Last year about this time (in May) Quest for the Ring (QFTR) pledged we would upgrade the Real Coach Ratings system and finally prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that certain coaches will almost certainly never win The Quest for the Ring. The result was the Playoff Series and Coaches Database and the resulting improvements in the Real Coach Ratings. That pledge was titled “Help is on the Way for Mavericks and Nuggets Fans,” or something similar to that.

QFTR was motivated to make the Help is on the Way Pledge a year ago when both Coach Rick Carlisle for the Dallas Mavericks and Coach George Karl for the Denver Nuggets were torched in the playoffs. It was obvious that the sorry performances of the Mavericks and of the Nuggets in the 2010 playoffs were partly due to bad coaching, and we wanted to go on record at the time promising that the Database would get done and that the improvements in the Coach Ratings would get done. These tools would prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that Carlisle and Karl were largely to blame for those and for many other playoffs flame-outs.

By late in 2010 all of what we promised in May 2010 was done. Help was delivered to Mavericks and Nuggets fans and managers in the form of proof that your coaches were and are poor playoffs coaches.

Of course, Mavericks Coach Rick Carlisle doesn’t look as bad right now because here in 2011 he swept the Los Angeles Lakers (coached by Phil Jackson no less, the all-time best playoffs coach) and as of this writing he is up 3-1 versus one of the best young teams in the history of the NBA. Well, either Carlisle’s usual playoff mistakes are not being made (due to Carlisle learning to not make them or due to sheer dumb luck) or else Coach Scott Brooks and the Thunder are losing out to the Mavericks due to the Thunder’s whopping payroll and experience deficits versus the Mavericks. I’d definitely bet the latter if I were betting, laugh out loud.

As for Carlisle winning the 2011 Quest? Please! I am afraid that at this point the West Conference is completely screwed and that either LeBron James or Derrick Rose is going to win his first Ring. Quite honestly, in the last few years, the West has gone from being the dominant Conference to more or less a joke when you compare it to the East.

QFTR has been known to fail to meet pledges in a timely fashion (and that is an understatement). But Help is on the Way pledges are special, and just as we met last year’s pledge, we WILL meet this year’s May Help is on the Way pledge. This May, as the Oklahoma Thunder collapse and burn in one of the biggest playoff series collapses in the history of the NBA (for example, blowing a 15 point lead late in the fourth quarter in game four against Dallas in the West final) QFTR is officially pledging right here and now that we WILL produce a multi-part Report on the Western Conference Final.

Actually, the Official QFTR Production Plan calls for three multi-part Reports, two on the Conference finals and one on the NBA Championship. But we are wisely limiting this Help is on the Way pledge to just one multi-part Report, on the West Conference Final. (QFTR is trying to once and for all put an end to pledges not kept, and we would for once like to exceed expectations and pledges rather than put up another air ball, laugh out loud.)

More specifically, we pledge that in the multi-part Report on the West Conference Final we will identify in detail every single reason why the Thunder were outclassed by the Mavericks and why specifically the Thunder blew a series that they could have and should have won. We will extensively discuss just how much of an advantage a big payroll and very experienced players are over a small payroll and very inexperienced players. Then, using this perfect example (Thunder versus Mavericks) we will explain exactly how a small payroll, inexperienced team can defeat the favored team. In other words, we will explain in great detail how Oklahoma could have (and should have) defeated the Mavericks.

Although Dallas was favored by “the establishment,” the truth is that Oklahoma is (was) the better team and should have won the series. QFTR has clear evidence that the Oklahoma Thunder is (was) a better team than the Dallas Mavericks in 2011. So although the Report that we produce later this year could in the future be used to produce an outright upset, with respect to the 2011 Thunder we will be reporting how they could have won a series that they should have won because they in truth were the real, true favorite.

To make a long story short, the Thunder, the better team, played foolishly and lost whereas the Mavericks played smart and won. QFTR is always warning that the better team can lose if it plays foolishly. If anyone thinks that correct management and correct strategy and tactics don’t count for very much this is yet another series clearly and beyond any shadow of a doubt proving that you are very, very wrong. The better but dumber team lost while the lesser but smarter team won.

All of the details will be in the multi-part Report that will most likely be at least 12,000 words long, which is more than ten times as long as a “blog post” in some ordinary blog. (And face facts, there are virtually and probably literally no blogs out there, high traffic or otherwise, that produce Reports even half that long.)

The Mavericks-Thunder 2011 West Conference Final is (was if you are reading this after the series is over) a classic rich team-poor team confrontation. It is (or was) also a classic old team-young team confrontation. Oklahoma Coach Scott Brooks is most definitely a better coach than Dallas Coach Rick Carlisle, yet Brooks is (was) unable to overcome the disadvantages of a low payroll and of a very young, inexperienced team.

Brooks should have and could have overcome those disadvantages. Brooks and the Thunder could fairly easily have won the 2011 West final, especially since Carlisle has a track record of being a poor playoffs coach. If the Thunder follow some or all of the guidance we will produce, they will in the future (including next year!) be able to avoid collapses like their 2011 collapse to the Mavericks.

