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Good point - maybe Avery Johnson isn't as bright as he appears. Interestingly enough, on that very same night, the Clippers played the Suns, and the Suns played very close to full strength that evening. Clippers won that game, but it wasn't because of the Suns' lack of effort. Dallas, on the other hand, was playing four bench players and their short order cook against GS.

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This point can't be stated enough. Even if you believe in the concept of "resting your starters", this was a really dumb time to do so. I've said before and I'll say again that I have mad [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] for the copstache-wearing D'Antoni for playing his best players the last two games, not only do I consider it a courtesy to the paying fan but those games were kind of like "victory laps", and it could also be a time to work on some things in game situations.

Also, if I am a Clippers fan in that spot I'd be kinda pissed. Yeah, they put themselves in that situation by sucking all year, but if Dallas fields even a halfway non-ridiculous team they may have beaten GS and then the Clippers would be in the playoffs facing Dallas, not watching from the sidelines.

So if Dallas does go on to lose this series they can look at that game on the second to last night of the regular season as a likely reason why. I can't see the Clippers giving them this much of a fight (sorry, Al) - they don't have Nellie's knowledge of how to marginalize Dirk nor do they have the mismatches in the backcourt. Even more strange, the next night AJ trotted out his regular starters for a meaningless game in Seattle. Seems to me if I'm a regular starter I'd prefer to play the home game against GS and then maybe skip the flight to Seattle altogether.