← The Right Time with Bomani Jones
The Right Time with Bomani Jones
Vinnie Goodwill on Why Dirk’s 2011 Title Run Changed Everything about his Legacy | 06.02
01:05:46
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- [00:01]
A
Wave. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Right Time, a Wave original. My name is Bomani Jones. Thanks for listening. Wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for watching us on YouTube. Subscribe like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. It is Time Machine Tuesday, and sometimes it lines up so good because that we kind of get to talk about two things at one time because it's all about the same dude. So I got my man Vinnie Goodwill at ESPN here, and we are going to talk about at once the 2006 Finals and the 2011 Finals, and the connective tissue between the two being Dirk Nowitzki, quietly one of the more interesting careers that we've had. I feel like, very similar to Kobe Bryant, that the version of the Dirk story that I feel like we tell now is, is so much less interesting than the actual story that came about at the time. But for whatever reason, we make it one dimensional. For Dirk, I think we make it one dimensional just because of what happened in 2011. But his whole career, like you tell me if I'm wrong here, I feel like he is at maybe the most pioneering of the international players, right? And there were guys that obviously Keem Olajuwan had come before him, for example, so he's not like he's the first international player, but he didn't play American college ball. And you tell me if I'm wrong. I would argue of those guys, even if you talk about drives and Petrovic, any of them, nobody felt like he had more of a European game than Dirk Nowitzki did. And I don't mean. And at that time, that wasn't that complimentary.
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B
No, it wasn't a compliment. It was. I remember Barkley saying all this stuff about Golden State before Golden State won. A jump shooting team can't win a championship. If you change the name to that, to Durk. He would say the same thing, you know what I mean? He would say the exact same thing. And also remember, Barkley was the dude that offered Dirk a scholarship or not scholarship, you know, an incentive to come play at Auburn when he saw him play, I think in the 1996 warmups to the Olympics. So that was two full years before he got to the league. And Chuck is like, oh, no, this dude is coming. But I don't know if he can win a championship. Like, Dirk isn't the greatest international player, right? But like you said, Kai and Aaron, he's the one that you feel like you can make Another one of. Even though you can't make another Dirk, you can't make another Dirk seven feet tall with that high release, that level of touch, young Dirk with that level of, you know, mobility, as much as mobility or someone like him was going to have. But the Heat, wait, he changed the game in the way of, you know, I was looking at the two series we were going to talk about and I was just looking at the spacing of the floor in both of those series. And even though it wasn't the pace and space time, it was still reasonably spread because you had to account for a seven foot dude who could shoot threes and not just as a function because you had seven footers who could shoot. Right, you know, the Robert Oy, the Bill Lambert, blah, blah, blah. But to have that be the way that you built your team and your franchise around, that was, that was the big chance that Nelly took.
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A
Well, see, that's the thing. I feel like we have to start this story well before Dirk sets foot in the United States. And it starts with the crazy kooky mind of Don Nelson. Right. And so Nelson was a very interesting coach in the sense that he was pioneering in the ways that he wanted to play basketball and the new things he always wanted to try and experiment with, sometimes at the expense of actually winning basketball games. Right. Like it's, I think he, he retired as the all time winningest coach in NBA history. Nobody thought of him in that sort of way because there was always kind of this push and pull against performance of his teams and the fact that he just kind of like fucking around and seeing what could happen. And I think a very important part of the Don Nelson around, there was a seven footer shooting threes that we don't talk about as much because he wasn't 7 foot, he was 76 and his name was Manu Bowl. Don Nelson had Manu bowl standing a zillion feet away from the basket on one end of the floor and blocking shots on the other. And it seemed like a gimmick, but it actually turned out to be a glimpse into the future. And Nelson always, I felt like, had an eye towards that sort of European game of this idea. We're going to have a bunch of guys that can shoot and face the basket. And when you get to 98, when he gets him now, he's finally got his guy. But I do think the part of this that we, we forget at this point is Nelly had been tinkering with this for a very long time.
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B
No. And I'll take You back further than Luke Bo when he was in Milwaukee, Jack Sigma, you know, like we, we, we forget about those Milwaukee teams because they could never get over the hump of the, of the 76ers and the Celtics, they're kind of lost the time. But those, those teams that the Sydney Mon creeps and Terry Cummings when he was there for a few years, Paul
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A
Pressy is point forward, right. Marcus Johnson I guess ahead of that, right.
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B
And Jack Sigma was there with that funky high release, that pump fake. And he played the game, he could play the game in the post, but he played the game facing the room, 15, 16ft out and then start to take it back a little bit further. So before, if you, even if you thought Maloubo was a gimmick, right, it was evidence that he had been doing this 40 years ago. And then also remember he had that disastrous stint with the New York Knicks after Pat Riley was, after Pat Riley left and he was trying that stuff there, but that just wasn't the place to do it and that wasn't the team to do it with at that time.
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A
Well, I also think that that ties into what we're going to talk about with Dirk because one thing that seemed to happen after the disaster extent with the Knicks and for those of you who weren't around for this, this is after Pat Riley leaves, they hired Don Nelson. Just a big name coach, big name hire. And the problems were not on court issues, they were off court issues. And that squad was not here for Don Nelson. And basically Patrick Ewing and them boys ran him off the job because basically an NBA team decides if you're going to be the coach. And they decided that he was not going to be the coach. And Don Nelson appeared in that moment to decide if I can at all help it, there will not be a black man on this team taller than me. No, there will not. No there will not be. And you got to understand Don Nelson, 6, 6, wasn't a short man. But you go look at some of those teams in Dallas and it was like, hey, all the white guys seem to be taller than the coach. Or at least in that ballpark anyway. Dirk Nowitzki for him, he was like, hell yeah, there we go. Yes, I've got it. And he came to the league, keeping in mind that, you know, it's one of those draft day trades that's not really a trade. But still the other pick in the trade was Robert Tractor Trailer. Cause there were two trades in that like Jameson and Carter, they got flipped. Yep, four and five in that draft. And then we also had this. And the pick after Dirk, interestingly enough, was Paul Pierce. Because this draft is a weird draft. A really weird draft.
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B
Well, Ol Candy went one.
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A
Yes. Mike Bibby two.
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B
Bibby was two. Who was three? Van. No, Ray fl. Wow. Another. Another future Melly special, Right?
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A
Yep.
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B
Another Nelly guy. And then Jameson and Carter, remember that was Bonzie Wells went top 10, if I remember correctly. Right?
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A
I think so.
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B
Paul Pierce fell in the draft. Jason Williams, white shoplet. I think he went eight.
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A
Yeah. I was like, he went ahead of Paul Pierce and Dirk.
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B
Yeah, yeah. And tractor trailer. The late, the late Tractor Traylor who was, you know.
