In a Historic Upset, Warriors Stun Mavs
Warriors 111, Mavericks 86

By Ivan Carter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 4, 2007 2:36 AM

OAKLAND, May 3 -- Don Nelson may never see the $6.6 million he believes he is still owed by Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. So the Golden State coach exacted another form of payment Thursday night when his No. 8 seed Warriors delivered a decisive elimination blow to the top-seeded Mavericks in front of a rabid home crowd at Oracle Arena.

It could well be that the 111-86 win is worth more to the 66-year old coach than any check.

Playing a quintessentially Nelson style of basketball -- up-tempo "small ball" perfectly suited to the talent of his roster -- and feeding off the energy created by a capacity crowd that showed up long before tip-off and made ear-splitting noise throughout the game, the Warriors made NBA history with a series-clinching victory.

Dallas posted a league-high 67 wins during the regular season and was considered a favorite to win the championship behind its MVP candidate, Dirk Nowitzki. But Nowitzki was rendered a non-factor and finished with eight points on 2-of-13 shooting Thursday night.

It is the first time in league history that a No. 8 seed beat a No. 1 seed in a best-of-seven series and the Warriors will await the winner of the series between the Houston Rockets and Utah Jazz. Game 7 of that series is Saturday night at Houston.

And just in case anyone thinks that the Warriors will duck out now after pulling off the biggest playoff upset the league has ever seen, guard Baron Davis issued a warning.

"This is definitely the beginning," said Davis, who shook off a sore right hamstring to score 20 points on 7-of-17 shooting. "We're going to learn a lot. We learned a lot in this series, with the technicals and the fines and everything that happened, but in the end, we kept our poise and played good basketball."

Davis energized a capacity crowd of 20,677 by scoring 13 points in the second quarter to give the Warriors a 50-48 lead at halftime. Forward Stephen Jackson sparked a 24-5 third-quarter run by making four straight three-pointers. Jackson, who was ejected at the end of Games 2 and 5, made 7-of-8 three-point attempts, took his turns defending Nowitzki and finished with a career-playoff high 33 points in 44 high-energy minutes.

Nowitzki, so dominant throughout the regular season, had a nightmare of a final game. He missed his first eight shots and never looked comfortable against the smaller, quicker defenders Nelson employed against him and finished with 8 points on 2-of-13 shooting. Apart from the closing minutes of Game 5 when he made two clutch three-pointers and came up with a key block, Nowitzki was a non-factor.

"He just struggled," Dallas Coach Avery Johnson said. "He struggled getting shots and he missed some open shots when he did get them."

Perhaps no coach in the league is as familiar with Nowitzki as Nelson, who was the Mavericks coach for eight seasons and helped the 7-foot German develop from an awkward teenager to one of the game's most unique talents before departing in March of 2005. Nelson, who selected Johnson as his replacement in Dallas, still claims that Cuban owes him $6.6 million in deferred compensation and is in the process of making an arbitration claim.

Nowitzki could go down as one of the most disrespected MVP candidates in league history. Because the Mavericks failed to finish after taking a 2-0 lead over the Miami Heat in last year's NBA Finals and because he struggled against the "small ball" tactics employed by the Warriors, critics will spend the off season questioning Nowitzki's heart and leadership skills.

He stifled some of that talk with his clutch playmaking at the end of Game 5 but a loss Thursday night effectively nullified everything accomplished during a season when Nowitzki averaged 24.6 points and 8.9 rebounds, while leading the Mavericks to the best record in the league. The problem for Nowitzki against the Warriors was his inability to exploit a height advantage over defenders like Jackson, Matt Barnes and Al Harrington and his failure to attack the basket and earn free throw attempts.

"We started this year off saying we wanted to win the championship," Nowitzki said. "I feel terribly disappointed for our players and our fans. It's just a tough way to end a season."

While Nowitzki and his team struggled, the Warriors thrived by playing a fast and loose style that is both ideal for their personnel and thrilling for their fans, many of whom filled the arena back in the days when Chris Mullin, Mitch Richmond and Tim Hardaway played for Nelson in the late 1980's and early 1990's. The Warriors made 62 three-pointers in the series and rarely required the entire shot clock before getting a shot up to the rim.

"We did not want to go back to Dallas (for Game 7)," said Davis, who averaged 25 points in the series. "We know Dallas is a great team and we have a lot of guys who are injured. I'm injured, Matt Barnes is injured, Stephen Jackson is injured . . . so, we wanted to end here at home tonight."

Golden State has shaken off adversity all season, starting with one of the most bizarre losses in franchise history, a 107-106 defeat at Washington in which a shaky foul call on Mickael Pietrus and a technical foul on Nelson allowed Gilbert Arenas to make three free throws with 0.1 seconds remaining. It was the sixth-straight loss for the Warriors, who dropped to 26-35 and appeared to be out of the playoff race.

However, the Warrriors won at Detroit the following night and kept rolling when Davis returned from injury two nights later in a win over Denver. The Warriors finished an NBA-best 16-5 and broke a 13-season playoff drought by clinching the eighth seed with a win over Portland on the final night of the regular season.

Apart from Nelson, Davis and the Warriors themselves, the Oracle Arena crowd is one of the most compelling stories of these playoffs. Thursday's audience of 20,677 was the largest ever to witness a basketball game in the state of California and there were times when it sounded as if twice as many gold-shirt wearing fans had packed into the 40-year old building.

"You can't help but feed off of that energy they've been giving us," said Jackson, who became a Warrior in January after he and forward Al Harrington arrived in a trade that sent Troy Murphy and Mike Dunleavy Jr. to Indiana. "They made a difference in this series."

Notes: Golden State guard Jason Richardson was fined $35,00 by the NBA for an incident that happened at the end of Game 5 in Dallas. Richardson got tangled up with a fan after falling into the front row after missing a three-pointer and the fan complained to the NBA, saying Richardson pushed him . . . Golden State's Matt Barnes, who played on a sore hamstring, just missed a triple-double with 16 points, 11 rebounds and seven assists.