King Kaufman's Sports Daily
There must be a way to stop NBA teams who have clinched their playoff spot from tanking or "resting their starters" in games that still have meaning.
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April 18, 2007 | The Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Clippers both won Tuesday, extending their thrilling race for the eighth playoff spot in the NBA Western Conference to one last day. The Warriors even guaranteed themselves a winning record by winning their 41st game.
The Warriors beat the best team in the West, the Dallas Mavericks, while the Clippers beat the next best, the Phoenix Suns.
Here's the starting lineup the Mavericks sent out in Oakland: Greg Buckner, Devean George, DeSagana Diop, Don Rickles and Jose Juan Berea. Here are some of the DNP-coach's decisions: Jerry Stackhouse, Dirk Nowitzki, Josh Howard.
Tim Duncan of the San Antonio Spurs got tossed out of a game the other night for laughing on the bench -- the ref who booted him, Joe Crawford, has been suspended indefinitely by the league -- but there was no sanction for the Mavericks starters doing sudoku puzzles, eating bonbons and phoning their brokers from the bench Tuesday.
Just kidding about Don Rickles. That fourth name up there should be Melissa Rivers. Oh, OK: Maurice Ager.
The Suns were playing at home, so either to please the customers or to stay sharp for the playoffs or because he just forgot and turned in a photocopied lineup sheet, coach Mike D'Antoni ran the starters out there, and then he mostly kept them in the game, which the Clips won by four points.
"I went into the game thinking it felt like a preseason game," a clearly drunken D'Antoni said. "I'm sure some of the other guys felt it was like a preseason game. You can't help it."
OK, I made that up about him being drunk. Just trying to liven up the NBA "regular" season.
But let me help you out here, Mike. You couldn't help feeling like it was a preseason game because it was a preseason game. The season starts Saturday.
Clippers coach Mike Dunleavy speculated that the Mavs resting their stars indicates Dallas wanted to help the Warriors win the eighth seed over his team. "It tells you they probably prefer to play Golden State than us," he said.
It's possible the Mavericks would rather play Golden State than the Clippers because the Warriors are coached by the Mavs' old coach, Don Nelson, with whom there are some reported organizational hard feelings in Dallas. But Dunleavy's coachspeaky implication that the Mavs are running scared of the Clippers is somewhere in the neighborhood of ridiculous, right around the corner from patently absurd. It carpools to work with delusional.