If you had asked Kobe Bryant last May what would constitute a successful 2007-08 season to him, it’s safe to say his expectations wouldn’t have been very high.  He certainly couldn’t have expected this to be his first official MVP season.  And considering he was pushing for a trade to teams that would have had to dismantle their rosters to afford him, a potential NBA Finals appearance would have seemed equally unlikely.  No wonder he’s been popping his jersey so much recently.

If we’re being honest, though, I’d be lying if I said Kobe’s trade demands last summer and his criticisms of Mitch Kupchak and others in the organization weren’t on my mind when considering how my own MVP ballot would look this season.  Kevin Garnett never would have turned his back on his team like Kobe.  I don’t think it’s unfair to say Bryant has been somewhat of a “fair weather Laker” over the past 12 months.  The MVP elect has indeed undergone quite a transformation since this time last year, and here’s an article in today’s L.A. Times by Mark Heisler that nicely chronicles Kobe’s turnaround with the Lakers.

“In the depths of the Lean Years from 2004 to 2007, Bryant discovered something new: fear.

Once serenely confident of achieving his goals, he felt abandoned and reviled — “an outcast my entire life,” he wrote for Dime Magazine — “[always] made to feel like there was something wrong with wanting to win so badly and wanting to become the best at what you do.”

Happily for Bryant, laying siege to the Lakers’ organization from last May to October didn’t get him traded to Chicago, which might have cast him into mediocrity forever.

Now his career lays out perfectly, on a rising power that should only be better when Andrew Bynum returns, with everything — multiple MVPs, multiple titles — possible.”  Full Article.

Column: Huge Balls

     by Rob Stiller

Dallas Stars: Lost at the San Jose Sharks Friday 3-2 (OT); Beat the Sharks in Dallas Sunday 2-1 (4OT)

It’s only fitting that the ballsiest player on the team scored the ballsiest goal of the season for the Stars as the team advances to face the Detroit Red Wings in the Western Conference Finals after appearing on the brink of completing an historic collapse. I’m talking about Brendan Morrow, for those of you who didn’t weather the five and a half hours it took to decide a winner early Monday morning. Just as significant as the playoff implications this game held, though, is the fact that this game reminded us that hockey games needn’t be high scoring affairs to be exceedingly entertaining. As much as the league has tweaked the rules in recent years to allow for more scoring, games like this, in which two goaltenders go toe to toe for hours, are the ones that will be tagged as “instant classics” in the hockey world. If you had asked me three weeks ago how much hockey I had watched this season, an honest response would probably have been about six hours. But not only did I watch as much Sunday night, I was on the edge of my seat the whole game, as Turco and Nabokov made ridiculous save after ridiculous save. As of 2:43 Monday morning, there isn’t a YouTube video of the game winning goal. But to me this HUGE hit Brendan Morrow layed on some San Jose chump might as well have been the game winner. Video, as well as Rockets and Spurs weekend news, after the jump. [Read more]

It’s Friday, and in an effort to further stifle any and all productivity, here are some fun/interesting/moderately entertaining links with which to kill the last few minutes and/or hours until the weekend.
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- Avery Johnson’s first interview after being fired Wednesday, with Randy Galloway from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

- Always the pessimist, Tim Cowlishaw paints a bleak picture for the Mavs in the near future.

- Interesting article on the merits of D-League affiliation.

- Mike Modano has added to his Stars legacy by accepting a new role this season, and has a near Western Conference Finals appearance to show for it.

- Oh, indeed.

- Here’s a video of members of the Houston Rockets giving their best Dikembe Mutombo impersonations. They still should have brought in Michael Wilbon as a guest impersonator.

- As of Day 2 of the NFL Draft, the Buccaneers have a whopping EIGHT quarterbacks on their roster. But you better believe they have high hopes for that eighth-string signal caller.

- Here’s a virtual tour of what exactly $1.1 billion will buy you these days, in the form of the new Dallas Cowboy’s stadium.

- It might be rebuilding time for a Texas baseball team that isn’t the Rangers, according to Richard Justice of the Houston Chronicle.

- Is Dwyane Wade really dating Star Jones?? Surely the Chuckster can get to the bottom of this. I was really pleased to find out that ‘cougar’ somehow made the cut for Charles Barkley’s sometimes lacking vocabulary.

Column: Huge Balls

     by Rob Stiller

**UPDATE** As of Thursday afternoon, the New York Post and Chicago Tribune are, respectively, reporting that the New York Knicks and Chicago Bulls are both interested in interviewing Avery Johnson and Mike D’Antoni in the next few days, assuming the latter becomes available.
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Upon their elimination from the NBA playoffs Tuesday night at the hands of the up-and-coming New Orleans Hornets, the down-and-going Dallas Mavericks officially embarked on their most significant offseason since 2004. But what is the appropriate course of action, and what will Mark Cuban and Donnie Nelson actually do to restore the Mavs to their elite status? At this point, there is no right answer, but big changes are clearly on the horizon, given the team’s dismissal of Avery Johnson Wednesday afternoon. There essentially exist three philosophical approaches that the organization could take, none of which are necessarily appealing to the fans, but all of which management will have to weigh in the coming weeks and months.

1. Stand pat
Probably the most distasteful approach to disgruntled Mavs fans everywhere is the possibility that Donnie and Cuban decide to give this group one last chance to make it to the top. And for a number of reasons, this scenario is a lot more likely than most sports media outlets would have you believe.

