For those of you with access to WGN, you can watch the Mavs
live on TV tomorrow night!  (Yaaaaah!)  Saturday's game vs
Chicago will be televised on WGN starting at 7:30 pm CT.

The basketball hour with GM Norm Sonju is now on Wednesdays
at 6:00 pm on 570 AM (Dallas).  [At least it was last week.]

There is more different on the court besides the shorter 3-point
line.  The lane is now blue instead of green.

The All-Star ballots are out.  Let's see if Derek Harper can
finally lose the title of best player never to have played in
an all-star game.  He now has two cities voting for him.  Jim
Jackson, Jason Kidd, and Jamal Mashburn are the Mavs on the
ballot.  My write in candiate for this year is Popeye Jones!
[Yes, I'm one of those aweful people who enjoy picking  
players I like instead of the most deserving (though, with
the East, I tend to do deserving).]

One thing that I forgot to mention from Saturday's game:
I saw all the warning signs and I started going "No, please,
no!"  I noticed when I arrived that a pipe in the ceiling was
emitting smoke.  It took about 1/2 an hour for it to sink in what
that probably meant (I got there _really_ early).  When the
players returned to the locker rooms after the pre-warmup, half
the arena lights were turned off.  I started to get really worried.
So they introduced the lineup for New Jersey and then came the
dreaded words: "Ladies and Gentlemen, would you please take your
seats."  And they turned off all the lights for the new laser
introduction.  Normally I hate artificial flavoring (and I was
dreading this one), but I actually enjoyed it.  It got the crowd
really pumped up and ready for the game.  At about 5 minutes, it
was far too long, but that was probably due to the special
welcome to the '94-'95 season and introducing all of the Mavs,
not just the starters.  They also didn't rip-off the Bulls music
(like other arenas have), so that eliminated another one of my
fears.  And NO fireworks (Yeah!).  Sonju said that they have a
couple of different introductions that they are going to use
throughout the season.  At least we still don't have a mascot and
the Mavericks Dancers don't sit along the baseline to stand up an
do jumping jacks whenever the Mavs score.


patricia