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A
No, true. No. Tractor Traylor went 6. Jason Williams went 7. Larry Hughes, who was that guy in college, went 8. Then Dirk Nowitzki and Paul Pierce followed by Bonzi Wells.
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B
Like you said, weird draft. Like totally weird draft. And not just in the way of like weird draft as in, okay, if we redrafted, it would look different. Of course it would look different. But Paul Pierce being the guy who fell in large part because Kansas wasn't showing up in big games back then. You know what I mean? And people thought that Paul Pierce wasn't going to show up in big games. Anyone should, hey, man, you going to be in shape enough really be able to play?
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A
And my understanding was that he was not exactly getting glowing recommendations from Roy Williams.
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B
I mean, well, shoot RA Wait. Ranch win three. That was his teammate. Like we. But we can all see two things.
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A
One, Wraith did get Glo recommendations from Roy Williams and number two, college RA Was a beast.
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B
Yeah. No, no, that Kansas team was like. And I know we, like, like somehow we, we wound up here, but that Kansas team was a monster.
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A
I think it never got past sweet 16.
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B
Yeah, it's crazy. That was like Josh B. Was the point guard and Paul and Ray.
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A
Yeah, Jacques was in the early run of it, but it's Raven, Francis, Paul, it was really great for France. And Paul Pierce is all. Is really. That's, that's, that's all we really need to talk about.
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B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, this just like you said. And that was the first, that was the first post. Jordan, you know, sort of Jordan, Mike's about to retire. This league is about to look different.
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A
Yes.
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B
Sort of. Sort of thing. And in comes this seven foot guy that we've never. There's no archetype for at that particular point. Like that's the crazy part of all this.
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A
And they're telling us he doesn't play at all in the post. No he don't, he don't go in there. That's not what this is. He is a 7 foot tall small forward was what they were selling us at the time. Like the idea of him as a power forward didn't come around until later. And the other thing with Dirk was it this did not take off immediately. He was 19 years old. And keeping in mind at that point, when you're drafting a guy who's 19 years old, the rest of the league is much older than two. There's a lot fewer young guys that are in the league. So he's 19 years old, coming from a country that don't really play basketball like that. Like Germany is not a basketball hotbed by any stretch of the imagination. Man. These numbers from his rookie year and it was a 50 game season. He played 47 games, shot 40% from the floor, 20% from 3 in average, 8 points a game, 3.4 rebounds a game in 20 minutes a game. There was not that many causes for optimism when it came to rookie Dirk.
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B
Well, you, you also have to back this up a little bit further because the 90s Dallas Mavericks is a completely different, like the way, completely different organization. The way we think of them, like the way that they sit in basketball now, even with the post Luca drip that they got and the way that people look at them as a lapping stock now is a completely different way that they were looked at as a laughing stock back then. Like they were just two years removed from everybody believing that, that Jimmy Jackson and Jason Kidd were dating Toni Braxton at the same time. Like that was the most interesting thing about that team. Something that I've been told by both men individually did not happen. Never happened. Okay?
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A
But that rumor was everywhere, dog. That rumor made it into Sports Illustrated. Like it was just there that the whole team. Now we know enough about Jason Kidd now to know anything could have broke up a team with Jason Kidd on it. But, but at that time and she,
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B
she, she played into it.
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A
Yeah, she, she was like, I can sell some records.
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B
Like remember the name of her album was called Secrets.
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A
Secrets. Right. That's what she. Cuz, remember that first record she had the shortcut and she was a little bit modest with it. That second record she put on that little bob wig and had on the white jumpsuit in the video, that was a, that was where was you moment right there.
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B
Hey, in the words of how we say it now, she had that shit on.
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A
She did, she did. People like, yo, you seen that Tony Braxton video because you was in Middle school. I was a senior in high school right before that. I was like, yo, you seeing that Tony Braxton video? But the evolution of the Mavericks, also easy for people to forget that they were seen as like the ideal expansion franchise in the 80s. They got good and stayed good. They were playing in conference finals. They had multiple all stars on the team. And then when the wheels came off, they were the worst. They were as bad as I can remember a team ever being.
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B
Ever, ever, ever. They were like Charlotte Hornets 2012, 13 bad. Like when you. For like four years. Yeah, yeah. And they. And they didn't. Jamal Bashburn was not a bad draft pick. Jason King was the right draft pick.
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A
Jimmy Jackson wasn't a bad draft pick.
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B
He wasn't a bad draft pick. Like, it just. And then you put those three guys together in theory. You get the guy who's a shooter, you got the guy who's a slasher, you got the guy who puts it all together as the point guard. Jason Kidd went somewhere. Jamal Max run went to Miami, and they had to start from scratch. And then you're starting from scratch with no identity. And then you draft this dude. And then you got. And then you still got Steve Nash sitting over there.
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A
But yeah, remember, this is part of that. Don Nelson. No black guy's taller than me. You remember when he got that job, he was talking all that shit we old school over here, right? Like, like the Knicks job really, really affected him. And so Dirk was part of the changes that they were going to make. So Ricky Durk didn't have it. Year two Durk. Hey, buddy, we're cooking with gas now. We're scoring 17 points a game. Now we're putting up 38, 38% from three. Now things are different. By year three, Durk is a third team all NBA guy, right? He hasn't made the all star team yet, but he's a third team NBA guy. And they're winning 50 games. Like they won 50 games in his third year. This gets to rolling. And you mentioned Nash. When did they send Nash to Phoenix? Because they sent Nash to Phoenix for Michael Finley.
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B
Right? Well, n. It's funny. Nash just. Nash started off.
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Oh, no, Nash.
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B
Yeah, Nash started off right, right. Because they both hit the. They were at the same press conference together now. That's right. They hit the. They had the French tips. Or one of them had the French tips. Yes, maybe both of them did. Right? But yeah, he was in Phoenix playing behind Jason Kidd and Kevin Johnson, which is like, that's the greatest three point guard. Triumvirate in NBA history at the same time. And then he goes there and once he gets going, you gotta remember Dirk played 47 games in that lockout shortened season. That was a lot of games in a very little period of time. You didn't have a lot of time to practice or figure it out. And you're 18 playing against these grown men. That was bound to happen. But like you said, once the year three got going, the numbers were better. I don't think they made it out of the first round to 2001. Like, but you could see that they were like, you could see that they were coming. And Dirk, once Dirk started to really put it together and you're like, I don't know if he can win a championship with this guy, but he's a guy that we can really start building him out. Like, think about the power force that he was having to play with on a nightly basis in the West. Karl Malone was the MVP in 99. He was still a reasonably effective player. Rasheed in Portland, Chris Weber, like, like Kevin Garnett. Kevin Garnett, Timmy. Like you, like those are six dudes, just six in the West. So you're playing 35 games a year against those dudes and you can't even bang back.