QUEST FOR THE RING REPORTING ON CONFERENCE AND NBA FINALS
The current, state of the art Quest for the Ring Production Plan calls for Reports on each Conference final and on the NBA Championship to be produced and posted in the fall or at the latest in December. These are supposed to be extensive, multi-part Reports totaling 10,000-20,000 words. (That’s the equivalent of 10-25 typical blog posts and it is the equivalent of 10-20% of a lengthy book.)

We have for several years wanted to post at least three multi-part series Reports on the Conference and on the NBA finals, but due to the following things, all of which soak up large amounts of time, QFTR has never yet even come close to producing all three mega Reports in one year:

--We have been unable to free ourselves of using up a lot of valuable production time on the Denver Nuggets. QFTR started out as a Nuggets Site, but certainly as of 2011 we are supposed to be a full scale NBA site and the Nuggets are supposed to be in the rear view mirror. But like we have said before, we are like a loyal dog that does not run away from home even though our owner is a lousy one indeed. So we have continued to report on the Nuggets, a team that most people can see will not possibly win The Quest for the Ring doing what they are doing.

The truth is that we will always do some reporting on the Nuggets that we would never do for any other team; that is, we will never completely rid ourselves of our seeming compulsion to “cover” the Nuggets. But we WILL eventually have Nuggets coverage scaled back to a nice minimal level.

--Extensive time has been going into developing new features and resources, most of which are unique across the entire World Wide Web. You would be amazed at some of the things that no one else has ever been able to produce, leaving QFTR to do those things, as much for its’ own benefit as for anyone else’s.

--Features that we have deployed on the Internet are continually breaking down and self-destructing, necessitating very large amounts of maintenance time. To say that a feature rich Internet Site requires a lot of maintenance time is an understatement; it requires a massive amount of maintenance time.

--Even when they don’t break down or self-destruct features need to be updated; for example, links need to be updated at least annually.

--Content Back-up requirements. Just as you can’t depend on a single copy of your data on a hard drive you need to back up everything posted on the Internet as well because there are reasons (most of which are more or less secret or at least unknowable) as to why your content (or your whole site for that matter) could be here today and gone tomorrow.

--Occasionally Google (which hosts QFTR and we take this opportunity to thank them for that) needs some help or guidance from QFTR, and also, occasionally, Google commits some error or foul that forces QFTR to spend valuable time trying to make sure that damage caused by that error or foul is limited. You would not believe how many hours can be soaked up due to “the Google factor,” due to Google not being perfect, alone.

--Due to limited traffic QFTR is unable to command the full amount of production time we would really want to give to it. (But there is a minimum time that can not be interfered with regardless of how limited traffic is. And also, ultimately, unlike with so many other Internet sites operated by a tiny number of people, QFTR will never be discontinued due to having traffic much less than it should.

SOME NOTES REGARDING TRAFFIC
Incidentally, the traffic thing is ultimately both a “yes we care”, but also a “No we don’t care” type of issue. That is, we care in some limited respects but mainly we don't care about how much traffic QFTR gets.

QFTR has only a relatively small fraction of the traffic that it should have if traffic were distributed according to the real value of Sites. If traffic was the be all and the end all QFTR would have been scrapped at least a year and a half ago!

Assuming that low traffic really reflects the lack of interest in pro basketball looked at with no hype and with a lot of sophisticated and detailed information (call it anti-hype) we are very disappointed in the abstract. But in the practical sense QFTR has been proved to be correct in seemingly controversial claims so many times that we are going to continue on regardless of traffic, regardless of what Google does, and regardless of how limited the audience really is for high level, sophisticated, no hype basketball reporting.

Your primary QFTR producer has gained a lot from producing this Site despite the limited traffic. Aside from learning and teaching basketball at the highest level, your primary QFTR producer has and will continue to become expert at an ever lengthening list of programs, computer system skills, and Internet publishing skills. In other words, by producing QFTR, we are in effect getting a free degree in practical computer science. So if you think we are not getting paid for producing QFTR you are very wrong because when you make something that is extremely expensive free, you just got paid.

SNEAK PEAK AT OKLAHOMA THUNDER: HELP IS ON THE WAY
Obviously the Thunder can’t do anything about the fact that they are very young and have a very light payroll whereas the Mavericks are very experienced and have a very fat payroll. But the Thunder made really dumb and fairly dumb mistakes which allowed Dallas to use their basic advantages to win a series they should not have won. The biggest mistake the Thunder made was that they disrespected the point guard concept.

As the Report later this year will show in extensive detail, the Thunder most likely would have won the Series if they had simply avoided committing the worst offense against basketball you can: disrespecting the point guard concept. In this report we introduced you to how Oklahoma point guard Russell Westbrook sometimes disrespects the concept and essentially forfeits games. We did so before “the Westbrook Thing” became public knowledge due to it being fairly heavily reported by TNT and ESPN broadcasters.

