It was youth and depth… that’s what did it for the little Mavericks that could. They were able to just keep throwing waves of young, athletic scorers at the Spurs, and they didn’t have answers. They had the answers for the big scoring threats. Dirk Nowitzki, Josh Howard, Jason Terry… they could handle normal depth. But when you start throwing guys like Devin Harris, Jerry Stackhouse, and even Keith Van Horn, who, much to my surprise, is still in the NBA… the Spurs just couldn’t match up with everybody.

A bench of Brent Barry, Robert Horry, and Nick Van Exel… to say that those guys weren’t athletic enough is a little like saying that Liberace wasn’t heterosexual enough. It wasn’t even close. And Avery Johnson exploited the hell out of that… He attacked it like John Daly going after a slot machine that spits out Marlboro Reds. He had the personnel to be relentless, and he took full advantage.

So it’s pretty clear where San Antonio needs to improve in the off-season. And before turning back to the Mavs, credit the Spurs for a pretty ballsy performance, even though it came up short. They played great, they just didn’t have the tools to win. Going down by 20, and then battling back like that… that took some championship-level heart. The deficit was just too much. Tim Duncan had a phenomenal series… I’m a little bit sad that we’re I’m not going to be seeing any more of him this year. I know he didn’t have the best regular season, but when he can play like he played in this series… he’s still the best player in the game, bar none.

But the team that deserved to win the series won the series. They had something that the Spurs couldn’t account for. Devin Harris played better than anyone had a right to expect of him. Dirk was incredible. And, you know, Gana Diop was a huge factor in overtime last night. Man, that’s not a sentence I ever expected to type. But it’s true, he came in and was quite useful against Tim Duncan in overtime. It may have made the difference in the game.

Looking ahead… I like Dallas’s chances in the Conference Finals. I actually didn’t see that game, because I was DVR’ing it, and some rotten son of a bitch told me who won. But yeah, the Mavs are going to be in the NBA Finals. We’ll see what Detroit shows in this next series, but the Mavs look pretty complete right now. It’s going to be a tall effort for anyone put them out.