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A
Ill equipped in every way. However, none of them can guard you. Right. Like the thing with Dirk, and I'd be curious to know how we would have treated this in real time now. Because by year three, Dirk was also turning into a bit of an advanced stats monster. It's interesting to look back at his career and realize, and for me, this is an, this is a thing I point to a lot. The number one predictor of MVP is win shares. For 48 minutes in those two years when Steve Nash won the MVP, people talk about the first year, Shaq should have won it, right? And then that second year that what's his name, Kobe should have won it. But the guy that led both of those years was actually Dirk Nowitzki. Like he had become a better player than I think we had realized. And for whatever reason, we typically give people credit for putting losers on their backs and taking them to places they weren't going. And somehow with Dallas, which really didn't have that many other dudes like Michael Finley. Okay, right, the version of Steve Nash that they eventually got back for Phoenix. That's right, he came with Michael Finley, not traded for him. But anyway, those guys were okay. Right? But this was, this was a bit more of a one man band that I think we gave gave it credit for. And I think it's just simply because he arrived with such a level of skepticism. And we kept that skepticism up. Also. Mark Cuban comes in to this around 2001 or 2, somewhere in there. And so now everything around the Mavericks feels different. But they had an honest to God superstar that was doing honest to God superstar. Things that for whatever reason we did not really think of as an honest to God superstar. And when you look back at his career into the path of getting to 06, it really is the path of a superstar making that climb. Because the spurs were the guys that they had to go up against. Right. And that's who they were dealing with going up along the way. And they took their Ls before they got there.
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B
So you. You touched on so much like for one, just the archetype of. And I wasn't an MVP voter in 2006. I was in college. But the way that we framed what MVPs were. I am a person who believes Steve Nash earned both of them MVPs. Right. 2005, he changed the league. He went. He took the suns from what, 32 wins to 60. And the only change was changing Stephon Marbury to Steve Nash. Yeah, it's kind of going to be an end.
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A
See the argument?
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B
That's it. And then in 2006, you lose Amar' E Stoudemire, who was their advanced stats guy in finisher and everything else. You lose him for the whole season. Cause he had micro fracture surgery. And you go from 62 wins to 56. And you don't really change them. Maybe, you know, there's a Boris Di who plays a little bit more and Shawn Marion who does a little bit more. But Steve Nash is the guy there and he scores more.
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A
And you remember it's Boris D. But because they traded Joe Johnson, that was a signing trade. It was not. It was understood that that was not a fair swap.
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B
Right. Right. You lose Joe Johnson, I think I want to say, who led the league in threes that year before. Like that was Joe Johnson who was catching and shooting, not Joe Johnson who was doing ISO Joe back then. Like it was a completely different way. And yet, and to your point, we seem to be stuck on Shaq should have won an MVP when Shaq wasn't even Shaq no more. And Kobe Bryant, God rest his soul, led a team to a remarkable 47 wins.
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A
Right.
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We don't. Now, maybe if people knew that Russell Westbrook was going to win the MVP in 2017, because God forbid we had to give it to him because of our infatuation with the number 10, then maybe we would have given Kobe a lifetime achievement MVP in 2006 or whatever it was. But your point about Dirk Stans, it is the fact that we didn't respect the way that he kicked it. Yep, we did. We did not believe that what he was doing was something that was sustainable and it could be validated in the playoffs. That's why the two series that we're talking about I think are going to be So I think when I tell you that they're like the turning points in NBA history, like both of them, they book in in a certain way, it starts something and it kind of finishes something like you'll see what I'm talking about. But yeah, it starts. It's 2006, starts some shit.
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A
In 2005, Dirk put up 26.1, 9.7 rebounds, a block and a half and a steal a game. By the way, 40% from three, third in the MVP voting. And like your third best player is Josh Howard. You're getting into like Jason Terry, Jerry Stackhouse, Eric Dan Pierre. There must have been no big white guys left. Keith, Keith Van Horn, right? Like this was. He was this guy. And they only got to the second round. Okay, like I think that's important to note. But they won 58 games that year. But the playoffs, they. It was 03. That's right. 03 is when they ran up against the spurs and got to the conference finals. It gotten all the way. But let's think about this for a second. What we're talking about. 24 year old Dirk Nisky got them. They ended that Sacramento, right, beat them in the second round and they got there against the 03 spurs, right, who had just beaten the round before had ended the Showtime Lakers. Like Dirk was doing the thing. They won 60 games in 03.
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B
And here's the other part. I don't know if you remember this and tell me if I'm wrong. Wasn't that the series that Dirk got hurt in the Western Conference final?
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A
I think you're right.
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B
And he didn't. He didn't. They held him out because also in 2003 that was the end of the Sacramento. That was Chris Weber tearing his knee up, I want to say in game four of that series. So it all was starting to sort of. It was all starting to book in at a point like that was the Nick Van Exel series where Nick had scored like 40 in two games in that series off the bench like Dallas looked like okay, if The Lakers ain't going to be here and we not really sure about this spurs thing because the spurs had not won since 99 and that lockout season. So we weren't sure that the spurs were going to win three, four, five championships. There was reasonable expectation that the ma. That the Mavericks couldn't wind up, at least wind up being there. And then I want to say Dirk hurt his knee early in that series and Nelly held him out for the rest of the way because he didn't want to take any chances on this young stud doing it. And San Antonio goes on, wins the championship and everything else. And that was as close as they had gotten for a while.
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A
Yeah, I mean look, by now Dirk has the mavericks as a consistent 50 or maybe 60 win team. It's easy to forget this. They, they got there, they were that, they were like that, you know. And then we get to that 06 season, another year where they won 60 games. They done that weird thing the year before where they gave Avery Johnson the job and took it from Don Nelson, which Don Nelson never got over. It becomes a very important data point later in this story. But hey man, that 06 team was good. And they took out the spurs and the Suns on the way to the playoffs on, on the way to the NBA Finals that year. And Dirk again, Dirk did not win MVP this year, but he did put up 26.69 boards, couple of assists and 90% from the free throw line, 40% from 3, 48 from the field on a team where again, Marquis Daniels was number four in minutes played on that team. Doug Christie was number six in minutes played on that team. This was not a great. Jason Terry's number two. This is not a great top to bottom team.
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B
Wait, hold on. I don't remember Doug Christie playing on
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the 06, 35 year old Doug Christie.
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B
My brain is broken. I do not, I don't remember anything with Doug Christie past him punching Rick Fox on the chin.
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A
Oh, hold on. My fault. He only played seven games for him.
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B
Okay, okay, that'll do.