For the sneak peak right here and now I’ll skip most of the evidence and most of the details (due obviously to lack of time at the moment) and get to the bottom line: When a point guard disrespects the point guard concept he starts promoting isolation plays by all his teammates and he also starts running them himself. In a playoff game, more so than in the regular season, this (a) completely ruins the offense and (b) makes it impossible to win a playoff series against a smart, veteran team that is following the point guard concept even if you actually have a better team and are supposed to win that series. In other words, when you disrespect the point guard concept you can in effect forfeit a playoff series.

Tell me for example how game four in Oklahoma was not essentially the Thunder forfeiting to the Mavericks. When Russell Westbrook quit playing point guard about half way through the fourth, the Thunder might as well have walked off the court right then and there and gone straight to the locker room and not come back.

The interesting thing about the monumental collapse of the Thunder in the last five minutes of game four is that Russell Westbrook apparently (and I would assume by accident) proved that there is one thing even worse than disrespecting the importance of the point guard concept for an entire game. Even worse than that is following the point guard concept for most of a game, building up a big lead and then deciding you can completely scrap the concept and run only isolation plays in the second half of the 4th quarter. So then, since you are in the freaking West Conference Final and you are playing a great team with a monster historical superstar (Dirk Nowitzki) you collapse and lose the game when you quit using the point guard concept and you try to go back over to isolation, gimmick, fast break, and random sheer luck plays for offense.

I mean, the Thunder would have had roughly as good a chance to win game four had Russell decided to not follow the point guard concept the entire night (which is more or less what happened in game three). At least then they would have had SOME offense late in the fourth. At least then major confusion could have been avoided. Whereas, what actually happened in game four was that when Westbrook quit trying to make plays the Thunder were out of rhythm, hopelessly confused, and not warmed up with the isolation and gimmick plays, which is to say the Thunder were left with essentially no offense at all, thus the complete collapse. I mean seriously, I saw the game, and I saw with my own eyes that after Russell quit there was basically nothing there in Oklahoma's offense but confusion and helplessness.

Or to put it another way, the only thing worse than Russell Westbrook not running the point correctly for a whole game is for him to quit running it during the fourth quarter with a big lead, and then the Thunder blow the game! Yikes that was miserable to watch. After the collapse I thought about smashing my monitor into about a dozen pieces but thought better of it, laugh out loud.

After Russell Westbrook decided he didn't need to run point anymore what did he produce in isolation in the last five minutes of the game? He made one shot out of five! Every one of his shots were mid-range jumpers and threes. He's a good jump shooter but those shots would not go in! He even missed BOTH free throws in a trip to the line! Well, you know what they say; "Ball don't lie"! The ball was saying: "Russell, you are disrespecting the point guard concept and trying to cheat basketball. Therefore, you are going to blow this game!" Gosh it's really true, that ball don't lie, laugh out loud!

QFTR Memo to Russell Westbrook and to all point guards: the point guard concept is like air; you need to use it ALL of the time and not just some of the time. You can not run point only when you want to; you have to run it all of the time if you want to defeat teams like the Dallas Mavericks.

A series forfeit due to refusal to follow the point guard concept is apparently what is going to happen in the 2011 Thunder-Mavericks series (which at the moment is 3-1 Mavericks).

Maybe the Thunder can learn the hard way? Maybe someone will read this or this preview right here or else this falls’ detailed Report and get the Thunder to change their ways? If after the details are produced and posted the Thunder continue to play dumb next year, if they in other words don’t follow the advice in the Report that comes out of this Help is on the Way pledge, at least no one will be able to say that QFTR didn’t fulfill its’ duties as the site that “explains exactly how Championships are won and lost”.

As for the here and now, I projected a Thunder win because I naively thought (I dream too much, it's true) that somehow Westbrook, Brooks, and the Thunder could “grow up in a hurry” and respect the point guard concept. (And in my defense they at least recognized and talked about the problem.) I thought that Westbrook would make more plays and get more assists than he did. I was wrong, but it’s ultimately just one lost year and obviously the Thunder are very, very young. They will very likely win at least one Championship if they eventually stop what they are doing and follow the number one rule of pro basketball offense in the playoffs: you WILL follow the point guard concept or you will definitely NOT be winning the Championship even if you could have won it otherwise.

Just as you don’t have any choice about how high the hoop is off the floor, you don’t have any choice regarding following the point guard concept. The point guard concept is just as much a fact of basketball that you can't do anything about as is how high the hoop is off the floor. Either a point guard (the starting one or a backup) or at the least a player at another position acting as if he was the point guard (or some combination of those players) makes (or make) a few plays EVERY SINGLE QUARTER and therefore prevent(s) the team from falling into the isolation trap and prevent(s) the offense from running down to next to nothing or the team forfeits any chance to win the Championship. In a playoff game against a great team, whenever you almost completely stop making plays you are toast and you will win only if you get very, very lucky.

If you don’t understand or if you don't believe that to win a Championship the ball absolutely must often move between players and that a few plays involving at least two players have to made every single quarter (but not every single play of course) you really need to find another sport.

For example, tennis is good if you don't agree with the point guard concept. I am sure Russell Westbrook would be at least a good tennis player, and probably an outstanding one. I am also sure he would be a great point guard if he just agreed to be one all of the time.