There's No I in "Excuses," But There Are 2 In "Whining"

I’m sorry for a lack of posts recently. I really shouldn’t be making excuses, but my internet cable is broken and my day job has been wearing me out. But unless my internet holds me back, expect more consistent posting on this site.

But while I was gone, we witnessed the end of the NBA season and the end of the United States’ World Cup run. Personally, I also witnessed the first week of my summer job as a tennis counselor, featuring good kids that still manage to whine about nearly everything I do. Never would I have thought that these three concepts shared one universal element, but that was the reality.

What was that element? Excuses.

Obviously, we have to give credit where credit is due. The Miami Heat deserve tons of credit for their comeback in the NBA Finals. Dwayne Wade deserves the Jordan comparisons he has been receiving throughout the playoffs. Role players like Antoine Walker, Jason Williams, Alonzo Mourning, James Posey, and Gary Payton deserve props for stepping up when it mattered. Pat Riley deserves to be mentioned among the best in the game after this title. And, most importantly, Walker deserves to do his shuffle, even if he looks like an idiot.

But the real story of the finals to me was Dallas’ collapse. The Mavericks certainly have a legitimate case against the referees in this series. The Game 5 suspension on Jerry Stackhouse wasn’t even close to being merited. There didn’t seem to be a foul called at the end of Game 5, and one could definitely argue that there was a backcourt violation. Even though Dwayne Wade was spectacular, he probably shouldn’t have gone to the free throw line so many times.

Dallas had always been an organization that spoke out on the officiating. I don’t think I need to tell you about Mark Cuban’s reputation. After all, his blog is linked here and he’s said a lot on there. But in the NBA Finals, it seemed like the entire team was crying foul. Avery Johnson was going on talk radio to rant about Jerry Stackhouse’s suspension. Cuban went from being outspoken to being downright nasty. And at some point, the team was dramatically affected. The loose Mavericks we saw in the Western Conference playoffs faded away into a team that played tight when the pressure was greatest. In every close game, it was the Heat that came out with the energy and produced.

The point here isn’t that Dallas wasn’t unfairly jobbed. They certainly didn’t get the benefit of the calls at key moments. But bad calls and bad suspensions are part of the game. The team that responds the best to these calls is the one that will be successful in the end. During the Western Conference playoffs, the Mavericks played harder and more focused to counteract the calls they were receiving. It was as if they were using the questionable calls and suspensions as fuel to play even harder. Against San Antonio, the Mavericks certainly were outspoken about the Jason Terry suspension, but once Terry got back into the lineup for Game 7, the Mavericks came out with a fire that sent a message that they would overcome the factors they couldn’t control.

In the finals, the story was completely different. After letting a 13 point lead slip away in Game 3 and being blown out in Game 4, the Mavericks caught an unfortunate break when Jerry Stackhouse was suspended. It’s one thing for Mark Cuban to be upset about the call, but the most outspoken critic of the decision was none other than Avery Johnson. Johnson went on the radio and had this to say.

"This is what I call ridiculous. The league is so inconsistent. I’ve been holding my tongue all year about the foolishness, just the foolishness that goes on there. They’re so inconsistent. I’m just embarrassed to have to deal with some of the things that I have to deal with. Because we are in a position we have no authority and we’re always reminded of that, we’re just coaches. It’s just a bunch of bologna, for lack of a better word. It’s just sickening.

"Our fans should be upset, our players will be. Mark is just humiliated. All of the stuff that players do to our teams, we’ve seen worse. DJ Mbenga puts a hard foul, LeBron James’ headband goes off, he got suspended.

"If Shaquille O’Neal does the same thing, he gets a slap on the wrist, the same thing DJ Mbenga did. I’ve seen it before. It’s been around forever. Certain players get royal treatment, and certain players don’t."

