosh).
I may be a homer to some extent, but that was one of the best playoffs I've ever seen. I can go on and on with examples. That was a true team of Destiny if I've ever seen one.