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A
Adrian Griffin, how did that, that sound more familiar?
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B
Yes, yes, yes, that, that, that rings a bell. That, that ring like the crazy thing like you said, Jerry Stackhouse, Jason Terry, Avery Johnson as a head coach also remember this. They beat the spurs in a game seven in overtime on the road as a defending champion and put them out. And those are the type of series that you look at when we looked at Dirk in 07, in 08 and even 09 when he had that failure against Denver. I want to say in the first round, we forgot that 06, he kind of got over the hump, like usually in the same way that LeBron got over the against, against the Celtics in 11. And then we forgot that he got over the hump because he had the meltdowns. There's like steps forward, then steps back. But I thought to that point, Durk had conquered the dragon. He slayed. He slayed the beast.
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A
Well, he had, right? In a way. And by the way, important to note about San Antonio, the way it went for San Antonio, and I even said this to Bruce Bowen's face, if they were going to lose the series, they were going to lose it immediately. Beating San Antonio in seven, that was a thing, right? To get that done. They get to the finals against that version of the Heat, which was this weird rack. Never has a team been built for one year quite like that team was. They felt like the 1997 Florida Marlins, right? We just go get a bunch of dudes that used to be good at some point, maybe a couple of them are a little bit good right now. And let's just see how it goes, right? Fire the coach to start the year. Everything else, let's just see how it goes, okay? The Mavericks are up in that series 2, 0. After winning the first two games in Dallas handily. They're up at the end of this game to go up 3 0. Gary Payton hits this shot to tie the game at the end of regulation. And was it regulation or did he.
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B
No, no, no, no, no. Game five was overtime. Game three, he hit the shot to put him up too. I think the game was tied at like 97.
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A
He put him up too. It looked like that series was about to be easily. The Mavericks, they didn't win another game.
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B
That, and the crazy thing was that was the series where Mark Cuban yells out, just yells out at David Stern, your league is rigged. After Dwayne Wade goes to the line a million times in game five. That was another overtime game like game three. To have a 13 point lead now feels like, oh yeah, 13 point lead's like a five point lead. But to have a 13 point lead in the fourth quarter of an NBA Finals game back then felt like you were up 30 because there was no abundance of a three point shot. And like you said, that team had old Antwon Walker, he who was only 29, but it felt like Anton Walker was 35, right? Alonzo Mori 35, back end of Shaq, back end of Jason Williams, back end of Gary Payton. Young Udonis haslem What is it? Udonis Haslam. I've been a young dude on some team. All right, cool. He's the young guy there.
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But even then, that was years out of college.
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B
Right? Right. He was like 27 or something like that. Damn near.
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A
And Dwyane Wade, James Posey forgot about. Was he on that team?
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B
Yep, James Posey was on that team. And Dwyane Wade walked down the Dallas Mavericks after being down 2.7 games to nothing. That ain't two games to nothing. That's like 2.9 games to nothing at that point. And you don't win another game. And thus, that starts what we are confirming about Dirk. Ah, man, look at him. He too soft. They can't get. They can't get it right.
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A
Let us go. Let us throw in an important detail about that series that no Mavericks fan would allow us to ignore, which is their belief that they were playing 8 on 5 in those games because Dwayne Wade was living at the free throw line, just throwing himself into the lane, and they were calling it. But the thing was, most of those were fouls.
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B
He was that quick. Like, the one thing. And I was going back and looking at the series, and I was like, man, he looked so much faster back then in 2006. And they had the stoppers, like, Adrian Griffin was the guy who was supposed to be stopping them. Devin Harris guy was supposed to be stopping him. Like, they had defenders, like you said, Marquis Daniels, Josh Hart, all those guys. And he kept getting his shoulder and they kept having to foul him. Yeah, like, I looked at that one foul. The only foul that I thought was a little weird was the file that sent Dwyane Wade to the line at the end of Game 5, where he literally drove through everybody and just flipped up something, and maybe he got clipped on a leg or whatever it was, but it didn't look like he really got fouled. Now, granted, I ain't got the Zapruder film or nothing like that, but that was the one that I was like, yeah, I don't know about that one, dog. And he was. Look, people talk about Shay going to the line, brother. I. I don't. I don't know how that compares to what the way people feel about 2006.
- [28:50]
A
Boy, that was. We talked about that for a very long time, but we were this close to the anointment of Dirk Niski, and instead it became Dwyane Wade, who was that guy? And coming up next, we're going to get to the 2011 finals. But for those of you who weren't there, buddy. A lot happened in between and not a lot of it was good for Dirk. The biggest stage in world soccer is here and every goal changes everything. And now FanDuel is giving you a reason to root for every single one. Introducing every goal pays bet on a match and get bonus bets for every goal scored in that match. That's right, more goals means more bonus bets and all you have to do is turn on your token. From the opening whistle to the final kick. Let there be goals on FanDuel. Visit FanDuel.com to get started now. 21/states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino 18/dc, Kentucky, Wyoming gambling problem call 1-800- gambler 1-800-myreset call 1-888-789-7777 visit ccpg.org chat Connecticut visit mdgamblinghelp.org Maryland visit gamblinghelplinema.org call 800-327-5050 Massachusetts call 1-877-8-Hopeny text hopeny New York call 1-877-770-7867 Louisiana. Today's show is sponsored by Strawberry Me. Let me ask you something. Are you where you want to be in your career? Are you waking up every day knowing you're capable of more but not sure how to get there? Listen, success doesn't just happen, and the most successful people in the world don't figure it out alone. They have mentors, coaches and people guiding them every step of the way. That's where Strawberry Me Career coaching comes in. Career coaching gives you the clarity, strategy and accountability needed to turn your goals into reality, whether it's landing a new job, advancing in your current role, or transitioning into a field you love. With expert advice, you'll identify obstacles holding you back, develop a step by step plan, and take action with confidence, knowing you have a dedicated coach supporting you every step of the way. Instead of relying on guesswork or waiting for the right time, professional coaching helps you take control of your career trajectory, ensuring you make intentional, strategic moves towards success. Go to Strawberry Me Bomani and get 50% off your first coaching session. That's Strawberry Me Bomani. It's like therapy for your career. All right, back with any goodwill Talking about the Dirk Nowitzki era in Dallas 2007 we can just say this really quick. The Mavericks were the best team in the NBA. Dirk Nowitzki was the best player in the NBA that season. But we never talk about the idea that Dirk might have been the best player in the NBA. But I told you the three straight years of leading the league in win shares for 48 minutes. That's what the best player in the NBA does, right? Like that's. There's a looking back on it. There's a strong argument there, like who's better, KG or Dirk Nowitzki. There's a strong argument. Now, separated from the moment, it's a little easier to look at it and be like, yo, I think it might have been Dirk Nowitzki. Except they lost in the first round of the warriors, who were coached by Don Nelson, who was super salty about what had happened. And it wasn't just that they lost, Vinnie, it was the way that they lost, which was that band of rapscallions that the warriors had. Stephen Jackson, Baron Davis, Al Harrington, Matt Barnes. And they basically just punk Dirk for the whole series. And Dirk did not. This is. Every time you sell me a big man that don't have a post game, it's like, if you don't have a post game, there's no advantage to you being big. And he could never punish them. So they were just guarding him with six, five guys who were just getting in under his shoulders and there was nothing he could do.
