Time to Dissect the Mavs' Weaknesses

As far as I can tell, there are at least three arguments out there:

1. Poor passing and an offensive game plan that relies to heavily on isolation. Basketbawful cogently made this argument a few days ago. Watching the series, it makes sense: Dallas only seemed to score when Harris or Stackhouse drove 25 feet for a layup, or Dirk hit fadeaways. I didn't see many well-timed passes for layups.
   
   
2. Poor play by Dirk. As John Hollinger pointed out and Henry Abbott reiterated, this isn't really a fair critique. Dirk played pretty well, just not scoring at quite his usual rate. His game last night was terrible but overall his series was a slight drop-off.
   
   
3. Intangibles: "lack of toughness," insufficient "imposing their will" on the other team, not "wanting it" enough.
   
   

I'm not sure any of these are correct, though. Dallas didn't pass well all season, and they absolutely destroyed the competition most of the time. Lots of stars don't do as well in the postseason, e.g. Jason Kidd has usually been less productive and still had good playoff runs. And the intangibles argument never really convinces me: the Mavericks were tough and wanted it all season, and I doubt they stopped "wanting it" in the post-season.

I think there's no more profound explanation than this: the Warriors were a terrible match-up for the Mavericks. I can't verify this right now, but I think GS was the only team with a winning record against Dallas for the entire season. I believe the only other team that even split was the Suns. In other words, high-octane offense teams that shoot a lot of outside shots and run all the time.

The entire Dallas mindset post-Nelson-and-Nash was to slow it down and play conventional 90s basketball. Walk it up. Isolate your star. Shoot a lot of free throws. Toughen up on defense. Become the Spurs, essentially. But the new-breed running teams will have their shot. Unlike Phoenix, Golden State also mixes extremely physical defense (did you see most of Matt Barnes' fouls!?) with gunner offense, which seemed to both Dirk more than anyone.