1975 felt like. Nobody expected us to be more than a minor irritation for the Bullets. A friend bet me a couple 6-packs that we wouldn't last to game 6. After we won game 2 the rest of the world was like, OK, these guys might be better than we thought. The way I felt last night was the way I felt after that 2nd game. We had taken their best punch right on the nose and instead of folding we punched right back, and we kept punching til they finally backed up a step.

The Mavs had turned the tables on us and finally dictated tempo and style. They were getting good shots and making them, they were avoiding our swarming stlye defense and the turnovers we'd been creating with it, and, on the other end, they made us settle for deep shots that we weren't making. Like the announcers were saying, the 67-win team had finally shown up. Thank God we had the secret weapon. Even though we were being outplayed, Baron wouldn't let us accept failure. I mean, the only other Warrior that didn't have a sub-par 1st half was MP (big props to him) and yet we were tied at the half. And again at the end of the 3rd. Fell behind again in the 4th. It seemed like playing from behind was just taking too much of a toll. Then we did the thing that's going to gain us more respect than all of the chaotic, small ball, mismatch exploiting nonsense we'd been throwing at them in the first 3 games. We became a good team. We dug deep and pulled out a tough win against a formidable foe. We made the plays at both ends, we hit the clutch shots, forced the turnovers. We did what good teams do. We took the game. We didn't resort to gimmicks. We didn't rely on luck. We fed off the home crowd and closed out the game. We popped them in the nose enough times that we made them blink and by the time they gained their senses it was too late. The last couple punches they threw, Dirk's two 3s (pretty ballsy shots, I might add), were too little, too late.

This series has made me happy to be a Warrior fan, last night's game made me proud to be one. Good stuff.

___________________________________________________________________

Flakey Foont - "Mr Natural, what does it all MEAN?"

Mr Natural - "Don't mean shit!"