Defending Nellie and Van Exel

[Lvubun1]

Everybody has been getting on them so I will give my opinion and what happened Thurs.

Nellie- First, the guy has won 1,000 games, its kinda hard to doubt him. When it comes to the closing moments I think Nellie made the right decision. Seems that a lot of people don't think he should have put NVE out their in the closing moments because of his bad play, but you have to look at it this way, it comes down to respect. I doubt if Coach Pop. from SA had a shot chart that said NVE is 1-12, the fact is he is NVE. NVE shooting 1-50 will still get more respect then Wang, Buck or Griff shooting 10-10 just by history. He has a nack for hitting big shots and I'm sure SA hasn't forgot when he hit that game winning shot against them in the WCF a couple years ago. As for forcing NVE down our throats, I don't think you can really blame Nellie for that, Nick is a probably the best ball-handler/passer on the team, and thats what he left him in for, it was up to Nick to realize he was cold and to stop shooting.

Nick- He sucked, plain and simple their is no other way to put it. But I think it is safe he won't shot 1-12 again, while he is not a great shooter he still is a 40% shooter which is no where close to 8%. I don't think you can take more out of that game then just that, he had a horrid game, its nothing to with him not being able to play in big games, he had 44 against the Bucks, 32 against the Kings, 34 against the Lakers, 31 against us. Nothing to do with the Spurs he had 25 and 15 against them eariler in the season. Unless it gets worse which is highly unlikely you can't cut his minutes, bench him or call for his head. The main thing is that we have to treat him as a equal its pretty obvious that he probably won't be here next year, not because of his play but because he is a starter, he is a top ten PG and its wrong that guys like Alvin Williams, Jason Williams, and Kenny Anderson are starting and Nick is sitting on the bench, he probably could start for 19-20 teams in the League, Dallas isn't one of them, but it doesn't matter if he is traded next year or tommorow he is a part of the team right now and I think its unfair to play "defect all the blame to the new guy" if one of the big shot 1-12 I don't think we would be talking about benching them or cutting their minutes, Why? Because we know they are better then that and they can contribute to the team a whole hell of a lot, and NVE is no different.