Hollinger with the hate crime

[rabbitproof]

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/column...ictions-090107

4. Dallas will miss the playoffs

OK, time to try something brave: divining which of the eight teams competing for the seven final playoff spots out West will fall short.

All of the candidates have shown their warts. New Orleans is heavily dependent on one player and has no frontcourt depth. Utah's two best players have been hurt all season, and Boozer might not be back for a long time. Houston only wishes it could be as healthy as Utah, and one if its best players seems like he's tuning out. San Antonio is getting awfully long in the tooth and has a killer schedule the second half of the season. Denver won't have Anthony for a month and is hardly any deeper than New Orleans up front. The Suns aren't all on the same page and have major age issues. Portland is a lightweight on D, and its best player is a bit on the brittle side.

So why Dallas? It's simple -- we can't say anything went horribly wrong for them in the first 35 games. The Mavs have been reasonably healthy, have benefited from an unexpectedly strong performance from Terry and Jason Kidd, and aren't enduring any major dramas at the moment.

And even with everything more or less going right and most of the competition suffering form serious problems, they still can't pull away -- because basically, they just aren't that good. When the other top teams in the West lose, there's usually a good reason -- injuries, schedule, something. Compare that to the Mavs, who had all of their important players healthy and available in Memphis on Sunday and lost by 20. Their once-mighty offense is only 12th in efficiency, largely because only three guys can score -- in fact, their fourth-leading scorer, Kidd, averages only 8.4 points per game.

The bar in the West has been raised high enough that it likely will take 47 wins to get into the playoffs, and I just don't see Dallas getting there. The Mavericks aren't imposing on the court and lack the trade assets to get better. Maybe they'll get a reprieve thanks to another team's injuries, but it's equally likely that they'll be left in the dust by a few of their own. Handicapping the playoff race in the West is a fool's errand, but if I have to pick one team to fall short, it's this one.