Notes from the Dallas Morning News and comments from me.


3/22 Former Mav Mark Aguirre visited the team during Monday's
(March 21) practice.  Aguirre spent several minutes joking 
with former coach and current team advisor Dick Motta and
owner Donald Carter about the old days.
Before leaving, Quinn Buckner told Mark that he was "welcome
to come around any time.  You're a Maverick.  You'll always be
a Maverick."

3/23 As expected, Randy White was placed on IR (official
excuse: right knee still bothering him).  It is safe to say
that Randy is bitter about the situation.  "Playing in the
CBA would be better than this, this treatment I'm getting
now."  It is highly unlikely that Randy will be reactivated
before the season ends.  Thus ends his career as a Maverick.

3/23 And Sean Rooks was reactivated.  He has been playing well 
and Buckner has been increasing his minutes.  Sean was 
concerned that a repeat of what happened earlier in the season 
was going to occur when he was reactivated.  When he came off 
IR in December, Buckner only played him limited minutes and 
Sean had to "prove" his value to the new coaching staff.  
Fortunately, Buckner has been playing Rooks and hopefully he 
will be starting him soon.

Something that I didn't know: Jim Jackson was elected as
vice president of the Players Association during the meeting
over All-Star break.  Nice to see Jim take an active role
in a league position.  [Note, there are probably several VPs
of the association.]

In a related note, Mark Eaton (Utah) may represent the
Mavs at the April 7th negotiations between the NBA and the
Players Association.  Neither Jim Jackson or Fat Lever can
participate in the opening talks as the Mavs have a game in
Utah April 7.  I'm still confused as to why they would send
Eaton to represent the Mavs.  But nothing productive is
expected to come from that meeting as it is the first one
of _many_ more in designing a new collective bargaining
agreement.

The Tim Legler Fan Club is up and running.  The club was
started December 28 and reports that membership is "well into
double figures."
Says Legs, "The few and the proud, I like to call them.  I
think it's at least in double-figures now."

3/25 The Mavs have _finally_ joined the ranks of teams with
their own team plane.  The team actually had a plane in the
early days, but sold it to the Pistons.  Donald Carter 
reported spent $17 million on the new plane.  (It cost $23
million for the Mavs to join the NBA.)  The plane is painted
green and white and has the Mavs logo on the side.  It has
26 seats in the forward cabin, 8 in the middle section (for
the coaches - with 2 TV and VCRs), and 16 in the back for the
players.  In the players' section, the distance between the
seats is 50 inches (10 more than normal 1st class).  Besides
making flying more comfortable for the players, the plane 
should cut down in travel time.

3/26 Jim Jackson's 10 turnovers during the 99-94 loss to 
Phoenix on March 25 tied the franchise record.  Mark 
Aguirre fumbled the ball away 10 times twice, in 1983 and 
1984, and Jim Spanarkel committed 10 in 1980.

3/26 After the Phoenix game (a 5 point loss) Charles
Barkley (Phoenix) came into the Mavs locker room.  Buckner
teased him, "You should be ashamed of yourself, letting us
play you so close."

3/27 Jackson's 10 turnovers also gave him the team record
for turnovers in a season (and counting).  Mark Aguirre held 
the previous record during the 1983-84 season.  

Mavs trainer Doug Atkinson has been asked to give 3 lectures
after the season is over concerning the team's use of Emu
oil to heal aches and scrapes.

3/30 After the 117-92 trouncing by the San Antonio Spurs, 
a lot of criticism was directed at the team, including some
from the players themselves.
Tim Legler: "We couldn't beat ... <pause> us.  We couldn't
even beat us.  I was trying to think of somebody bad, and I
couldn't think of anybody else.  Us."

