Okay, I'm going to finally get off my duff and stop procrastinating. If you haven't heard, Jamal Mashburn is going to undergo arthroscopic surgery this week. It is not known how long it the recovery process will take and it is likely that he will not return this season. Mavs team physician T.O. Souryal, who will perform the operation: "Jamal had three vigorous workouts [last] week and after running [on the 7th], the symptoms returned. I'm comfortable that we've tried every non-surgical option, and that surgery is now indicated. Jamal has an area of wear on the end of his femur. That's what's causing the pain. The procedure will involve scraping and drilling to stimulate healing. The timetable for Jamal's return can not be set until after the procedure. Not all arthroscopic procedures are the same. The reason surgery was the last resort is because in these types of arthroscopic surgeries, the return to athletics is extremely unpredictable and in all likelihood will take a matter of months, not weeks. It's likely Jamal will be out for the rest of the season." The Mavs did not schedule the surgery last month due to wanting to see if the injury would correct itself. Even if Mashburn had the surgery last month as he wanted to he would still probably have missed the rest of the season. As you probably saw, Jason Kidd had a very nice All-Star debut. Kidd finished with 7 points on 3-4 FG, 6 rebounds, 10 assists, and 2 steals in 22 minutes. He received some nice complements from the announcers and seemed to have "wowwed" a lot of people who haven't really seen him play before. George McCloud also did nicely in the 3-point Shootout. He finished tied for 3rd in the high scoring contest. Last year 15+ points was a pretty good score. This year, besides Clifford Robinson's 11 points, 16 points was the low score in the 3 rounds. McCloud had 18 points in the first round with 8 points in the three-man tiebreaker and 17 points in the seconds round. Former Mav Tim Legler (Was) won it all, was the high scorer in each round, and became the first contestant to ever score 20+ points in each round with 23 points in the first, 22 in the seconds, and 20 in the finals. Way to go Legs! The Mavs signed journey man David Wood to a 2nd 10-day contract. This is Wood's 7th team and he became the first player to ever play for all three Texas teams. Wood is 6-9 and can play both forward positions - but more of a 4. He can hit the 3 pretty well (and you automatically cringe watching him take one despite his good percentage and you just don't think he should be doing that). He is also a good flopper. And he was brought in because Terry Davis has missed several games with a pulled groin. Hey, a plus on the injury notes: Lucious Harris has returned to action and shot very well in the 3 games since his return - 10-15 in 31 minutes total (Motta's going to have fun finding minutes behind Jackson for both Harris and Dumas). More injuries: Kidd is playing with a sore back, Popeye is still playing with sore knees, McCloud is playing with a sore shoulder, and Dumas missed a game with an injured toe. Despite the sore back, Kidd set the team and Reunion Arena record with 25 assists in the double-overtime victory against Utah. He had 22 assists in regulation. He had the first ever 20-20 assist game for the Mavs with his 20 points. Jason was also named Player of the Week in the NBA for the week ending February 4. He average 27.7 points, 10.7 rebounds, 10.7 assists, and 3.3 steals while shooting 51.7% FG as the Mavs went 2-1. I think it is about time for a little coach bashing. I've always thought that Motta was a great teacher, but I've often questioned some of his on- court performances. The most glaring problem I have with him is his treatment of the rookies. Since he has said all season long that this was not a playoff team, why hasn't he been giving the rookies more minutes? It took Lorenzo Williams getting injured for Meyer to consistently get 20 plus minutes per game (except when he gets in early foul trouble). Parks is buried in Motta's rookie dog house and won't get minutes except for when the other big men get in foul trouble such as the Utah game. Sure rookies are going to screw up, but they have to get the court time to learn and gain experience. Problem #2: His lack of using a timeout when the team is struggling. He has his set points in the game when he calls timeouts and won't use one unless absolutely forced to. The team will play 4 minutes of struggling on offense and not hustling on defense and no timeout. This team is not mature enough to get themselves out of ruts most of the time. Sure, having plenty of timeouts at the end of the game when you may need them is nice, but if the game is not going to even be close at the end they don't do you any good. Problem #3: I'm still annoyed at how he nearly blew the Utah game. Tie game. Mavs ball with a little over 6 seconds difference between the shot clock and the game clock. I called it again. The Mavs hold the ball as the shot clock winds down. Shot clock gets to 5 seconds and the Mavs run last quarter play which, as usual, results in a lousy shot. Utah grabs the rebound and calls timeout with 8.8 seconds on the clock. Why didn't they just set up a normal play and not run the clock down and get off a good shot? There was too much of a time difference to run the clock down. The Mavs had already lost one game this season pulling that exact same stunt. Fortunately (luckily) Utah missed their last shot attempt and the game went into overtime. The Mavs won 136-133 in two overtimes. I'll skip the game notes due to the fact that if I did them it would be at least another 1/2 hour of writing (and I've nearly stopped a couple of times already). I'll just put it this way: wins vs Seattle and Utah and losses to Minnesota twice and Milwaukee. It is called getting up only for the big games. Hopefully (excluding injuries) this 2nd half of the season will be reminiscent of last season's 2nd half. I'm ready to leave the first half in the past. BTW, the 3 Js have only played 66 games together for Kidd's two seasons. BTW2, the Mavs have already lost 115 player-games to injury. That is enough to rank as the 5th most lost in team history _for_the_season_. Information has been scarce, but apparently KLIF will be sponsoring a Mavs Jam Session on Saturday, February 24 at Reunion Arena from 11 to 4. Don't forget to catch the Mavs at Houston on TNT tomorrow (Tuesday) night! Quotes Radio play-by-play announcer Ted Davis: "[LAC Stanley] Roberts slipped and fell. Is there a dent in the floor?" PA announcer Kevin McCarthy, who recently had surgery on a reoccurring inner ear problem that he has had surgery on before: "Now I know why they call it the _practice_ of medicine. They don't call it the practice of basketball or the practice of broadcasting." patricia