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Originally Posted by fluid.forty.one
Did Fin say something recently?
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Mavs, Spurs on opposite sides of the ring
02:26 PM CST on Thursday, November 2, 2006
By EDDIE SEFKO / The Dallas Morning News
If you think the Mavericks and San Antonio Spurs have had a good rivalry for the last few seasons, you ain't seen nothin' yet, as we say here in Texas.
On Wednesday, Jerry Stackhouse pointed out a couple of key reasons why the rivalry has gone full-scale. First, it's hard to have a rivalry when one team wins all the time, which the Spurs did for years. More important, however, the most recent winners of the Western Conference have something else to stoke their feud: Venom.
Down south, the Spurs are making it clear that they don't like the fact that the Mavericks took away the West crown last spring, winning an epic seven-game series in the second round to send the Spurs home for the off-season.
"To be honest," said Michael Finley, "the only difference is that how I felt last year is how the whole team feels this year."
That would be angry at the Dallas organization after the Mavericks waived Finley, and he found refuge in south Texas.
There's a basic dislike, if not hatred, that has replaced the respect factor.
"And that's good," Stackhouse said. "That means the feeling's mutual."
What the Mavericks hope is that this era in the NBA won't remember them as the Phil Mickelsons of the hardwood. In golf, Tiger Woods has no equal in this generation. Mickelson is one of the best players ever. But because the prime of his career has hit squarely during Woods' wheelhouse, Mickelson will never be acknowledged as the best of his time.
In this era of basketball, the Mavericks are loaded and have had a terrific decade of success. They own the second-best record in the NBA since the start of the 1999-2000 season, but are well shy of the Spurs' total. And the scoreboard that counts reads: Spurs 3, Mavs 0. That's the number of championships won since the 1998-99 season.
The Mavericks won the West last season but fell short of the NBA championship. In that respect, they are still fighting to gain equal footing with the Spurs.
"We just don't like them," owner Mark Cuban said. "They had what we wanted for so many years. And we took it from them last year. They have had former Mavs, and Avery [Johnson] is a former Spur, which has raised the intensity. Plus, we feel like one of their players is more than a little dirty."
But enough about Bruce Bowen.
"There's not a lot of love between these two teams," Stackhouse said. "Obviously, they got some factors – us putting them out of the playoffs – and they're going to be ready to go. And we got to find a way to deal with this new so-called bull's-eye on our back. But we feel we can deal with it."
Tonight's season opener for both teams won't push the Mavericks ahead of the Spurs in anything other than the Southwest Division standings. But these teams are two of the best in the NBA this decade and at least one of them has earned a place among the best teams in NBA history.
The Mavericks would like to crash that party sometime in the next few years.
"We expect championships," Greg Buckner said. "If we don't win the championship, we think it's a failure. We're here to come out and win the title and bring it home to Dallas. It starts Thursday. It's a process."
Buckner, back for his second stint with Dallas after being away for four years, said he thinks last season's trip to the Finals will be a huge benefit to the Mavericks who went through it.
"They know what it tastes like," he said. "They didn't get the whole pie, but they got to taste the pie. I want to be part of eating the whole pie."
And yet, the Spurs have had their pie and gobbled it up three times in the last eight seasons. The Mavericks – a very good team during that stretch – have made just one appearance in the NBA Finals, losing to Miami in June.
But you can't win a championship in November. What you can do is send subtle messages to your greatest rival. Johnson made his mark in the league as a player. But he was coach of the year last season with the Mavericks.
"It's good for basketball," he said. "You have a team that's been successful like they've been, and you're trying to get to that level. So I think it's great. Pop (Spurs coach Gregg Popovich) and I always talk about kicking each other's behinds. That's what it's about. Tim [Duncan] wants to win. Dirk Nowitzki wants to get to the level Tim's at in terms of winning championships.
"Let's keep it going. Let's celebrate it. Our series was one of the higher-rated series because you got two of the more interesting teams.
"These teams don't have to talk to get motivated. But we still feel we're the underdog. We still feel we're trying to get to the level they've been to before."
It's the stuff rivalries need.