Dallas Breaks Out the Big D in Game 5

Filed under: Mavericks, Spurs, Playoffs

Dallas coach Rick Carlisle doesn't seem like the kind of guy who has many "Eureka!" moments. He has the face of an accountant, and for the past three games in the first round series between his Mavs and the Spurs, he coached like an accountant, too.

All the No. 2 pencils have been sharpened, aligned and ready to scribble. All the actuarial sheets were blank and ready to be filled. Every number has been methodlically checked and double-checked. Yet, for Games 2, 3 and 4, no matter how he crunched the numbers, Carlisle saw the results add up to a loss.

So, somewhere between the end of Game 4 and on the brink of elimination, Carlisle noticed some numbers that did work: 15-4; as in the Mavs' record when Brendan Haywood started, including a 12-4 record when Haywood joined the quartet of Jason Kidd, Caron Butler, Shawn Marion and Dirk Nowitzki.

That record improved to 16-4 on Tuesday as Haywood's defensive energy fueled a 103-81 poleaxing of the arch-rival Spurs in Dallas. Game 6 is Thursday in San Antonio.

"Eureka!" indeed. Then again, Carlisle undersold the process of how the lineup change came about. It wasn't exactly Archimedes leaping naked out of a tub.

 

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Full story at http://nba.fanhouse.com/2010/04/28/dallas-breaks-out-the-big-d-in-game-5/