Interesting article by Hollinger on how a team's finish to the regular season seems to correlate pretty well to playoff performance.
http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/playoffs2...%26id%3d2862552
For a quick summary, look at Dirk's pre and post all-star splits and esp his stats in March and April:
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/player...s?statsId=3252