The great Al McGuire, Ball In’s all-time favorite coach, always hoped that his team would lose a game against a tough opponent they would face again. He would just as soon lose a less important game, knowing that his team would work harder in practice and be more motivated when they faced their opponents again in a bigger game. It’s always easier for a team to prepare to overcome a loss than it is to defend a win. Many coaches since (and even before) have believed the same thing. They just won’t say it. What makes Al McGuire so great is that he said it, even when he was coaching.

Despite the Miami Heat’s fairly convincing win over the Dallas Mavericks in the first game fo the NBA Finals on Tuesday night, all they did was hold serve. No matter the state of my love/hate relationship with Pat Riley, I must give him credit for his maxim that no playoff series really begins until the home team loses. That could happen tonight, to his home team. So they have done more than hold serve, they have pissed off a team that didn’t need to be pissed off to be good.

Yes, I ridiculed the Mavs in my previous post for their regimented, compartmental team. But in the end they are a team. A team that’s used to kicking ass, not getting their ass kicked. A team that will do what it can to not get its ass kicked again. I could see this in Tyson Chandler when he slammed the ball near the end of the game, after yet another thing went wrong for the Mavs. It was a look like, “Damn, I want to get this game over and get another shot, our best shot, at these suckers…”

It still seems to me that the Heat will win this thing, but they’ll lose tonight. That means that they’ll be making the home team lose in Dallas…