lakers @ mavs gameday

[superheadcat]

well, it is within 24 hrs.

first, some apetizer:

Mavs not backing down from tall task vs. Lakers
Dallas knows LA is loaded, but it's not backing down, either
By EDDIE SEFKO / The Dallas Morning News

The best team in basketball will arrive at American Airlines Center on Thursday night, and they are being welcomed with all the respect and adulation you would expect.

Which is to say, none. The Mavericks spent the day before the biggest game of the young season talking about the alleged greatness of the Los Angeles Lakers. The Lakers come calling with the best record in the Western Conference and enough future hall of famers that they might require a new wing at the Springfield, Mass., museum when they all are enshrined.

But respect comes hard in Texas. Just because you smacked defending-champion San Antonio by 16 points in the past week and beat the Eastern Conference's top team, Indiana, by 22 on Sunday, there just aren't many believers when you go a full year without winning an NBA title, even if you did win three in a row before that.

And here we thought the whole league felt like LA's raiding of free agents Karl Malone and Gary Payton, who agreed to join Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant for the proverbial minimum wage, just wasn't fair.

"It isn't," Mavericks forward Danny Fortson said Wednesday. "But what can we do about it? People say what we did here in the off-season isn't fair. We just have to play hard and not focus so much on their names, realize that these guys are still old and we're still younger. If we remember that and play hard, I think we can run them off the court."

That's what happens when you bring in a bunch of new guys who don't understand that the Mavericks have lost 30 of the last 33 meetings against the Lakers and 45 of the last 50. They don't know any better.

"They're good, real good," forward Antoine Walker said. "They put a pounding on the Spurs last week. But we'll see what happens Thursday night."

The Mavericks aren't using this game as any sort of yardstick. They quite frankly don't care where they stack up against the Lakers in the first week of December. They'll worry about that in the first week of May.

But as early-season games go, this one at least has the potential for some entertainment value, if for no other reason than the Mavericks are talking a good game going into it.

"We can get this one," Mavs guard Steve Nash said. "We're going out there to win this game, for sure. There are no moral victories or giving up in this group. We're going out there to win them all."

As you might suspect, coach Don Nelson is somewhat less exuberant when it comes to bringing the Lakers' invincibility into question.

"I was up early [Wednesday] morning watching their film, and I had to stop watching it," Nelson said. "It was depressing. They're that good. They're one of the most dominant teams I've seen in a long time. It reminds me of the Boston Celtics when they added Bill Walton [in the 1985-86 season] to an already championship team.

"They're far and away the best team I've seen. And it's going to be harder to play them now than it was opening night [when the Mavericks lost, 109-93, in LA]."

So are the Lakers as good as their last six games – all victories, with five of them by at least 16 points – have appeared? At least one objective observer thinks so.

"They are clearly the class of the NBA right now," said TNT analyst Steve Kerr. "They are the best team, and they have the most talent in a starting five. And I think that they are motivated and angry after last year's failures."

"Look at it this way," Nelson said. "They've had the best center in the league forever. They have the best two-guard in the game. They've added the best high-post player in the game. You can argue that [Tim] Duncan maybe is that guy. But Malone always has been considered to me to be the best high-post player in the league.

"And you put Payton in there who you could still argue is the best point guard in the game. Most people would say [Jason] Kidd or maybe somebody else. But when you talk about the best point guard in the league, you got to talk about Gary Payton, along with anybody else.

"So on the same team, they got four of the best players in the league at their position. Hello? Anybody home?"

That's Nelson's way of saying anybody this side of Charles Barkley could figure out how good the Lakers really are.

But apparently, some of his players haven't yet made it to this side of Barkley.