I have this Nike Rockets hat from a couple of years ago with the dildo logo on it. One night a couple of years ago, I was eating at BW3 in Dallas and Avery Johnson was doing a live broadcast of a radio show, so I had him sign my hat. At 7:00pm CST Saturday May 7th, the hat will be in flames. A little pre-game sacrifice to the basketball gods.
Avery Johnson spent too much time reading the Houston Chronicle rather than watching game tapes and preparing his players.
Well, we don't know if it will work or not. I posted it here because there was a little debate on whether that was a good idea. The press conference last night ended any debate.
Me and my buddies will be rooting for the Mavs next week when Houston will be whining about the refs all off season. I thought it was a nice post til you got to the pu$$y comment. I'll show you the same respect on Saturday when my Mavs win. Every team sends game tapes to the league and I wouldn't doubt it if the Rockets did also. If Cuban was so wrong then why did the league say that 9 out of the 20 he sent in were moving screens. There were a few bad calls last night but no one is whining because it didn't affect the outcome. Houston just outplayed Dallas in the 4th. The refs have been bad both ways.
you had me at hello. this is one of the many reasons i love RM95!!! Avery was freaking out. In saying so adamantly, "we're not making excuses..." it's as if he was calling attention to his perceptions of the officiating, anyway. By the way...the Mavs have been the King of Whine for years now. It starts at the top. Cuban whines like a mutha all season long...and he's been fined for it more times than I can count. Mavs fans think that's great. But then want to rally to the "we don't whine" mantra that Avery exploded with. Whatever. Game 7...for the series...I like our chances. Clutch City.
He wasn't wrong! That's the point. He's right. It doesn't surprise me. No one is saying conspiracy. They're saying two things are a problem: 1. an owner's whining having such a huge influence on a season; 2. officials singling out a player...not just a problematic play. when they start saying, "hey watch THAT GUY" instead of, "hey watch THAT PLAY" that's a problem. most interesting were Larry Brown's comments saying he had received similar calls from officials saying the same sorts of things to him in the past. i wonder if Stern will ban him too?
Cuban has been fined $1 million for publicly whining. Cuban has kept charts and record of how many games they win/lose with each official. Dallas is a complete joke. Like we said earlier in the thread, this whole incident has screwed Cuban as much as Van Gundy. Van Gundy is in the hot seat but so is Cuban since it all started with him. He's flying under the radar for now until he complains about some other team. If Dallas moves on, Mark Cuban will have to hold his tonue throughout the remaining playoffs. And Dallas isn't good enough to beat Phoenix, SA, and Detroit/Miami without some refs help and psychologicial BS. The fact Avery has talked about no excuses is going to haunt him.
We have the right coach for a Game 7 (or deciding game) also. On the road, JVG is 3-1 in game 5 or 7 on the road 97 loss at Heat (and his Knicks had players suspended for this game) 98 win at Heat 99 win at Heat 00 win at Heat
Johnson is a punk.. "when we lose, we don't blame it on the refs" yeah well, stop losing by DOUBLE DIGITS!
I would say Johnson's comments came out of frustration. As much as being obviously upset about all the media attention to Van Gundy's comments, he was also just thinking out loud: "Do I have to go crazy to get my guys fired up as much as the Rockets were?" He wasn't just thinking of Van Gundy when he made those comments he was thinking about the next game. It's easy for fans on both sides to "predict" a win on Saturday but Dallas didn't win all three games in a row due to the refs. The Rockets made plenty of their own mistakes, too. Heck, last night Jon Barry made three turnovers in a row, several people fumbled away passes (one of my biggest complaints about Yao -- kind of butterfingers). And Dallas didn't finish #4 in the Western conference by being an average team. They are deeper than the Rockets and if the Rockets win on Saturday it will most likely be because they play with same urgency as they did last night. Only, now both teams "play or go home" so don't expect Dallas to be a pushover.
Rockets lost 3 games by an average of 3.6 points... Mavericks lost by 18. Losing by less than 4 points, yes... one bad call by a ref may decide a game. Losing by 18... refs can't pull out miracles now. Avery, it's obvious your guys just lost. But I still like you, anyone that played for the Rockets is cool in my book.
how about the last three games were houston lost by avg of 3 pts do you think the bad calls affected the outcome?
I was at the game and checking out the referees before hand and knew that there was POTENTIAL for some problems. That one ref, #33, is always horrible. He's the one that's a beanpole. As expected, in the first half, he made a number of odd calls, missed calls, etc. In the second half, it seemed as if the refereeing just let the players play, for the most part. It's not that hard to find which referees are good and which aren't. The ones that you remember one a game by game or month by month or season by season basis are probably doing something wrong. The ones you don't even recognize are likely doing a decent job. In last night's game, after it was over, I had a problem even remembering who the third ref was. There was beanpole #33, the other black guy (not a racist thing here, but he just had some interesting calls as well), and then some other guy. I think he was a white, Italian looking dude, but I really don't remember. He let the game be the story and not his refereeing. As for Avery...you started the whining dude. What's more, he has no more of an idea if what JVG said is true than you or I. Furthermore, expecting the Chronicle to write actual stories about the Rocket games is a little too much...don't you know it's baseball season already?
MFFL, The thing that Van Gundy was upset about was that there was a directive from the NBA to watch Yao more closely, which is what Cuban asked them to do. If Cuban had sent in video of every screen set by every player, I'm sure some Mavericks got away with a few moving screens. If the NBA felt that illegal screens were being set in this series, they should have directed the refs to closely watch every screen being set not just Yao's screens. This is what Jeff Van Gundy commented on. The biggest whiner in the NBA is your damn owner. While I'm on on the subject of your owner, why the hell does the NBA allow him on the floor at any point during a game? He's not a player, coach or a referee. You might be able to argue that he's a mascot because that's one hell of a clown suit he wears to every game. He needs to sit down, shut up and stop embarrasing the city of Dallas. In regards to your Coach, who kicked him in the nuts and caused his voice to get that high? He makes Clay Aiken sound like a tough guy from the Soprano's. If you look in the huddle, it's Frank Drebben from Police Squad telling Avery what to tell the players. Drebben forgot to tell him to act like a professional when he got up to the podium last night. We were the underogs going in to this, so win or lose in Game 7, we punked your team twice in this series and exposed Dirk as not being the "Superstar" he was being billed as. Dirk gets his points from flailing around like a Nancy Boy and going to the line. Tell your boy Dirk to man up and play ball.