- [33:08]
B
They were punking him. Like you said Nelly had. Nelly made sure. We are. We are doing this six, five and under league, okay? Baron Davis, Jason Richardson, Mikhail Petras, then Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes and all those dudes. Like, I'm going to take it even a step back to you, Beau. 2006 felt like the league legitimately was changing. And if Dirk was the best player in the league that had Kobe Bryant at his absolute individual peak. We saw LeBron James get his first taste of the NBA playoffs, that series against Washington, where he basically won three games by him himself and took Gilbert
- [33:48]
A
Arena's heart out his chest at the free throw line.
- [33:51]
B
You don't hit this, you know what's going to happen. You going home. I ain't never seen Gilbert Arenas brick free throws the way that he. He ain't miss them. He bricked the free throws at the crib and he said, I'm going to pass it to Damon Jones. Wait, never mind. No, but just think about that. Like the best of Kobe Bryant, the best of a young LeBron James, who I want to say was second in the league in scoring, might have led the league in scoring like 08 or whatever it was. But LeBron was coming. Dwyane Wade was coming. Like the league was changing. And Dirk was at, individually the forefront of that. And then followed it up with an mvp and had to have the MVP awarded to him not on the floor of American Airlines arena, whatever the hell it was called then, but because they got decisively put out in six. They could have got put out in five if not for like some miracle stuff that happened in game five at the crib. And I've never seen, I'm trying to think, but have you ever seen a team get punked the way that we saw the old seven Mavericks get punked?
- [34:57]
A
And they were an excellent team. They were a top five offense, top five defense by this time. Josh Howard is a really good player. They, they ran through the league that year. They look like they were taking the step that you make when you've made the finals the year before. And it doesn't quite go right. And they clearly been kind of stair stepping it up a little bit to get to where they were. And we never looked at him, not never, but it took a while for us to ever look at him the same again. And it was really just because those we believe warriors, as they called them, it wasn't just that they beat. It was that particular set of dudes and the way that they got down. And once again, Don Nelson, who seemingly knew, you know, they might be a little soft over there. That team with Jerry Stackhouse on it, they might be a little soft over there. See what happens. And they didn't. They just, they just punked him.
- [35:52]
B
It looked like a team from the suburbs going to the hood.
- [35:55]
A
Yep.
- [35:56]
B
And you went to the hood.
- [35:57]
A
A team with Jason Terry, Josh Howard, Jerry Stackhouse, Eric Deper. It's not like it was one guy. It wasn't even talking about the team. It was just about Dirk. And it was a colossal failure from the best player on the team. There's no other way to look at it. He failed them and that.
- [36:13]
B
And it was funny because that was at the point that we could acknowledge, oh, Durk is the guy. Like, he won MVP. His team won what, 67 games or whatever it was. We were just coming around to saying, Dirk is it. Dirk is the leader of all this. Not just in an advanced stats kind of way, but the validation of it. Whether they got to the finals or not. I don't know if it would have, if that had to have happened. Right. They could have taken a step back. They took the step back and got punked in a way, I want to say in since 19, since the start of seven game series, they were the first team since in the 1 8.
- [36:53]
A
They were the first.
- [36:54]
B
They were the first.
- [36:55]
A
Right. Like in a seven game series.
- [36:57]
B
In a seven games. In a seven game series. They were the first like 94 sonics, 99 mixing heat.
- [37:03]
A
Yeah.
- [37:04]
B
And then later on it was a Spurs losing to Memphis. I think in 2011. Like it's funny the stuff that sticks to people. We don't put 2011 on Tim Duncan or some of the spurs meltdowns on Timmy. The way that we put a everything on Dirk. Dirk catches all the playoff hell.
- [37:22]
A
Now to be fair, the reason is we thought after 11 that that spurs thing was over and then they rattled off an incredible three year run that is easy to lose sight of because they lost that series to the Thunder and then they lost that Game 6 and 7 to Miami. But we thought they were finished and they picked that whole thing up with the arrival of Kawhi Leonard, which I don't think we emphasized quite enough. And that and that whole thing went on a run. But you're right, this stuck to Dirk. But the reason it stuck is unlike the spurs who picked things up on the other end, they went out there and it basically happened again the next year. Now, 08, as I recall, was a very interesting year in the west because everybody won 50 games, I'm not mistaken. All eight teams that went to the postseason, 150 games. And the separations between them were like a game here and a game there. But it was also interesting because the order of how they finished did feel like the natural like hierarchy of what the league was. It didn't feel like they were all the same level of good, but they were all really bunched up. And I want to say the Mavericks at the seven seed because they went up against the Hornets with. That was the Chris Paul year. That's before Chris Paul hurts his knee.
- [38:38]
B
Yes.
- [38:38]
A
And we learned that you give Chris Paul any dude that can jump straight up in the air and he will throw him.
- [38:43]
B
Oops.
- [38:45]
A
Well, they beat the.
- [38:47]
B
No, I was going to say they beat the brakes off of that. That was the David West, I'm going to touch your chin.
- [38:53]
A
He walked up on Dirk and touched his face three times while talking to him. And Dirk stood there and listened to every word of it. And I've talked to David about this. It was an elbow situation. And David west said that he had had enough of that. But that image of Dirk getting his face touched stuck. It's like, damn, y' all got punked again. And then the next year, the part that nobody seems to remember where you
- [39:24]
B
going, he would know where you're going
- [39:25]
A
to be allowed to forget Right now, How many people right now. I wanted to. I would love to know if there was a way that I could get like real time reaction for the audience of two sets of people. One people who have no idea what I'm about to mention. Two or actually like three sets. Two people who were like, I feel like I know what he's about to talk about, but I don't know. And three people like, oh, snap, I forgot. And so for those of you who don't know, Dirk had fell in love with a scammer. An honest to God scammer whom he met because she had been running game on all kinds of athletes. The one that I remember is Toni Banks.
- [40:12]
B
Yes, I forgot about that one.
