LeBreton@FWST: Two Games There for the Taking

[MavKikiNYC]

Haven't paid that much attention to this guy before, but he seems to have G1-2 summed up pretty well.

Poor-shooting Mavs stumble to another loss

Gil LeBreton - In My Opinion


SACRAMENTO, Calif. - They huffed ... they puffed ... and nobody could blow anything down.

Billed as a battle of the NBA's two wildest western gunslingers, the Mavericks and Sacramento Kings lapsed Tuesday into the gangs that couldn't shoot straight.

Yet, for the uneasy visitors, the tempo was accommodating. The crowd squirmed. The hosts struggled.

The door was ajar, daring the Mavericks to barge back into this NBA playoff series.

And what did coach Don Nelson's team do?

It mostly stood on the front porch, clanging jump shots, ringing a door bell that was never answered.

Shooting only 32.3 percent for the game, missing 63 of their 93 shots from the floor, the Mavericks failed to seize another golden opportunity Tuesday night, allowing Sacramento to escape with an 83-79 victory.

If you're thinking of sending a wreath, the Mavericks will come home down 2-0 in the best-of-seven series. Game 3 is Saturday, and whether this series ever gets back to Northern California next week is still very much in doubt.

Allow me to give you two reasons: Michael Finley and Steve Nash, minority partners in this series of the franchise's alleged Big Three.

There has been little, if anything, wrong with Dirk Nowitzki in these two games. Dirk scored 32 with 13 rebounds in Sunday's first game, and in Game 2, he managed 28 points and 10 boards. His standing in the Big Three is secure.

But Finley and Nash again struggled at both ends of the floor Tuesday, even after acknowledging on the series off day that at least one of them had complement Dirk.

Finley's first-quarter contribution was an eight-minute cameo that produced no points and no rebounds. Nash's role in the debacle was best mirrored by the night that his counterpart, Mike Bibby, had -- 24 points.

Down the stretch, it was Bibby who made the clutch basket for the Kings. Down the stretch in the final seconds, with a chance to at least knot the game, it was both Nash and Finley who couldn't find the basket.

Clutch time calls for clutch players, not guys who have struggled to find a rhythm for two games. With a timeout to discuss their final options, why the Mavericks put the ball in Finley's hands is curious, at best.

His jumper from the left wing was whisked away as he was going up by Peja Stojakovic, who is not exactly the Lawrence Taylor of NBA defenders.

But those kinds of things -- swats and swipes, that passed for disrupting defense -- seemed to go on all night. Is this what a trace of defense does to the league's two most electric offensive teams?

The Mavericks set their tone for the night in the first quarter, misfiring from inside and out, shooting only 30.4 percent. The Kings weren't much better. They finished with 37 percent. The two best shooting teams in the league missed on a combined 114 of 174 shots.

Nelson tried to find his own stopper and turned to Eddie Najera in the fourth quarter. But Najera couldn't stop everything, despite his nine rebounds.

Without the home-court advantage, the Mavericks might have been expected to be down, two games to none, heading back to Texas. But by the dim light of the plane ride home, they should know that both games at Arco Arena were there for the taking. And the Mavericks couldn't.