HoopsHype.com NBA Blogs - Eddie Johnson

I thought these Golden State Warriors were immune to hiccupping in crunch time but, wow, what a choke job in Salt Lake City in the first two games. I wanted to be nice about this, but the more I look at the first two games of the series I keep saying the Warriors should be up 2-0.

I am not like Charles Barkley. I happen to love the Bay Area. I used to travel there every time I got a chance when I played for the Sacramento Kings. Right now there has to be a dark cloud over the city. The Warriors should have the decency to at least hold up the image of the downtrodden Dallas Mavericks.

Where’s the team that made plays against the Mavericks at will? But hold up… Did they?

Hmmm, let’s reflect back a minute.

Well, the Game 1 victory against Dallas was indeed a barn-burner. The Warriors held up under pressure and rode the great play of Baron Davis, but since then it’s been suspect when the games have been close.

Remember Game 5 against Dallas? The Warriors had almost a double-figure lead with few minutes left. Dirk Nowitzki went crazy and the Warriors lost composure down the stretch.

Well, here we go again. I will concede the Game 1 loss to Utah, but Game 2 was extremely disappointing. The Warriors had a nice lead late in the game and had a chance to seal the victory by executing the only thing on the basketball court where the opposing team can’t play defense: shooting a free throw.

Where is Mark Price, Calvin Murphy and Rick Barry when you need them? I know it drives me nuts when guys miss key free throws, but those guys must start throwing dishes when they see it.

Mickael Pietrus looked like he was facing a firing squad when he threw his two bricks and Davis, who is showing everyone how great a player he can be, missed one out of two and a chance to put the Warriors up three points later.

What really added insult to injury was the fact that Andris Biedrins, who might be the worst free-throw shooter I have ever seen other than Ben Wallace, made both of his to increase the Warriors lead.

This is a pattern that seems to be quite obvious and Utah has feasted on the weakness.

Keep the Warriors in a close game and you can beat them because of silly mistakes like Baron Davis not pushing the ball up the middle of the floor and instead stepping out of bounds on the sideline. This is all about fatigue. And the Warriors, who only play seven guys, seem to be tiring late in games.

So what should the Warriors do? What seems to be the answer to their woes?

Blow the Jazz out in Game 3 and 4 – which they will do. The Jazz are terrible on the road despite their Game 7 victory in Houston.

The Warriors and their crowd will be in rare form this weekend. The Warriors will ride the emotion of their crowd and abuse the Jazz and send the series back to Utah 2-2.

The Jazz might look like the better team in the series because they are up 2-0, but the Warriors have made things easy for the Jazz to grab the first two games.

Here are the keys…

The Warriors need to shut down Andrei Kirilenko and Mehmet Okur. Both players struggled on the road in the Houston series and I expect the same this time around. Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer will continue to flourish because they are fearless and Derek Fisher will cause problems with his defense.

They also need a good weekend out of Monta Ellis, who has looked intimidated and lost, to finally play like the Most Improved Player. Al Harrington has to rebound and keep Boozer off the offensive glass.

I picked the Jazz in seven games and I am sticking with it. But how can I not root for the Warriors? Although they quite frankly drive me crazy.

But I love it!

I saw this coming, but I did not think it would happen. I thought the inexperience of the Warriors would not allow them to pull one the greatest upsets ever in the NBA. When I saw the way the playoff ladder was shaping up the last two weeks of the season with Golden State and the Clippers fighting for the eighth seed, I thought “This is not fair.” Here you have a club in the Clippers that made the semifinals last year with the same identical team and the Warriors who also underachieved early, but were playing the best basketball in the NBA to end the season.

The Mavericks really set themselves up by trying to avoid playing the Warriors in the playoffs by basically throwing a game away at the end of the regular season, hoping that they would move up to the seventh spot. Avery Johnson sent a message to the Warriors and his team by sitting Dirk Nowitzki, Josh Howard and Jerry Stackhouse in that key game for Golden State.

When the Warriors clinched the eighth seed, they entered the series with the psychological edge over the first seed – a team that won 67 games.

Here is why the Warriors had that edge and I wrote it a few months ago when I said the Suns were a better team than the Mavericks…

The Mavericks are a jump-shooting team with no inside scoring whatsoever. I have never seen a team win a title that had no inside-presence scoring. That’s why the Heat figured them out last year and eventually won four straight to get the title. They just took away their ability to make jump shots.

The Mavericks top four players are all jump shooters. Nowitzki, Howard, Stackhouse and Jason Terry get the majority of shot attempts and most come from 15 feet. The reason it has worked the last two years is because DeSagana Diop and Erick Dampier provided very good interior defense and offensive rebounding – thus giving a very good shooting team more opportunities.

The reason the Mavericks were so dominant this year is because they used their shooters differently than, for example, the Suns or Warriors. They used them in a half-court slow-down pace with one-on-one clearouts, two-man games and post-ups around the free throw line.

This allowed them to play non-scorers like Diop, Dampier and Greg Buckner, who would not have survived in an uptempo game. Thus we have the defensive and rebound presence.

This system was great against 27 teams during the regular season, but not so much against Phoenix and Golden State.

Those two teams force the tempo and play small with serious inside-the-paint scoring.

Avery Johnson changed his lineup and went small to start the series and was criticized – which I thought was unfair. He did the right thing, but realized something he already knew… His small guys could not compete with Golden State’s.

The Warriors not only have shooters, but their shooters are multi-faceted and that is something the Mavericks could not deal with.

Stephen Jackson, Baron Davis, Jason Richardson, Monta Ellis and Mickael Pietrus can all shoot from the perimeter, drive to the basket and post you up inside. That advantage and the Mavericks inability to post the smallish Warriors inside caused this massive breakdown.

So how do you fix the Mavericks?

Ask Mark Cuban again if he misses Steve Nash. A pass-first point guard who can score is what the Mavericks need. They waste too much time and energy getting off shots. A guard that can get Nowitzki and Howard wide open shots without having to bang and dribble would help. Terry and Devin Harris are off guards and always will be.

They also need to find a post player that can defend and rebound, but also with a good post-up game to command a double team every now and then. Having an enforcer that can score on the other side would do wonders for Nowitzki.

The Mavericks will see how Utah takes advantage of the smaller Warriors inside players with Carlos Boozer and Mehmet Okur and forces Don Nelson to play Andris Biedrins and maybe even Adonal Foyle – especially if Al Harrington continues to be the weak link as he was in the Dallas series.

(Utah in seven, but I am pulling for the Warriors).