The Texans

["hironaka@xxxxxxxxx"<hironaka@xxxxxxxxx>]

Last night's Nets-Sac result makes up for anything bad 
that could happen tonight. 

The Dallas Mavs were held in the 80s four times in the 
past ten games, and lost their first home games of the 
year to Milwaukee and Utah in that span.

In the blowout over Atlanta, the Mavs shot 10-21 on 
treys, but in the 10 previous games before that the 
Dallas Morning News reports that nobody on the roster hit 
more than 29.4 percent of their 3-pointers and the team-
wide 23.7-percent ledger dropped the Mavericks from first 
to ninth in long-range accuracy.

The Celtics will try to throw Dallas out of whack with 
our perimeter blitz package, pass the ball and throw 
bombs down on top of the Dallas zone. Antoine simply 
needs to be brilliant tonight. Pierce has to actually 
make jumpshots.

Every stat going into tonight's game suggests an epic 
mismatch, so the Celtics can't go in respectful or 
fearful. They can't let a few bad bounces throw them off 
target, which is to win. 

The following stats are real, but the Celtics would be 
better off not thinking about it.

-The Mavs are currently working on their second longest 
winning streak of the year.

-The Mavs go for 30 wins tonight. That would put them on 
a 70-12 track for the season.

-The Mavs have scored over 100 in five of six games. I 
wish our offensive dry spells were like that!

-The Cubanos feature 11 guys who have started NBA games 
this year, including likely starter and good guy Adrian 
Griffin (9th on the balanced team in scoring). Everyone 
on that team plays well and plays a role.

-The Mavs hold opponents this year to .418 shooting, 
while Boston comes in at .413 from the field. 

-Despite the slump, all five of the Mavs' leading scorers 
shoot 35.9% or better on three-point attempts, and they 
all use it as a weapon.

-LaFrentz is suddenly a 20-10 guy over the past week. 
They already have three other guys regularly scoring 20 
points, plus Nick Van Exel (12ppg).

-Dallas has won five straight against Boston, and I don't 
remember any final score that was close. I'm not sure 
Boston will ever beat a Dallas team in the Nowitzki era.

Tonight is a key game, because the Celtics put themselves 
in that situation. They can't worry about playing a 
perfect Celtics game, because they can't and won't. But 
hopefully they will come out with some things to build on 
to try to earn a win versus an erratic San Antonio or 
Houston (both just .500 in the past 8 games). We got 
swept as per usual last year in Texas, but this year can 
be different. This isn't a playoff-type weekend. Its more 
like the playoffs-if-Boston-went-straight-to-the-NBA 
Finals type of weekend. It should be some fun and 
entertaining basketball, win or lose.

Joe H.




 
-------------------
L'e-mail gratuit pas comme les autres.
NOMADE.FR, pourquoi chercher ailleurs ?