50 Again!

On April 5th the Mavs passed the 50 win mark for the 5th straight year. In the 20 years before that the Mavs had only broke that barrier twice('86 and '87 seasons). They are also 1 of only 2 teams that currently have 5 years of 50+ win seasons. The other is the Spurs and this year makes 6 for them. The Kings have a good chance at making it to 50 for the 5th year in a row. They currently have 48 wins with 4 games to go(@LAL, @PHI, @UTA, and PHX).

That is an amazing amount of consistency for a team that reworks it's lineup at least once, and usually twice a year. Up until this year the only consistency had been in the big 3(Dirk, Finley, and Nash) with all the others rotating every offseason and/or trade deadline. This year Cuban and the Nellie's(Don and Donnie) even broke that group up. Letting Nash go to Phoenix and relegating Finley to role player status. The one constant in the situation has been Dirk Nowitzki. He is now the unquestioned leader of the team and that is a good thing. The departure of his buddy Nash spurred him from being just very good player to a great player.


Dirks the reason

A lot of credit also has to be given to the front office (Cuban and the Nellie's) for being willing to change things, despite success, in order to make it to the next level as a team. They won't settle for just winning 50+ games, making into the playoffs and winning a series or two. They want to win it all and will do whatever it takes to do it. I have no doubt with those guys running things there will be many more 50+ win seasons to come.

Missing the Puck

No skating the Cup this year....

Well today would be the start of the NHL Playoffs, if they had bothered to have a season. I will be honest, I had not missed hockey at all until today. But today I do feel a little sadness knowing that hockey is not only going to lose a season but a lot of fans. From the people I talk with, articles I read, and sports radio I listen to it seems as if most really haven't missed the NHL all that much. The hockey season is cluttered with other sports for fans to involve themselves in, NBA, College hoops, Arena football. Lets hope that the 2 sides can get there crap together in time for next season and not let this carry on any longer. Lets also hope that they make some much needed changes in the game to open it up some more so we can watch the great players do their thing and not watch guys huggin' each other all the way across the ice. That way maybe they can get the majority of the fans back quickly.

A Hero

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This is a Hero, not some athlete. Read more here, or here.
SFC. Paul Ray Smith was posthumously awarded the Medal Of Honor for his actions on April 4, 2003.

Opening Day?

Running Baseball into the ground for 13 years!

Welcome to Major League Baseball's Opening Day. But yesterday was Major League Baseball's Opening Game. So the opening game was the day before the opening day. The opening game on a day when there were 7 exhibition games. Makes sense. Well I guess it is better than last year when they had an opening series in Japan 2 weeks before the season. Where the teams played real games then came back and played more exhibition games. Makes sense. Few things to me are more pleasurable than going to the ballpark and enjoying a dog, a beer, and a game, but it is really hard to get involved when the league keeps running itself into the ground. The Opening Game fiasco is just a laughable symptom of a rotted system. The strikes/lockouts, the ignoring of steroids for so long, the refusal of the league to go to a revenue sharing program, etc., etc. I just have a really hard time getting emptionally involved in a league that is always shooting itself in then foot while holding up it's middle finger to it's fans.

And for tonights big game all I have to say is
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Next Mav?

In an interesting post script to my last post, here is a preview of a possible future Mav.

Meet Luke Schenscher

Bradley Jr. or just a cousin of Napoleon Dynamite?


7'1"
250 lbs.
Hometown: Hope Forest, South Australia

Season Averages
YR PTS REB AST BLK PF FG% FT%
'05 10.2 7.5 1.3 1.9 2.3 .541 .635
'04 9.2 6.6 0.8 1.4 2.9 .565 .687
'03 3.7 3.1 0.3 0.8 1.8 .472 .526
'02 4.8 3.2 0.8 1.1 2.1 .587 .514

Career Highs
Points: 22, Alabama A&M, 12-17-03
Field Goals: 10, Alabama A&M (10-14), 12-17-03
Field Goal Attempts: 14, Alabama A&M (10-14), 12-17-03
Free Throws: 5, Tennessee State (5-5), 12-6-03; Clemson (5-6), 2-28-04); North Carolina (5-6), 3-12-04; Northern Iowa (5-6); Kansas (5-6), 3-28-04
Free Throw Attempts: 7, Florida State (4-7), 3-2-02
Rebounds: 17, North Carolina, 3-12-04
Assists: 4, Virginia, 1-15-04
Blocked Shots: 5, North Carolina, 2-10-04
Steals: 4, Duke, 2-9-02

WOW a 7'1" Australian with a career high 22 points and 5 blocks.
How can Nellie pass on this?

Guess which he is

Draft Dreams

Hey remember that great 2000 draft when the Mavs had three 1st round picks(#'s 12, 13, and 22). Remember how happy everyone was when they drafted Etan Thomas, Courtney Alexander, and Donnell Harvey. I know I was, and I know the media was. Turns out wasn't that great of a draft after all.

Etan Thomas - Drafted #12 - Career stats PPG 6.5, RPG 5.2, AST 0.4, BLK 1.1
Courtney Alexander - Drafted #13 - Career stats PPG 9.0, RPG 2.2, AST 1.2
Donnell Harvey - Drafted #22 - Career stats PPG 5.6, RPG 4.0, AST 0.8, BLK 0.39

Wow, overwhelming, huh. Now like I said before I was happy with this draft. Not as happy as most of the local media was. I thought they would be really nice bench guys. I thought Alexander would provide scoring while Thomas and Harvey would give us defense and boards. Guess we were all wrong.

Just for a giggle lets look at some guys they could have taken.

Drafted Team
16 SAC Hidayet Turkoglu
17 SEA Desmond Mason
18 LAC Quentin Richardson
19 CHA Jamaal Magloire
21 TOR Morris Peterson
30 LAC Marko Jaric
43 MIL Michael Redd (passed on him 4 times!! Eddie Najera was drafted 38)
44 DET Brian Cardinal

My point isn't to rip the Mavs too much, but I do think that with all those picks they should have been able to get somebody who could play. At the time I really thought that they should take Quentin Richardson instead of Alexander.


Etan Thomas grabbing a rare rebound

To start with

To start with this is gonna be my little forum to vent on mainly sports, but anything else I feel like venting on. Feel free to respond with differing or concurring opinions. But if you are going to disagree make sure you have a something to back it up. Not just you suck or Quincey Carter was too a good QB. I live in Dallas so most of sports thoughts will be about Dallas teams. I will leave you to delineate my political leanings on your own. Although I have a feeling half of the people who read this thing will think I'm a liberal while the other half will think I'm conservative. I guess I just assumed a lot with that little sentence. That would mean that at least 2 people would have to read this thing. Somehow I doubt that is gonna happen.

Well I guess being in Dallas I better start off with some Cowboy talk. Everyone here is, or was, going crazy about the Drew Bledsoe signing. They are acting like it is worse than the Chan Ho signing. Yet there seems to be no major issue with the signing of Anthony Henry! That is more egregious of the two. To pay that much money to a just above average CB. I mean they need help but for that kind of money they could have got Fred Smoot, or Ty Law, or 5 other guys that are better than him.

Oh, and just as an FYI, I don't read blogs, except on the rare occasions when I check out Bob Sturm's or Mark Cuban's, so I have no idea how blogs are supposed to work or what anyone else does. So don't bother telling me. I'm treating this thing as more of an online editorial page. Well that's all for today more to come.