- [40:14]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was the one name I remember. But she had this game, and this is before Durk was showing up to the arena. With the plates, we didn't know. With the full wrap plates, we didn't know what Durk was about. Right. The story was that this woman called Durk and said, oh, wrong number. I was trying to call my brother, but hey, what's your name? Dirk. And he went for it. I got so much mileage out of that on the radio. Boy, he got. For a while there, he's like, man, that boy mess around and got dirt. He fell in love with an honest to God scammer. Like she had been. I think she may have had charges she was stealing jewelry. Like she was doing all of this. But the world found out about this during the playoffs.
- [40:59]
B
I think they found out about during the Denver. Was it the Denver series or was it Denver in 10? But I felt like they found about in the first round in 20 2009.
- [41:07]
A
It was in 09. It was in 09. Cause the first round they beat the breaks off the Spurs. That's when the spurs were in the process of making a transition, right where they were going, like they were changing the offense up. They realized they had to add some of that Phoenix stuff. But they ran the spurs out of there. I can't remember which series it was against. The one year the Nuggets did something. But that was hanging in the air the whole time that this woman ran this game on Dirk and what's his man's name, the dude from Germany, the shooting coach. Like all these. Yeah, all these people that tried to get her out of Dirk's life. But Dirk, like, no, but I love him. Like it was.
- [41:44]
B
Ooh, ooh, ooh. Oh, my. Oh, my God.
- [41:48]
A
I say somehow that has been completely lost to history. Nope, that Thing happened.
- [41:55]
B
We don't talk about that no more.
- [41:58]
A
Dirk was down bad after 06, man. Everything was going wrong.
- [42:02]
B
Dirk was the mark.
- [42:04]
A
Lost in the first round, somebody touching his face. We found out that he. He lacked discernment.
- [42:11]
B
Dirk was the mark. Like, like, like, how do you. How does, how does. I'm trying to figure out how a woman, like, let's just go back. I got so many questions about how this woman scammed him, right? Like, hey, finding Durk's number. Durk answers the phone of a number he don't know. I don't know who answers phone calls of numbers that they don't know. But, you know, this is 2008, 2009, you know, you just answer the call that's on your screen and then she says. And she says that. And you have no, like, spidey sense of this. I'm trying to call my brother. Huh. It's interesting. Your brother has a number that's just like mine, except the number is off. Don't you need to call your brother?
- [42:49]
A
No, I'd rather talk to her. What a lucky day for her, right? What a lucky day for her that the wrong number turns out to be mega millionaire Dirk Nowitzki. And by the way, who told her what Dirk liked? Or did she just throw it against the wall, just see what might happen?
- [43:10]
B
I think there's probably evidence that Durk had a type before.
- [43:14]
A
Yeah, but I don't know. I mean. But you know what, though, man? She was in the game like that, so she would, you know, she would know the thing. But she made that happen. She eventually went to jail. Here's what Dirk did in that series against Denver, by the way, do you remember the numbers he put up?
- [43:27]
B
I don't remember the numbers.
- [43:28]
A
I do. I. I don't remember. I did not remember them exactly, but I remembered them generally. And I'm going to read them off to you because this is what's been lost in the face of all that pressure, in the cauldron of all this embarrassment. People like me laughing at him and Frank, front of the world, 34, 34.4, 11.64 assists, the game on. 53 from the floor, 39 from 3 and 92 from the line. In the face all that Dirk soft. All that dirt crumble under pressure. Dirk stood up in that moment. He was like, hey, man, I can't let it take everything from me. Big dog.
- [44:05]
B
No. And that was a series against Kenyon Martin, if I remember correctly, right? Yes, yes, I remember part of that. The only reason Only thing with that series I remember is Dallas was up in a game and they were supposed to foul Carmelo late. And they didn't foul him or they didn't follow him hard enough. And he took a three, made a three, they went to overtime. It might have been like game three or something like that. Like that was the one year that Denver put it together with Chauncey Bills, when Chauncey got traded there for Allen Iverson. And that was the year that they made it to the West Finals, all that stuff.
- [44:32]
A
And then they went out, they went out like some suckers against the Lakers. That last game against that game six, they played against the Lakers. That was a 1, 2, 3, Cancun classic right there.
- [44:43]
B
Yeah, that was. Was that the game where your boy Dante Jones was out there trying to trip Kobe?
- [44:48]
A
Might have been.
- [44:49]
B
I mean, well, look, Dante Jones, a Duke guy trying to trip somebody is not like, that's not a unique occurrence. So that could have been game four. But I remember Kobe put Kobe being able like 40. The crowd was cheering for them. And I'm like, this, how y' all going out? Like they had a tie series after the first two games. I never thought they were going to win the series, mind you, but I thought they were going to put up something better. And at that point, Bo, you're thinking Dallas is one of those teams that will have very good regular seasons, but will never, ever, ever put it together to the point that they are anything more than a 50 win team and a playoff nuisance. We thought that they would go the way of the Minnesota Timberwolves in the years after Kevin Garnett won the mvp. Like some decent enough regular seasons, but you're not the guy anymore. And you can't carry this team beyond anything. Yeah.
- [45:43]
A
I mean, 2010, they lost in the first round.
- [45:45]
B
Yeah.
- [45:46]
A
Lost in the Spurs. Like it, it felt like it was over. Right. Like he had his peak and it was. Right. Like he's in his early 30s at this point. Like this was at a time where I also think we looked at the early 30s a little bit differently. And this is like decline time. Right? Like, oh, man, you guys had your chance. This roster is going to be whatever it was. And then came 2011. They won 57 games that year. Like that. Everything in the league that year centered around the Miami Heat. It's. If you were not there, guys, there's no way for us to explain to you just how insane things were around that team. Right. They were the lead story on Sports center every single day. And The Mavericks, who I want to say were the three seeds that year in the playoffs, buddy, they put on a run through the playoffs like we have rarely ever seen. Again at a time where we're not really thinking that this is possible with this set of dudes because their window was closed. It was also a bit of a transitionary year in the West. Like the young Thunder are starting to rise. You talked about this earlier. The spurs with the one seed, but they lost to the Grizzlies. So the one seed was out of there at the end of the first round. But in the end that team ran through the postseason and only lost three games that whole postseason.
- [47:03]
B
No, I'm going to give you.
- [47:04]
A
Hold on. Ended the repeat Lakers situation.
- [47:09]
B
No, think about like this.
- [47:10]
A
Think about.
- [47:10]
B
You said, you said about the heat in 2006. There was never a team made more for one year. And I will present to you these dudes because think about the ages of the 2011 Dallas Mavericks. Dirk is in his early 30s. Jason Terry is in his early 30s.Jason Kidd is in his mid-30s. Pedro Stojakovic is on the back end. Sean Marion is on the back end. Karan Butler was there for the start of that and then got. And then hurt himself. He was on the back end. Deshaun Stevenson. You're thinking of all the names. Tyson Chandler, right? That was a team that came together and they didn't start off the season like the 94.
