Mavs 93 - Clippers 86

Clippers were 37% from the floor, but 46% from deep.  All of Maggette's field goals were from beyond the arc.  Bizarro.

I think comparing foul totals is pretty much an awful way to determine if a game is well officiated.  Of course, watching that crew it wouldn't surprise me if that was their ultimate goal.  They were either trying to play the make-up call game for 48 minutes or they were on the take.  Mavs -6  

THE OVER

Clippers lost the first 3 minutes by 10.  Dallas lost the rest of the game by 3.  Dallas only had to make 7 shots from the field in the 4th and they came from only 3 Mavericks.  The Clippers made 10, of which 3 were 3 balls.  But because it was suddenly legal to foul Clippers going to the basket, and tackle Clippers shooting 3's from the wing, the Clippers only got 3 FTA in the 4th.  1 trip for Maggette and an old fashioned 3 point play for Dickau.

I suppose its a bit self-fulfilling to see that ref and anticipate a poorly officiated game.  But that was brutal.  It started with Kaman getting dumped to the floor on his first rebound attempt and continued right through the fourth when on a break Jason Kidd literally threw Q to the ground away from the ball but right in front of the ref.  The ref had to side step to not trip over him.  No call.

Nick Fazekas is looking like a nice piece.  Here he can be seen going for a Big Mac.

And here he is enjoying the fair.

Yes, the worst is not while yet we can still say this is the worst.  Or something like that.

Man, it's a rugged deal to be a Clipper fan.  It's like a twisted philosophical question:  if Chris Kaman sprains an ankle on March 31st in a lost season, does anybody care?  In the larger scheme of things, the answer is a resounding no, but for us, the miserable few, this is a devastating blow.

I'm not sure why, but I'm much less interested in seeing EB come back onto the court if he's not out there with K2.  It just seems like it will be yet another exercise in futility.  Of course EB will be a nice complement to the Maggette-Thornton show, which is pretty entertaining, but I was counting on more impressive firepower for this last two weeks.  Oh well.  Go ahead, hit us again, we can take it.

Fazekas is fun to watch.  He never even took a jump shot last night--part of his charm is that he's a good shooter, right?  With Williams gone there's another roster spot--one that really should have been there all year, and doubly so when Williams wasn't ready to go when Davis got hurt, but no matter.

I'm really tired of Ralph's boosterism of QRoss.  Ross has had a very disappointing season in a year when mid-level guys badly needed to step up.  But Ralph is still plugging away, saying for the millionth time that "he does all of the little things that basketball people understand" and then "the game changed when QRoss came in to guard Jason Kidd."  Um, no, Ralph, sorry.  The game changed when Dunleavy brought in Dickau instead of Smush, and Fazekas replaced Josh Powell.  Yes, Ross slowed down Kidd a little better than Mobley, who was playing while injured yet again.  But a guy who has no offense whatsoever is not a game-changer when you're down by 15 points.

As much as I like Fazekas, Dickau needs some props after last night.  Part of the problem for the Clips is the horrible Smush.  Has he had even one decent minute as a Clipper?  They were down ten, clawed their way back to get within reach, and then Smush came in and everything went blah.  The blues carried over to the second half and the Clips were going nowhere.  But then MD did a very good thing, going with Dickau instead of Smush, and the Clips had a nice comeback.  There's definitely a possibility that MD hasn't played Dickau enough this year, starting him and bringing Knight off the bench, just to see what happens when there's nothing to lose.  Instead, we're gotten some recent big doses of Smush Parker.  It's strange.

And the same applies to Marcus Williams now.  They couldn't have put Williams out there to see how he did against Jason Kidd?  I know it's hard for him to get minutes when you want to play Thornton and Maggette as much as possible.  But maybe there will be an opening now that Mobley is banged up.  Don't be surprised, however, if Mobley goes 40 minutes and scores 10 points in a loss to the Sonics.

Does anyone know what the clipper injury situation is against dallas? What i mean is... Every time the clips play the mavs, it seems like someone get hurt. I think there was a game earlier this year when another clipper got injured (thomas or davis) I cant really remember now. This whole season has been a blur of mediocrity.