NBA FINALS PREVIEW, PART 2
Don’t Believe in Alchemy? Then You Haven’t Watched Basketball
The Dallas Mavericks have been one of the NBA’s best roller coaster rides
In Part 1 of my NBA Finals Preview, I analyzed how the league has changed and the place magic plays in the sport.
Even in the age of 3-pointer roulette, defense still wins championships.
In 2020, Jason Kidd was an assistant coach with the Lakers under Frank Vogel the year they won the title in the Orlando bubble. He learned that a defense can only afford to have one defensive weakness on the floor at any time. In the summer of 2021, Dallas hired him as the head coach.
Kidd turned the Mavs into a top-10 defense and led them to the 2022 Western Conference Finals by upsetting 64-win, title favorite Phoenix in a devastating Game 7 rout that caused the Suns to explode. (Remember that number 64 for later.)
But disrespecting star players can turn a franchise into a lottery team.
Dallas stumbled, refusing to give Jalen Brunson a reasonable offer and lost him in free agency to the Knicks. In New York, he has transformed into a…
