Quick Thoughts Heading into Game 5

Mark Cuban has been strangely silent throughout the series.  He'd gone a week without a post on his personal blog until today's very relevant entry titled "Yahoo+Comcast=Deal of the Year".  I'm sure it is, Mark, and you've outlined some intriguing reasons for the claim.  But your site is called BLOG MAVERICK, your team is down 3-1, the game is in 2 hours, and your primary concern is that Yahoo/Comcast
   "still doesnt create enough bandwidth for the delivery of HDTV over the net"??????
Wow.  For a guy who has never shied away from an opinion in his 7 years as Mavs owner I was expecting at least one rambling, Steinbrenner-esque motivational rant about this series.  Maybe a :"We're the Mavericks, goddamit and their coach is Don EFFING Nelson." 

But sadly, Cuban appears to have been reduced to the 79-year old Steinbrenner's quiet, detached fuming from the sidelines.  Soon, Howard Rubenstein will be faxing press releases saying that Avery Johnson's job is safe, but he must turn it around.   
That being said, there's a decent shot that at this moment Cuban is sitting in Avery Johnson's office screaming about Dirk's PT, like he did 4 years ago to Don Nelson after his star was hurting during a playoff series:
      "Mr. Nowitzki had suffered sprained ligaments in his left knee in the third game of the best-of-seven series, but,    with    the    Mavericks trailing three games to one, was cleared by team doctors to play again. Mr. Cuban confronted Mr. Nelson in the coach's office and demanded the star forward return to the court, Mavericks officials say."

At this point, he might be telling Avery to cut down on the Giant German's time for game 5.

No doubt the Nelly/Cuban/Dirk backstory that was chronicled in a front page WSJ article today gives the series added juice.  But the back-back story here is that throughout the 1990s, this Mavericks were just as awful and ineffective as this Warriors franchise.  Cuban and Nelly slowly built a powerhouse the traditional way, using the draft to land raw but athletic talent that they developed incrementally.  That's the way it's supposed to work.  They went down in the early rounds of the playoffs for a few years and then battled their way to the finals in '06.  This was their year, and it still may be. 

But these Nelly/B-Diddy Warriors don't give a damn about taking the time to develop.  This team was built through free-agency, mid-season trades, and lunacy.  They don't think about the future or planning or executing.  But so far this series, they've been the only team that has done just that.