- [47:52]
A
Deshaun Stevenson.
- [47:53]
B
That's what I'm saying. Deshaun Stevenson. Like they didn't start off like the 94 rockets. You know, they started like, well, 15 and 0 and everybody. And then they kind of. People kind of forgot how great they were to some degree. Right? This was like that everything was centered around is LeBron and the Heat going to get to the finals and see Kobe in the Lakers or see Co or see the Thunder. And we didn't think the Thunder were going to get there, but we could entertain the thought. But we were thinking Lakers and Heat or Lakers or, or Heat and Spurs or whatever it was. We were not thinking of the ragtag old ass Dallas Mavericks. Remember, even in that first round series against Portland, Brandon Roy had the last great game of his career in a fourth quarter comeback. And we were like, yep, that this is, this is who they are. This is who Dallas is. A team that will never be able to get there. And then they beat the absolute breaks off the Lakers. The breaks. The JJ Berea getting. Getting flung in midair by Andrew Bottom
- [48:56]
A
made Andrew Bottom tap like that was the moment they fired Phil Jackson, it was so bad. They fired Phil Jackson.
- [49:01]
B
Remember, Phil Jackson tried to punch Paul Gasol in the chest or something like that. During this, I think I read something like Walsh was trying to wake Paul. Phil was trying to wake up Paul Gasol. And it was like. That was. I want to say, was that the most embarrassing from a performance way that a champion has ever gone out?
- [49:20]
A
It's up there. It's up there. Like it was. It was bad, man. Like it was. They. They completely slammed the door on the whole era after that game was over, after that was done. Like they. They ran through it quietly. The Eleven Mavericks, very similar to the 06 Heat.
- [49:35]
B
That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying.
- [49:37]
A
Yep. You know, in terms of that construction and everything else. And by the way, now they get to play the Heat and the Heat, I don't know about you, I did not think going into that year that the Heat. I thought the Heat were going to lose in the second round because the law. The. The weaknesses they had on the roster were at point guard and inside. And I was just like, you're going to get to somebody that's going to do something with that. And I thought it would be Boston in the second round. But then Dwayne Wade popped Rondo's arm out of joint, and they were never the same after that. But the Heat had gone through enough of those challenges. LeBron, I think they won in five against the. Against the Bulls, with LeBron really coming up big. The end of the. Of games in that series, and it looked like, oh, okay, they're going to make it happen. And the Heat, they left Miami split Heat 1, Game 3 in Dallas, up to one, and they never won another game. Now, I don't want to make our focus on this on LeBron James, because that's the way that everybody looks at that. It was without question the most embarrassing set of circumstances of his life, his basketball life, at least. There's no way around that. Right. But on the other side, there was Dirk, and those boys did it. They got it done.
- [50:48]
B
It is almost one of those things where, like, it's like, for one, that those 2011 playoffs was so rich. Like, I don't think we realized when we were in it, like, LeBron getting past the Celtics, we thought, oh, okay, he's done it now. Like, they. They beat the Celtics in five, and LeBron put out the Celtics in game five. They were down like six in the last few minutes of the game. And Lebron went on like a personal 10 nothing run where he looked bigger than the floor, right. I don't know what way to say it, but physically he looked larger than the floor in which he was playing on. And then they go and play Chicago, who had the best record in the league and had the MVP. And LeBron got in that stance and shut the Bulls down or shut Derrick Rose down in the last five minutes, virtually up every one of those games. There was no reason to believe going into that series, even after game two, where Miami led by 15 points and Dwyane Wade hit a quarter three in front of Dallas's bench and LeBron started premature celebrating. It wasn't until then where you felt like Dallas woke up. And Dallas legitimately woke up in that moment, up down 15, it was like they were exercising the demons of 2006. They came back and won that game. I want to say Dirk hit the game winner. I want to say he spun around Udonis or spun around Bosh for a game winning lefty layup. And then they just. Game three happened, right? Chris Bosh hit the baseline jumper on the right side to win game three. But it never felt like Miami got in front of that series. It never felt. It felt like Dallas was in control and it was going to be a matter of time. Even the game.
- [52:32]
A
Dirk got sick, don't forget. Speaking of sick, the Dwyane Wade fake cough walking in the arena, mocking the idea that Dirk was sick. Because little did we know, because we didn't think about it that much. There was a real live rivalry going on there. Dirk and Dwayne did not like each other. They had the finals that had gone on before like this. This had been a thing. There was quiet beef that people didn't really know. And it's funny hearing them talk about it later where they're both like, yeah, yeah, I didn't really.
- [53:03]
B
I really rock. I ain't rock with him at all.
- [53:05]
A
Yeah. And the thing about it is two guys that everybody likes, like, people love Dwyane Wade, people love Durk, they did not like each other.
- [53:17]
B
The coffin like to me, and think about it, we put so much of that on LeBron. When it was Dwayne who was actually the one that was act that was doing most of the instigating. And we talk about it a little bit, that series, if Dwyane Wade, if the Heat win that series, we look at Dwyane Wade totally different because that's a second finals MVP. That's four rings, two, you know, arguably four rings, two finals MVPs. Who knows how you move as far as your relationship with LeBron, if you take that step back and everything else like it took for Dallas to win that series, I don't think that he gave it away. I think Dallas took it from him. And we got to give Dallas a lot of credit because they just came.
- [54:01]
A
Dwayne was balling.
- [54:03]
B
He was brilliant, but he's brilliant.
- [54:04]
A
Look. Dwayne Wade, whole 2011 season, Homeboy hall of Fame, right? Cause he sat up there with LeBron. LeBron was using Dwade. Like them. Like them cats be using their children. Come with me to every press conference, right? Maybe this will make things a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was basically it, right? But Dwayne did that for him. And then when LeBron covered up short in the finals, Dwayne was coming up strong at every turn. Like, think about, think about. In fact, I don't even know how to imagine it. What would we have done if they had won a championship and Dwayne was MVP and LeBron had played as poorly as he had? Right? Like, I don't. It would not have saved LeBron, because I think we still would have been on him in the ways that we had, but he still made it so much easier for him. And Dirk snatched that whole thing away and by the end, had America on his side. And then we had to look up and be like, damn, I guess Dirk ain't solve, huh? Dirk, remember that? Remember we used to say Dirk was soft? We were just saying it the year before every. He washed everything away. I always say, is it him or is it Paul Pierce? I think it may be dirt where that one ring did more for their future reputation, because to me, the ring helped us put Paul Pierce in a place that he would not have been otherwise. But with Dirk, it put him into a place that, looking back on it, he should have been.
