Both teams fully healthy (meaning the Kings have fully healthy Peja, and Dirk doesn't get injured like he did in the '03 WCF).
Who wins in a playoff series, and how many games would it take for them to win?
2002 Kings or 2003 Mavericks?
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2002 Kings or 2003 Mavericks?
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Re: 2002 Kings or 2003 Mavericks?
- Winsome Gerbil
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Re: 2002 Kings or 2003 Mavericks?
Kings notoriously owned the Mavs back in those days, knocked them out of the playoffs 4-1 in 2002 and 4-1 2004, and the only reason they didn't beat them in 2003 was because Webber blew out his knee at the beginning of that series. Still took the Mavs 7 games to get by them even without Webber. Don't know what the argument would be why the 2003 Mavs would win this matchup.
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Re: 2002 Kings or 2003 Mavericks?
Winsome Gerbil wrote: Don't know what the argument would be why the 2003 Mavs would win this matchup.
They have the best player - Dirk.
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Re: 2002 Kings or 2003 Mavericks?
Quotatious wrote:Winsome Gerbil wrote: Don't know what the argument would be why the 2003 Mavs would win this matchup.
They have the best player - Dirk.
They didn't have the best player at that time. Dirk was young, Webber was better at the time, although of course not postseason. There was certainly no huge gap there, they were both All NBA every year.
As I said, this is ahistoric. The Kings beat those Mavs handily right through that whole period, and the only time the Mavs got by them it took a devastating injury to the Kings version of Dirk right in the middle of the playoff series. Normally when we do one of these threads its between two teams who never met or some such. But the Kings and the Mavs met repeatedly during all those years, and the Kings had their number.
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Re: 2002 Kings or 2003 Mavericks?
Winsome Gerbil wrote:They didn't have the best player at that time. Dirk was young, Webber was better at the time, although of course not postseason. There was certainly no huge gap there, they were both All NBA every year.
2003 Dirk was clearly better than any version of Webber in my opinion. I'm just really low on Webber, he had great numbers but his impact wasn't on superstar level.
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Re: 2002 Kings or 2003 Mavericks?
2003 Mavs barely beat the 2002 Kings and this with no Webber around. 2002 Kings were much better than the 2003 Kings.
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Re: 2002 Kings or 2003 Mavericks?
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Re: 2002 Kings or 2003 Mavericks?
JordansBulls wrote:2003 Mavs barely beat the 2002 Kings and this with no Webber around. 2002 Kings were much better than the 2003 Kings.
I'm not at all sure about that. 2003 Kings were really stacked, had added Keon Clark, Jim Jackson, Damon Jones, Gerald Wallace to the already stacked 2002 squad. They were 2-3 deep everywhere. But the '03 Kings were also really injury riddled, and the final Webber injury finished them off.
Still, vs. the Mavs? They owned the Mavs back in those days.
2001-02 playoffs: 4-1 Kings
2002-03 reg season: 3-1 Kings, in playoffs up 1-0 then Webber blows out his knee, lose 4-3
2003-04 playoffs: 4-1 kings
We can be high on this guy or low on this guy and use it as an excuse to knock them or their team in hypothetical matchups that never happened, but this matchup happened every year right through that era, and those Kings were just the stronger team.
The interesting matchup that we never got to see because of that Webber knee injury was Kings v. Spurs. Somehow they always dodged each other in the playoffs and so we never got to see the great offense vs. the great defense.
Re: 2002 Kings or 2003 Mavericks?
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Re: 2002 Kings or 2003 Mavericks?
Winsome Gerbil wrote:
The interesting matchup that we never got to see because of that Webber knee injury was Kings v. Spurs. Somehow they always dodged each other in the playoffs and so we never got to see the great offense vs. the great defense.
Im more amazed at the fact that we never got to see Kobe vs Dirk in the playoffs until 2011. How did they avoid each other for that long?
btw, you are really mischaracterizing that matchup. The Kings actually finished with a better defense than the Spurs in 2003.
Re: 2002 Kings or 2003 Mavericks?
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Re: 2002 Kings or 2003 Mavericks?
The 02 & 04 Mavericks are distinctly different from the 03 Mavericks in one aspect: Defense
2002: 25th
2003: 8th
2004: 28th
Given that the Mavericks still maintained a GOAT level offense, this means that the 03 Mavericks had a much higher SRS than the adjacent years...
2002: 25th
2003: 8th
2004: 28th
Given that the Mavericks still maintained a GOAT level offense, this means that the 03 Mavericks had a much higher SRS than the adjacent years...
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