What a turn around: the Spurs are going to win this series

I said yesterday the Mavericks were going to have to play a lot better to win this series against the San Antonio, mainly because you knew the Spurs would not play as poorly as they did Sunday night. But who knew the Mavericks would go from being average to being terrible. As a result of last night's blowout -- and let's face it, a 14-point loss in the playoffs is a blowout -- as well as a closer examination at the way each team finished the season, I'm backing way off my prediction that the Mavericks will win this series in five games. Now I believe the Spurs will win this series, probably in six games.

It's not only the way the Mavericks played last night, but more in the way the Spurs have been playing lately and it's a lot better than the Mavericks. Just looking at wins and losses, there's not that much difference. The Surs were 11-7 in the last month of the season and the Mavericks were 10-5. But look at the difference in what I call quality wins. The Mavs only had two of them in the last month -- a 109-93 win at home against Denver on March 29, and a 83-77 victory over Portland on the road April 9.

The Spurs, on the other hand, had a quite impressive, some might say "phenomenal,"  six quality wins during that same time span -- 88-76 at Miami on March 16, 102-97 over Cleveland (the team with the best record in the NBA) March 26, 94-73 at Boston (a team that beat the Mavs in Dallas eight days earlier) March 28, 112-100 over Orlando April 2, 100-81 at the Los Angeles Lakers April 4, and, finally, 104-85 at Denver April 10. That's spectacular basketball.

Dallas won the first game of this series because of (1) uncharacteristic San Antonio mistakes (too many fouls and turnovers) and (2) a monumental 12 of 14 from the floor shooting night by Dirk Nowitzki. Last night the Spurs cut their fouls from 28 to 15 and their turnovers from 17 to eight. And the Big German's field goal percentage plummeted from 86 percent Sunday night to 38 percent last night on 9 of 24 for 24 points. The mark of a good perfiormance is to have more total points than field goals attempted and only Jason Terry and J.J. Barea (albeit the latter with only five points) reached that plateau Wednesday while, for the Spurs, that level was reached by Tim Duncan, Richard Jefferson, Manu Ginobli and Matt Bonner.

From where I sit, things look a little bleak for the Mavericks right now, but then I'm sitting a pretty good distance from the American Airlines Center. And it's dark out.