4/1 He's back.  The Mavs signed Morlon Wiley last Thursday.
And it wasn't no wimpy 10-day contract.  They signed him for
the rest of the season.  Wiley, a pure point guard, became 
the first player in team history to play for the Mavs on 
three separate occasions.  He was the Mavs 2nd round draft
pick in 1988 (we lost him in the expansion draft - what do
ya mean someone didn't want Jim Farmer or Uwe Blab instead?) 
and he played 33 games for the Mavs last season.  Jim Jackson
is happy Wiley is back.  
Jackson: "I was happy to see him back.  I wish he was with us 
earlier, but that's besides the point now.  It's good for me 
because me and Morlon work well together."
And hopefully his presence will mean that Buckner will cut 
down on Fat Lever's playing time, but more likely he will 
(and did) cut into Lucious Harris' time.  Lucious DNP-CD in 
the Cleveland game Saturday night, Wiley played 23 minutes, 
and Lever played 25 minutes.

To make room for Wiley, Greg Dreiling was placed on IR 
(tendinitis in the right knee, official reason).  Barring 
injuries to other players, don't expect to see either Dreiling 
or Randy White to return from IR (or to play again for the 
Mavs, for that matter).  Placing Dreiling on IR seems to be a 
vote of confidence in Sean Rooks and Lorenzo Williams - the 
two players who get all the center minutes.  This is also the 
first time that the Mavs have really used IR to store players.
(They've been pretty clean in the past about using it only for 
legitimate injuries.)

Doug Smith has been playing very well lately.  He has been
scoring and rebounding very well for the past 10 games, but
is still limited due to foul trouble - a lot of which is
due to his reputation.  His confidence level seems to be up
and hopefully he will keep it.  If he retains this new found
consistency into next season, I'll be very happy and might
even start to believe in him.   

The Mavs are starting their push for a larger arena.  Due to
the design of Reunion Arena, it can not be significantly 
expanded (they did that study a few years ago).  The City of
Dallas, which owns Reunion Arena, has been discussing the 
need for a larger facility, but not all that seriously.  One
point that was mentioned was that the NCAA now requires the
Final Four (semi-finals and championship) be held in a 
facility that seats at least 20,000.  Reunion Arena seats
17,564 (or something like that, they expanded a few years
ago from 17,007) for basketball.  In what I see as an attempt
to get Dallas to seriously consider building a new facility
(politics in motion), Mavericks owner Donald Carter is helping
to finance a feasibility study for a $100 million sports arena
seating 20,000 in Lewisville.  The City of Lewisville and 
Denton County are also funding the $30,000 study.  The study 
to assess the financial feasibilty of building a sports 
complex next to the Vista Ridge Mall (off of I-35 just north
of the Dallas county line) should be completed in about a
month.  The Mavs do have 7 years left on their lease with
Reunion Arena, but have been very unhappy this year with 
numerous problems caused by having to share the arena with
the Dallas Stars hockey team.  (Scheduling, ice under the
court, change of seat colors [I hate that darker green - it
looks awful with the brighter green that's on the team logo],
advertisers - Mavs had a beer exclusive agreement with Anheiswer
Busch and the Stars had an agreement with another company to 
which they wanted to sell advertisement space in the arena, ...)
Of course, the Mavs officials mentioned all of those problems
when discussing the feasibility study with the reporter.  (Well,
except for the seat colors, that's my pet peeve.)  The Dallas
Stars are not part of the study and were not even contacted
regarding the study (Lewisville can play politics too).  And 
to keep the pressure on, GM Norm Sonju will travel to Oakland 
and Portland to meet with officials of those teams, who are
planning new arenas.  How quickly times change.  When Reunion
Arena was built 14 years ago, it was one of the larger 
basketball arenas in the country.

Apparently rumor monger Peter Vescey has been floating around
the idea that Dick Motta will replace Quinn Buckner as coach
after the season ends.  Wrong.  Motta doesn't want to coach.  
He will probably have some say in Buckner's replacement, though. 
I still think that Motta will end up in some sort of team 
management position.  Also look for Motta to have some 
influence on who the team drafts.  Don Carter has said that
he (Carter) will have some say in who the team drafts, after
the first pick which he calls a probable no-brainer.  And
Carter just loves to get Motta's opinions.


patricia