So instead of blaming Dallas’ flat Game 4 performance on his players, Johnson chose to blame the league office. Another interesting thing Johnson did was to move his players out of their South Beach hotel. In a way, the decision made perfect sense, but in a different way, it was yet another example of Dallas making excuses. Miami and Dallas both had to deal with the lifestyle of South Beach during the playoffs, but it was only the Mavericks that moved away from it. Dallas, in essence, had found yet another scapegoat for their poor performances. But the problem was that it wasn’t South Beach or the referees that caused their collapse; it was themselves.

When I made my prediction that Dallas would win in 7, one of the reasons was because I felt that Avery Johnson would outthink Pat Riley at the coaching battle. While I admitted that Riley was more experienced and had his motivation tactics, I believed that Johnson’s outside-the-box thinking would confuse Shaq, DWade, and Riley. In the first 2 games, that’s exactly what happened. But by the time the series shifted to Miami, Dallas started to find reasons to blame others. Their attempt to find scapegoats affected their performance on the court. Suddenly, once Riley and the Heat made their adjustments, it was Johnson who refused to think outside the box. Avery and the Mavericks allowed Wade to catch the ball too easily. Dallas never pressed Wade, and rarely trapped him. Wade had the ball in his hands way too much and he made the Mavericks pay. By the end of the series, it seemed like Avery was wasting so much energy blaming other forces for Dallas’ struggles that he was never able to tap into the unique thinking that got the Mavericks here.

Here’s the thing. When I give feeds to my kids during tennis drills, I’m not always perfect. There are times when I do give bad feeds. Since I hadn’t played much during the year, bad feeds happen all the time. There were times during the games the kids would play where I would give a bad feed and cause them to miss their shot. Eventually, the kids were expecting me to screw up every single time I fed the ball. If they ever missed a shot, they would always look at me and whine “bad feed!” It doesn’t bother me too much, because these kids are 8 years old, after all. But the same exact thing happened to the Mavericks here. During Game 6, I couldn’t believe how many times they whined to the officials. Whenever there was a whistle on the Mavericks, they whined as if they were screwed. Eventually, they played as if they were expecting to receive a bad call. The Mavericks suddenly acted as if there was fungus on the rim, refusing to drive to the rim. They settled for jumper after jumper, going against the very tenant of slashing to the rim that had brought the Mavericks to the finals. In the end, it was Miami that was the more aggressive team.

So to recap, the Mavericks’ whining affected their coaching and their in-game performance. They have nobody but themselves to blame for their finals collapse. It’s unfortunate that they didn’t realize this while the series was going on.

Speaking of excuses, we’ve all been guilty of making excuses for the United States’ inability to advance to the second round in the World Cup. After the “gutsy” tie against the Italians, I expected the US to come out with a ton of energy against Ghana. Even with 9 men, the United States showed the passion and aggressiveness to win against the best teams in the world against the Azzurri. Against Ghana, however, they played with so little passion that it made me sick. They were playing as if they believed the referee would screw them again. Other than the one great ball by DeMarcus Beasley that led to the goal, it was the Black Stars that were aggressive. The fact that the foul that led to the go-ahead penalty kick was a bad call is irrelevant. We can argue the what-if scenarios all we want. Maybe the US would have beaten Italy with 10 men. Maybe they would have broken through for the go-ahead goal against Ghana without that penalty call. But the fact is, the US didn’t show the assertiveness necessary to advance. They have nobody to blame but themselves.

Blog to check out this week

I’m starting a weekly feature on this blog. Each Sunday, I’ll throw out a blog to check out carefully this week from the sidebar. I do more blog reading than blog updating these days, so I figure it makes sense to give the readers a good blog to check out. This week, with the baseball season taking center stage in the sports world, I recommend you check out Thank You Brian Sabean. This new Minnesota Twins team blog, from the makers of personal favorite Complete Sports, is not your typical baseball team blog. There are the individual game recaps, but there’s a distinct fan style in the air. You can almost sense the enthusiasm and love for the team between the lines of the writing. The style is a refreshing change from the critical writing I’ve seen with many other team blogs. So be sure to check out Thank You Brian Sabean this week for a good read.