Taking a Bite Out of the Numbers

Grab your shovels and start digging. Cue the sad funeral music and don't forget to grab an extra tissue to wipe your eyes. Yep, the Mavs are dead. Done. Dead men walking. Well, at least according to the math they are.

As you all have certainly heard by now the team who wins the "rubber match" Game 3 when the series is split one-one goes on to win 11 out of 11 times. Now, I'm not a math major but I do know that 11 out of 11 is a rather strong correlation.

So go ahead and grab your shovel and start digging because math tells you its the only logical and rational thing to do after a gut wrenching loss in Game 3. Grab that shovel because math whizzes like Kurt "Tommy Guns" Thompson tells you to never doubt a good old fashioned formula (to listen to "Tommy G's" life song go to  http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1588025591045&subj=1249290846). And grab that shovel because TAG radio is grabbing our shovels too...

While you begin to dig I want you to for a moment, just a fraction of a second, forget about math. Forget about math because in competition math and the odds have a funny way of being proven wrong time and time again. The "better team" on paper does not always win and that's why they play the game.

So what do the Mavs need to do now that the media is digging the Mav's grave, Miami is getting their fingers' fitted for a ring, and when you look way down that mountain the Mavs have have found themselves at the bottom of, it appears that they are also digging. According to Mav's defensive stopper Shawn Marion, they need to "dog it up."

After reporters received this answer from Shawn "Matrix" Marion, they sat in puzzlement at this new term, "dog it up," so 'Trix continued, "Man up...on both ends of the floor." Writer Jen Engel later took from Marion's answer that the, "Mav's type of dog it up means to get dirty, to go mean, to go to the mattress, or to do what at times has been referred to as 'thugging it up'..."

In other words, Marion believes that the only way to react when backed into a corner by the "numbers" and the "odds" which are stacked so strongly against them, is to fight, to bark, growl, claw, grab the rebounds, crash the glass, play suffocating defense for four quarters, treat every possession like its the last, and to show some teeth like any cornered mutt would do.

So go ahead and keep on digging with your shovel. We and TAG Radio are, so are the Mavs. Only know this, we are not digging a grave like the media is, no sir, bad dog. Any wise dog knows that in order to get that prized buried bone he needs to dig deep. The Mavs have to dig down deep to uncover that illusive buried treasure called a World Championship.

And while they dig, you can begin to see how when Marion's words are applied to the court they begin to form a trench in which the Mavs will proceed to fight trench warfare where every inch is the difference between being the most nationally appreciated champions of all time by beating the hated Heat or forever living in with the title of a bunch of old, sorry dogs.

Be loud. Be proud. Go Mavs. Ya' Dig?