Will Golden State Upset Dallas?

With almost all the first round series in the NBA playoffs ’07 finished with New Jersey and Toronto, San Antonio and Denver, Houston and Utah, Phoenix and Los Angeles Lakers, and Dallas and Golden state in the homestretch of their respective series (Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland ended their series via sweep).

This blog entry will purely discuss about the Golden Sate and Dallas series. Why, because the performance of Golden State in the series exceeds everybody’s expectations. Because they are dominating Dallas and because it is the classic underdog (might) defeating the favorite.

As of this writing Golden State Warriors is leading the series over the Dallas Maverics 3-2 (Dallas just won two hours ago to cut the lead). Ok nobody expected this to happen even though the warriors dominated the mavs in the regular season when they 4-0 in their head to head games. Everybody was certain that in the playoffs would be a different environment. But lo and behold, the warriors continued they dominance taking a 3-1 lead after games.

In the history of the NBA playoffs there only eight teams that have recovered from a 3-1 deficit, the last one was done last year by the 05-06 Phoenix Suns. Also there are only 2 eight-seeded teams who defeated the number 1 seed (all in the best of five series). So the warriors would like to be the third to accomplish the feat and the mavs would like to be the ninth team to come from a 3-1 hole.

Baron Davis is the difference maker for the warriors. In the three wins that they registered it was him who led the charge. While in the two lost he was a non factor in the end game. In game 2 he was ejected in the third quarter while in game game 5 he graduated with six fouls. In order to pull the upset Baron should be a factor in the end game.

For Dallas everybody knows that the offence revolves around Dirk Nowitski. If Nowitski delivers more likely the mavs will win. In game 5 Nowitski had 30 points (his most in the series) with 12 coming in the last three minutes of the game.

With game 6 going back to Oakland (warriors’ homecourt) expect that the warriors will go all out for the win because they cannot afford going back to Dallas and steal the series. While Dallas would take it one game at a time and hope they steal one in Oakland and bring the series to their homecourt for the series finale (game seven) where they are virtually undefeated in the regular season.