MVN - Most Valuable Network

The Headless Boys From G-State Do Themselves In

The Golden State Warriors may be just as good as done.

It took me a while, but now I remember exactly what isn’t to like about my bandwagon playoff underdog: The Warriors are headless.

Say what you want about the officiating last night in Dallas – it looked atrocious at times to the naked eye, and Bennett Salvatore just happening to be doing yet another playoff game in which the home team needed to get a win raised a few eyebrows – but there is no excuse for the way the Warriors conducted themselves last night. And they will pay dearly.

Baron Davis is supposed to be the leader of this young team. He set quite the example last night, reacting to every call with a newfound animation that made it evident to anyone watching that he was headed for an early exit right from the start last night. Yes, arguing with the officials can at times be productive if it is early in the game and the goal is to get them to give you a certain call later in the game. However, let’s keep in mind that arguing with the referees will never result in a call being changed and that the vast majority of complaints go to no avail. That said, with the officials’ ability to T up any comers who are too aggressive with them, the mouthing off in general seems to be a fairly high-risk, low-reward endeavor.

Which is what it was last night for Davis. He was fortunate not to get a technical throughout the early portion of the game for his demonstrative reactions, but once he picked one up due to the pseudo-scrum with Jason Terry, he had to know to keep his mouth shut. As the guy responsible for making this team go, he had to know that he could not even come close to risking getting himself thrown out.

Apparently, he didn’t know this. Not only did he manage to get himself tossed before the end of the third quarter in what was just an 11-point game at the time, he managed to do it after flipping out about a play where he clearly bopped Jerry Stackhouse on the Dallas reserve’s way to the rim. His behavior was reprehensible, and for all intents and purposes, his team’s chances for the night were terminated by his actions. And the Baron is supposed to be one of the good guys on this team. Imagine the example that this sets for the young’uns.

What really says something is the fact that it was the Warriors’ biggest problem child who seemed to be their most under-control member last night – for a while. It was Stephen Jackson, our favorite neighborhood brawler, who pulled his teammates back during the pushing and nudging match that went on in the middle of the third, and it was Jackson who seemed for a bit to be making a truly concerted effort to just play basketball and not get himself in trouble.

Then he became Stephen Jackson again and got himself ejected. This was followed by Jax hanging around and indicating no real rush to leave while continuing to swear at the referees and anybody else in the vicinity before receiving a security escort to the locker room. You can take Stephen Jackson away from Ron Artest, but you can’t take the Ron Artest out of Stephen Jackson. Horrendous.

Shockingly, while these bits of misbehavior were occurring, the Mavs were on their way to running the Warriors out of the gym in the second half by feasting on poor shot selection and questionable decision making with the ball on the Golden State end. What we saw last night was a Warriors team that got frustrated as soon as the going got tough and had its leaders misbehave, leading to a completely unnecessary distraction as well as bad basketball.

And this is why these Warriors are likely done. The stat heads can tell you all they want about how well Golden State has matched up with the Mavericks and how this will be a series going down to the wire, but the fact of the matter is that it is the human aspect that makes sports what they are. Make no mistake; the Warriors have already put themselves in the biggest hole possible in that regard. The guys who set the tone for them sent the message to their teammates that asinine behavior, particularly with regard to the referees, is acceptable, that getting distracted from the task at hand is acceptable, that using the officiating as an excuse for poor play is acceptable. Don Nelson may be an excellent coach, but he too tends to have his own combustibility issues at times (see: game-losing technical foul in Washington earlier this season) and is unlikely to erase the message sent to the team by Davis and Jackson.

Far more important, however, is the message the behavior of Davis and Jackson sent to the Mavericks. Any mental advantage the Warriors had over Dallas because of their regular season and Game 1 success against them? Gone. In fact, it is now Dallas who has a huge mental edge. It is the battle-tested Dallas team who knows now that all it needs to do is get off to a decent start and let the Warriors do the rest by repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot. It is an edge that Avery Johnson’s boys are too smart to give up.

Theoretically, going back home to Oakland with this series even at a game apiece should have been a dream come true for the Warriors. Instead, because of the way they lost Game 2, they have ceded control of this series to Dallas.

Sadly, a renaissance season in Golden State will be over shortly. But the boys from Oakland now will have no one to blame but themselves.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 9:12 am and is filed under Baron Davis, NBA Player Misconduct, Stephen Jackson, NBA Playoffs, Don Nelson, Dallas Mavericks, Golden State Warriors, General NBA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.