Bloggers Believe It: Warriors upset Mavs

As you might imagine the blogosphere is abuzz this reacting reaction to the Warriors upset and Nowitzki's ... well, Nowitzki.

Golden State of Mind (is that ever true today!) reveling ...

Oh. My. God. After 13 years of missing the playoffs, the Warriors shocked the world by squeaking into the 8th seed position with a 42 and 40 record on the last day of the regular season! It's only fitting, I suppose, that we get matched up with Goliath in the form of the Dallas Mavericks, a team who garnered the 6th best regular season record in NBA history at a staggering 67 and 15. Alas. What can we do? Hell we already exceeded expectations simply by making it into the post season. Sure, we seemed to have the Mavs number during our regular season games but the playoffs are different, right? How can the Golden State Warriors run with the mighty Dallas Mavericks when the Mavs are thinking Championship and the Warriors are thinking, "Dude, we're actually on TNT?!" How can the Warriors, a petty 8th seed, take a best of 7 against a dominant 1st seed and accomplish something that has never been done in the history of basketball?! Heart, baby. Heart.

True Hoop on Dirk's performance, or lack thereof in playoffs ...

Dirk Nowitzki and the Mavericks weren't just the best team in basketball this year. They'll tell you in careful terms that they are, in fact, the rightful reigning champions -- but for a referee inspired coup d'etat. This season was not just a chance to play well and see what happens. The team had been wronged, and they had a certain taste in their mouth. They were on the hunt.

The NBA playoffs are a place for predators. This would be their jungle.

But there was that one little nagging worry. What if, everyone wondered, Dirk just isn't cut out for hunting?

The way things have gone down, now there is just too much evidence to support the theory that Dirk Nowitzki is prey.

Complete Sports succinct on the real MVP ...

- Nothing really needs to be said about Baron Davis' game. Wow.

Mavs Moneyball just plain honest ...

I guess as Mavs blogger I'm supposed to have some huge post either passing out blame or delivering profound optimism. I won't be though. I refuse to join the millions of people who will be piling on my team the rest of the postseason, and I'm currently incapable of providing the second.

All I can say is that it sucked. It's going to be a long offseason. And I can't wait until November for it to all start again.

Basketbawful thinks we should take it a little easier on Dirk ...

Last summer, after disappearing in the NBA Finals, Dirk took some shrapnel, but he's definitely going to fall on the grenade for this one. In some ways, it's unfair. After all, he didn't establish the de facto rule that the MVP has to be the best player from one of the best teams in the league. And it's not his fault that the media seemed to decide, en masse, that Steve Nash simply couldn't be allowed to win a third straight MVP. If he is indeed named MVP, as everyone suspects, it will be by default. He didn't ask for the award, or the weight of
expectations that go with it.

Sportzilla thinks Dirk was just Dirk ...

Now, could you tell if Dallas won or lost this series based on Dirk's surface numbers? Absolutely not. In four of the six games, Dirk was Dirk, only with more rebounding. In the other two games, he couldn't buy a bucket, to a seemingly flukish degree. I mean, really, 2-19 from the field? If anything, the surface stats imply a tied series, if only because you might figure the W's took one of Dirk's high-scoring games and won his two low-scoring games. In any event, Dirk did not "disappear" until Game 6, and you could plausibly argue that Josh Howard's mostly unnoticed monster series, let alone Jerry Stackhouse's huge games, more than made up for Dirk producing ever so slightly less than his usual. Perhaps, just perhaps, the Warriors simply played better than the Mavs' established standard.

Dan Shanoff unsurprisingly calls it the greatest upset ever ...

Please don't tell diminish the magnitude of this result by saying this Warriors team was "better than an 8-seed." Please: That's never really been how we value upsets.

(And, certainly, the 7-game series – more than anything else existing in sports – is supposed to present the biggest hurdle to an upset. This isn't some "on-any-given-day" March Madness thing; this is winning – decisively, mind you – four games... in six attempts.)

The fact is: This Mavs team had the best record in the NBA this season, but it is meaningless. Epically meaningless.

I still disagree with this stance from Shanoff. Was this the most entertaining upset ever? Absolutely. As captivating a series as there's been in many years. But I'm not going to let that emotion carry me into thinking this was the biggest upset ever. I understand the 7 game series vs a 5 series. But this was a team that owned their opponent all season, not too mention being a completely different team come playoffs. The Nuggets back in '94 were a far inferior team than the Sonics. That's how I judge the level of upsets.

Curious to your reaction on all of this posts. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)