1. Cuban just signed off on one of the riskiest trades in franchise history, and Cubes isn’t the sort of guy that’s used to failure. And to clarify, trading Kidd now would be one big admission of failure. It certainly wouldn’t be difficult to sell the media on the “perhaps the team just didn’t have enough games together to find their chemistry will Kidd at the helm before the playoffs” explanation.
2. The team’s most valuable trade chip just caused a media raucous after discussing his affinity for smoking dro during the offseason, and compounded that with the worst playoff series of his career. Even if the Mavs are shopping Josh Howard, which, one can only assume they are, the logical move is to wait until next season when J-Ho has had a chance to remind the league exactly the Mavs were unwilling to part with him this season. Prematurely moving Howard would only hurt the Mavs and move them further away from the upper tier of the Western Conference.
3. The other big ticket item the Mavs have to work with, Jason Kidd’s expiring contract, will similarly increase in value the longer they hold on to it. That is, as next season’s trade deadline approaches, teams working to clear cap space for the 2010 LeBron James Sweepstakes would LOVE to take on Kidd’s 21.3 million (!) dollar expiring contract.
4. Beyond the two players already mentioned, the Mavs have a lot of undesirable (Terry, Stackhouse) or just plain bad (Dampier) contracts that are essentially immovable. That is, unless the team starts stripping parts and selling them off for pennies on the dollar in order to clear cap space down the road. [Read more]

(AP Photo/Bill Haber)

The Mavs’ loss Tuesday night at New Orleans was no ordinary playoff elimination. As nearly every TNT analyst repeatedly reminded us throughout the evening, Dallas and Phoenix were both in the midst of ‘franchise defining series’, which is absolutely true. Both teams’ windows of opportunity officially closed last night, and both teams appear primed for a serious overhaul this offseason (well, as much as is possible, considering their recently acquired overpaid, overaged superstars). But until I can gather myself and my thoughts on the subject, here’s a bag of links to some immediate reactions to the games.

- **UPDATE**  As of Wednesday afternoon, the Mavericks have officially fired Avery Johnson.  Between him and Mike D’Antoni, it’s a bull market out there for teams looking for a new head coach.  The Bulls and Knicks must be ecstatic.  Commentary on this later.

- From Kevin Sherrington at The Dallas Morning News:

“Johnson’s annual problem with point guards isn’t the only reason he’ll lose his job sometime soon. He lost this team even before his players called a players-only practice the day before they were eliminated by the Hornets. He’ll lose his job because he told the owner he could get the most out of Erick Dampier.

He’ll lose it because he got out-coached in the playoffs three years in a row, each exit progressively worse.

Losing in the Finals to Miami? Heartbreaking.

Bounced by an eighth seed? Embarrassing.

Out in five in New Orleans? Humiliating.” Read more.

- Considering his performances so far, maybe Stackhouse getting tossed was the best thing for the Mavs.

- Post game quotes from Avery, Dirk, Stack. Probably the most telling is this: “We’ve been just really inconsistent this year. We haven’t been able, in the second half of the season, to keep up with the better teams. We paid the price for it.”

- Apparently some of the mounting distractions did have an effect. From Jerry Stackhouse’s confrontation with Byron Scott to J-Ho’s late night birthday party Sunday night. From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

“It started last Wednesday when Jerry Stackhouse blasted Hornets coach Byron Scott — named NBA Coach of the Year on Tuesday morning — on the radio. On Friday, hours before tip-off of Game 3, Howard decided to hit the radio and share his affinity for smoking marijuana in the off-season.

The final straw came Monday, when coach Avery Johnson canceled that day’s practice after learning that Josh Howard held his 28th birthday party at a Dallas nightclub after Sunday’s Game 4 defeat.

Nowitzki, the team workhorse ever since he returned early from a high left ankle sprain April 2, said all the distractions took a toll.

“I mean, obviously it was very disappointing what happened here in the playoffs with everything,” Nowitzki said. “It was bad timing. In the playoffs, it’s time to just really concentrate about basketball and focus on it and not let any distractions come up. So, it’s very disappointing about the timing of the whole thing.” Read more.

- Here’s a piece by Paul Coro at the Arizona Republic on Mike D’Antoni’s future with the Suns.  **UPDATE**  D’Antoni may be out as Suns head coach, according to an SI.com report Wednesday.  Although according to ESPN.com, Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic stated this morning that no such decision had been made.

- And finally here are some comments from the Spurs-Suns series. What a letdown after that ridiculous Game 1.

(AP Photo/John Bazemore)

We had Suns-Spurs.

We had Cavs-Wizards.

We had Rockets-Jazz.

No one would’ve thought that through four NBA playoff games, the most compelling series would feature none other than the Atlanta Hawks.  But the Darlings of the Dirty South have absorbed the Celtics’ best shot and are still standing, and now have a real shot at finishing off the upset, according to Mark Bradley of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“We know we can play with these guys,” said Johnson, expressing a belief that absolutely no one — not even the Hawks — held 51 hours earlier. But two games here, two games that defied form and reason, have turned a perfunctory exercise into a pulsating entity.

“It’s a series now,” Al Horford said. “Before it was 2-0.”

Now it’s 2-2, and the Celtics find themselves where they were in the heyday of Bird and McHale, relying on their home floor when all else fails. And all else has. The team that considers itself a defensive carnivore couldn’t guard two Hawks when it mattered. Joe Johnson and Josh Smith scored all 32 of their team’s fourth-quarter points, and who knew this much-lampooned roster was housing a latter-day Jordan and Pippen?

Full article here.