Dallas Mavericks and LA Lakers Fight: Why the Mavericks Won't Win a Title

In case you missed it—and I feel bad if you did—Thursday night's game between the Dallas Mavericks and Los Angeles Lakers had a pretty crazy playoff atmosphere, which is rare in March, even with the season ending in a couple of weeks. 

However, both teams also felt this game had some major playoff implications because the two teams weren't playing too nice.

In fact, stuff got pretty freaking dirty in the fourth quarter, even though the scoreboard was showing the Lakers had a pretty big edge. 

While the Lakers did have that edge during that time, you'd figure that the Mavericks would show a little vigor, especially since they kind of started the whole mass confrontation to begin with. 

That's not the case: Watch the video here—and seriously, watch it.

It's the best entertainment you'll find for the rest of the night, outside of something showing on Cinemax, which you may or may not have scheduled time for.

After Mavericks guard Jason Terry fouled Steve Blake pretty hard, Blake swiftly rose to chest bump Terry, screaming in his face, which caused immediate movement from the other eight players and three referees on the floor.

Things would have been OK had Matt Barnes—known for being a total badass, thanks to his tattoos—avoided getting involved. Fortunately/unfortunately, he didn't, as he swooped in to shove Terry, prompting refs to immediately eject him.

The dude didn't go in a timely manner and even knocked the Mavericks' assistant coach into the stands as he left.

Wait, there's more—what? You thought that was it?

After Brian Cardinal had fouled Pau Gasol, um, "hard," Shannon Brown and Cardinal got into it, with a little shovey-shove exchange, which led to Shannon Brown's immediate ejection.

In total, five players were ejected—Matt Barnes, Steve Blake, Shannon Brown, Jason Terry and Brendan Haywood. I don't know why Haywood was ejected.  

The entire fight spoke densities—sorry, but "speaking volumes" is so overused now; time to coin a new term—about the difference between a championship team and a really good team.

All of the Lakers' floor players immediately jumped to action, leading to Matt Barnes springing in to defend his teammate. As Chris Webber pointed out in the postgame show, at least three Mavericks were just slowly walking towards the confrontation, while all Lakers players not on the bench moved pretty damn swiftly.

Chris Webber also said he felt that the Mavericks were soft, that the players should have—at the risk of being suspended—jumped in to get down and dirty with the rest of the Lakers because the entire Lakers squad on the floor was so quick to do so.

Webber's right, though. Because while those players would have faced fines and/or suspensions, the Mavericks would have sent an important message, not only to the Lakers, but to the rest of the teams in the playoffs—something along the lines of, "don't screw with us."

Since the Mavs didn't really get their hands dirty, they showed zero toughness, something they really haven't shown at all in any of their past 10 50-win seasons in the past 10 years.

It's the reason they haven't gotten anywhere near an NBA Finals, with the exception of the 2006 Finals, where they ended up losing four straight en route to Miami's first championship.

It's really hard to say to a team, "Hey, go out there and play dirty and get involved in that fight." But if the Mavericks were really trying to portray themselves as a championship team, they should realize that togetherness and extreme bad-ass demeanor is a requirement.

When, in the last 20 years of NBA history, was the last time a team that wasn't willing to throw some blows won a championship?

So while the Mavericks were punished on the scoreboard, they were also punished psychologically.

The Lakers defended homecourt and made the Mavericks kiss their sometimes-flamboyant butts goodbye on the way out.

That's not the message the Mavericks should send to a team they'll eventually have to play come May.