OKLAHOMA CITY — We love to say NBA teams make their own bounces. This is not true.
Once the ball leaves a player's hands, much of what follows is random.
We all have witnessed what looks to be a perfect shot rim out, what undoubtedly is an ugly one find a way in and so many balls that roll around seemingly unable to decide.
I think we love this talk of impacting bounces because it lessens the cruel randomness of sports. It helps explain what otherwise defies explanation: how a Dallas Mavericks team with a championship banner hanging as a testament to a ferocious ability to finish games merely a postseason ago finds itself unable to do so.
This is why the Mavs were talking bounces after Monday's 102-99 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder. It is easier than talking about endings. And there is no doubt, when Mavs forward Dirk Nowitzki's late-game shot failed to go down in Game 2, this felt very much like an end to what always had felt like a fatally flawed championship defense.
"The ball definitely bounced our way in these situations (a year ago)," Mavs guard Jason Terry said. "But it is not over yet. . . . It is going to have to bounce their way four times before it is all said and done. It is still up to us to get those bounces down the stretch."
Nowitzki had a 12-foot fadeaway with 25.7 seconds left in Game 2. It is a shot you'd bank on him making. Miami Heat players — OK, not the jackass fake-coughing ones — might argue he never misses this shot because that is how the last postseason had to feel to them, which is why what happened Monday felt strange.
"It bounced and hit every part of the rim and then bounced off," Nowitzki said. "That's kind of the way our season has been going. They get that bounce last game. We don't get it."
Kevin Durant's winning shot from Game 1 also had bounced this way, hitting every conceivable part of the iron before going in for a one-point victory.
Twice now this has happened to Dallas and the question is: How do you bounce back?
I am not talking about bouncing back from two crushing playoff losses. The Mavs had plenty of experience with that a year ago. Rather, I am talking about bouncing back from this idea that this is futile, that they are not good enough to beat this Thunder team in four of the next five games, that they are not good enough to beat the Lakers or Spurs or Heat, that this championship defense always has been fatally flawed, that this season never actually has been about defending anything but rather positioning themselves to get Deron Williams.
How do you bounce back when defeat seems inevitable?
"We just got to keep competing," Dirk said. "If we do that, you put yourself in position to get those bounces. I don't know what else to tell you. We are not going to lay down. We are going to compete."
He already had unleashed a version of this William Wallace speech earlier, and what I know for sure about Dirk is he means every word. He is not going down without a fight.
Winning a championship meant everything to him. I always will remember the sight of him crying in the bowels of the arena in Miami. It had been such a long road and such a hard fight, and he had had to fight for every inch. And when you do that, you do not give it up easily or lightly, even if you know you eventually will have to.
The Mavs players have known this was coming all season. This season was always less about defending their championship and more about chasing D-Will.
He had better be coming to Dallas. And he had better be worth it.
There were two ways to play this for Dirk, Jason Kidd and Terry: Play out the string, or go down swinging.
What they learned through all of those missteps is that how one bows out says something about them.
"We're going to keep coming. We are not going to lay down. If they beat us, we are going to make them earn it," Dirk said. "We have enough warriors over there that are going to come back and respond the way they did tonight when we were down 16. We kept battling back and kept making plays. We are not going to give it to them. They got to take it."
This is most certainly true. Oklahoma City players certainly agree.
If the Mavs were going to lay down, a perfect opportunity existed in the middle of the second quarter when they found themselves trailing by 16 and looking like they were about to get rolled.
And the Mavs fought back.
The tenor of the Mavs defense was established by Dirk. He was throwing elbows and talking trash to Kendrick Perkins, not backing down at all when it got rough.
"He tried to bully me and I bullied back a little bit. We talked about some stuff and moved on," Dirk said.
Mavs coach Rick Carlisle is a little less likely to move on, judging by his comments afterward.
"I love hard play, a clean competitive playoff series and you throw the ball up and may the best team win," an obviously agitated Carlisle said. "But the dirty bull(spit) has got to stop."
He and his friend, Thunder coach Scott Brooks, have been going back and forth. Carlisle posturing for calls, Brooks calling him a whiner, Carlisle dropping an s-bomb.
Your serve, Brooks.
My guess is Brooks stays quiet. The team getting the bounces usually does.