- [55:19]
B
No, no, I'll take it a step further. 2008 Put Paul Pierce in a place like, oh, man, he really is good. But we never thought that much of you to begin with. To some degree, right? 2011 saved Durk from the abyss. Durk was in the abyss. Like, they rose to the same place. But Durk had a much further way to go in terms of public perception, because he was started very highly in 2007. You won the MVP, and then you lose, then you lose, then you lose. It's like, man, Durk is an afterthought. And then if you put out in that year, you put out Kobe and the Lakers and Kobe was still Kobe, right? Like he was still a reasonable version of himself in 2011. You put out Kobe, then you put out the Young Thunder. Remember the Young Thunder won game one of that series and then you walked him down four in a row. And then you put out LeBron and Wade and Bosh. When you talk about one year runs or however you want to put it, whatever skins you got on your playoff wal, I don't know if there's anybody that's got a one year run of playoff skins on the wall the way that Dirk has those playoff skins. Nobody.
- [56:26]
A
And look, man, and all of this, we have to keep this in mind, involves stereotypes, right? So like 07 would have been like, what if a black person was supposed to go get a Nobel prize, but he missed it because he was late. And the reason that he was late is cause he was over there with a 40 ounce and a slice of watermelon and he just could not tear himself away from those negro treats who suck some watermelon. That's what it was like. The way that Dirk lost in 07, right? He lost in the most stereotypical fashions all those years. It was all just in the most stereotypical fashions you could imagine. All the way down to this dude from another country. He'll know. Shit, he got scaled like all of it. Every, every single bit of it was
- [57:24]
B
just like this central casting, central casting dog. That's it.
- [57:29]
A
Every single bit of it bad. And now people raise the question as to whether or not Dirt Nabisky is one of the 20 best players in the history of the NBA. Which by the way, is not as crazy as it is it sounds when you go back and look at a bit of it. 20. Look, it's a lot of dudes that don't play in the NBA, right? But he is an upper echelon all time great and I contend, perhaps more beloved as the face of a franchise than any franchise's face of the franchise is.
- [58:01]
B
That's like, it's tough.
- [58:03]
A
They love him down there, man.
- [58:05]
B
It's funny, I remember because this was right around the time that me and you got cool. So like the trick for Bo's Morning Jones was. This is funny. You would do three hours, right?
- [58:17]
A
Yep.
- [58:18]
B
And after the first hour was finished, like it would upload or download or whatever it was. So if I'm on a plane, you could be on hour two and I'm listening to hour one on a flight or something like that, like on my BlackBerry just to show you how long ago it was And I want to say you brought up before the 2011 finals, you said, Dirk Nowitzki is one of the 20 best players in the history of the NBA. And I'm like, man, I just meant bo. But I wanted to ask him, is he high? Like, I, I, I was literally thinking, I was like twitting. And then once it happened, I was like, oh, yeah, he kind of fits. It's one of those things that you think about. But when you go down the list of the players that he's with, like the tier of players that he's with, he belongs somewhere between 18 to 25, right?
- [59:04]
A
Yeah, it's there. Like I say, as we look back on it, you couldn't trust Kevin Garnett to go win the game for you. No, you could trust Dirk to do that. Like, and Kevin Garnett is an all time great player, right? But Kevin Garnett is a role player in a superstar's talent, right? He's a superstar caliber role player. And that is not an insult to anybody that's out here. Like, Kevin Garnett getting to Boston and being like, I'm the number three is the point that I'm making, right? Like, he could, he had a team where he could be the leader in the way he needed to be the leader without you asking him to do things that weren't necessarily what you needed. But I do believe there's a tier that you can't quite get to if you're not the guy that we give the ball to. When is, when he's there to make it happen. Unless you Bill Russell, like, there's a, there's a place you probably can't get. Dirk could get to that place. And Dirk consistently got his teams to these places, obviously, except for the times that he didn't, but he did it. And they, they were America's basketball team. After they won that, they had the championship celebration in Miami at live, where Cuban just sent him a million dollars and said, we pulling up. They partied in a city all over,
- [60:10]
B
all over them pulling up at your trap, taking over your trap.
- [60:14]
A
Yes, that, yes, it, I mean, the Heat by then, the Heat tapped. They made the Heat tap.
- [60:20]
B
I think you look at playoff basketball, maybe we don't do a good enough job explaining, like, not stamina in terms of like a physical stamina or even like a mental stamina, like an emotional stamina that you have to have in going through this. At some point, you're just like, this is enough. Like, we're not going to do this. They have it more than us. Y' all got it. And it looked like that's what the Heat said. Y' all got it. And it wasn't any one player. Like, LeBron was just in his head. And that was the JJ Berea series where he couldn't back down. JJ Barea, even though it might have been a grand total of like three plays. And we just turned that one vision into, man, LeBron ain't got no postgame, which he didn't have. But you know what I mean? Like, we turned that into. We extrapolate that the same way that we extrapolated on Durk. It was like they reverse roles. Durk and LeBron reverse roles from 2006 to 2011. And if it was one person who understood, oh, he's curling up. We gotta. We got to take advantage here. It was Dirk Nowitzki. He knew what time it was because he was that man on the other side not five years ago, and he didn't. And if he think about this, what would we think of Dirk if they didn't win in 2011?
- [61:32]
A
Right. What would we say about his career now? Like, he would be in the tier where he got to the Finals, which is very important. So that keeps him out of the James Harden tier. And for those of you, James Harden went to the finals in 2012. Not the same and you know it, right? Not. Not the same and you know it. And by the way, it had been better off if he hadn't gone. Everybody would have been happier if he hadn't gone to the 2012 Finals. Except for the Miami Heat. They were glad.
- [61:57]
B
And. And some people. And some people on South Beach.
- [62:00]
A
Yeah, I was about to say club owners are probably very glad.
- [62:02]
B
Yes.
- [62:03]
A
That James Harden was. Boy, that career is going to be hilarious to look back on. But now, man, this was the one man I have had a good time with this one, Vinnie Goodwill. Check him out on espn covering the NBA. And you get to watch the NBA Finals or cover the NBA Finals while also sleeping in your own bed for much of the time.
- [62:23]
B
I don't know about that, because with the World cup happening, I might have to get a hotel a little bit closer to Madison Square Garden because I'm not trying to get caught in this gridlock.
- [62:34]
A
Oh, damn. I hadn't even thought about that. Told you you didn't have to live in no damn New Jersey.
- [62:41]
B
Thanks for having me, Bo.
- [62:45]
A
Ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us here on the right time. We do this four days a week. Ryan Brumley heading everything behind the scenes. Thank you, sir. Hit the voicemail line. 323-596-7767. Remember, follow the right time. Subscribe like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. We'll talk to you guys in a couple of days. Take it easy.