Saturday team doctor T.O. Souryal extended Jamal Mashburn's rest period
for his sore knee for 10 more days.  If his knee does not improved by that
time, they may opt for arthroscopic surgery to scrape the area on the bone
that is causing the irritation.  If Mash has the surgery, he would be out
at least a month.  The Mavs are considering bringing in a player while
Mashburn is out.  Reggie Slater is the only name I've heard mentioned so
far.

Also on the signing side, the Mavs have opted to remain over the salary
cap, despite having the salary sum under the cap.  This is so that Doug
Smith's $1,950,000 salary slot (which I had forgotten all about) remains 
available for the team to use.  It won't do the team any good for the free 
agent race this summer as the slot disappears July 1, the same day the 
free agents become free agents, but it could be useful for trade purposes 
(and I don't think there is a $2 million free agent currently out there).

Well, besides the Phoenix and Seattle games, the Mavs have been playing
lousy, lousy, lousy.  They've looked bad and shot worse.  For the 9 losses
in December (which means all the games except for Seattle and Atlanta) the
Mavs have shot 41.7% FG while allowing the opponent to shot 51.3% FG.  In
the losses, the opponents out-scored us 107.0 to 96.9.  Again in the
losses [since that is what I went to the trouble of computing], only Terry
Davis (16-21) and Lucious Harris (25-49) shot over 50% FG.  Lorenzo 
Williams shot 48% (12-25) and everyone else was under 45% FG.  Pretty hard
to win games when nobody is hitting.  I have my own little theory for the
team's problems thus far: the lack of the summer mini camps.  The camps
were key in last season's team geling so quickly.  Jackson probably would
have benefited the most from the camp since he hadn't played since early
March.  By the time training camp finally started, he hadn't played in
over 6 months.  Also, a lot of players did nothing on the court over the
summer - due to the lockout any basketball injuries were not covered by
insurance and a lot of agents advised their players to stay away from the
court.  On a brighter side, I have seen some flashes of the old Jackson so
maybe he will shortly return to old form.  He has been taking it more to
the hole in his old form and has hit several shots in rhythm.  He still
struggles a lot, though, but he's too much of a good guy to slump forever.
The other positives are Tony Dumas' continued improvement, George
McCloud's raining 3s, and Parks' 15 points and 8 rebounds game in the
Minnesota game.  It looks like Motta is trying to give the rooks more
minutes (we'll see how long it lasts).  McCloud's 10-12 3-pointers in the 
Sea-Dal OT game tied the NBA record for 3s in game and he also set the NBA
record for 3s in a half.   McCloud has performed well starting for the
injured Mashburn averaging 24.2 points (including 33-55 3-pointers) and 
4.8 rebounds in 6 games. 

I give credit for the Seattle win to the Mavericks' Christmas party that
was the night before.  It seemed to have relaxed the team and made them
feel good about themselves.  Carter gave each player a framed Mavs jersey
with the player's name and number and told them how special he thought
they all were (I was told that this went over really well).  The highlight
of the party was the traditional rookie dress up and singing of a carol.
Meyer and Parks were candy canes and it was hilarious when halfway through
Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, Meyer (who had a guitar) and Parks started
jamming.  They showed highlights of this during the halftime of one of the 
road games.

Kidd's injury in the Phoenix game was the scariest thing I have seen in a
while.  If you saw it, you know what I'm talking about.  It was an
exciting game up to that point (and extremely similar to last year's
Pho-Dal game), but I can honestly say that I did not care at all about the
game when he slipped [stupid hockey] and went down hard and stayed down.  
He had to be carried from the court on a stretcher.  I was greatly releaved
to hear 1/2 hour later that it was no where near as bad as it looked and
only caused Jason to miss one game.  It wasn't until they were carrying him 
from the court after about 3 minutes that I realised that it was Phoenix's 
ball out of bounds with the Suns up by 1 with about 3 seconds left.

First, for a change, a little bit of ref praising.  I felt the refs in the
Phoenix game did a very good job.  Most of their calls were accurate
(missed a couple, of course) and they called the game pretty consistently 
and fairly.  So, kudos to Jack Nies, Ron Olesiak, and Leroy Richardson.  
And, of course, the bashing.  Man did Sean Corbin, Dan Crawford, and Joe
DeRosa let Chicago get away with a lot.  Two offensives by Jordan called
as blocking, blatant illegal defenses not called - in fact no illegal D
called (3 Bulls on the baseline in the paint not on the ball, 3 Mavs
around the 3-point arc, excuse me?), and Rodman was allowed to hold and
shove as much as he wanted.  Through 3 1/2 quarters, the Mavs attempted
only 4 free throws while Chicago shot 29.  Motta finally got his Ts and 
tossed halfway through the 4th.  The refs tried to make the stats look a
little better by calling 7 fouls and giving the Mavs 7 free throws after
Motta's ejection, but 10-11 FT to 28-31 FT still looks pretty bad.  It
probably wouldn't have made any difference in the the game, especially
with Kidd out, but it was very frustrating to watch.

Dick Motta needs one more win (and has for 2 weeks) to become only the 3rd
coach in league history to have 900 wins.  Lenny Wilkens (980 and
counting) and Red Auerbach (938) are the other two.

Dick Motta's father past away on Dec. 14 and he missed the Dec. 15 game vs
San Antonio and the Dec. 16 game vs Phoenix.  Kip Motta was there for both
games.  And a big boo to ref Tommie Wood (and I hope he got in trouble
with the league for it [the league doesn't announce when refs are
punished]) who hit Kip with a T and _then_ got in Kip's face and the two
were yelling at each other.  Kip went ballistic and had to be restrained.
After the other ref, Dick Bavetta, blew his whistle several times, Wood
finally returned to the court.  Motta declined to comment on the incident.

Arena plans: finally some news on the possible new arena.  Apparently the
holdup for the past 6 months has been the Dallas Stars' (hockey) financial
instability.  The Stars were sold a few weeks ago and the new owner is
ready and willing to help finance a new arena.  The Stars, Mavs, and city
of Dallas have set a meeting on January 4 to discuss the plans.  Several
Mavs representatives toured Chicago's United Center.  The Mavs and Stars
like the 50-50 revenue share set up between the Bulls and Chicago
Blackhawks (hockey) who built the arena with their own funds.  The Mavs
and Stars are considering a similar plan.  The site for the arena is still
very much up in the air.  Mavs owner Donald Carter would like to keep the
arena in the downtown area.  The three main sites in downtown being
considered are next to Reunion (which would mean that Reunion would have
to be torn down), near West End, and near Farmers Market.

Jason Kidd, who was assigned to guard Reggie Miller for a bit after Jim 
Jackson allowed Miller to get several layups early in the Ind-Dal game: 
"Reggie asked me what I was doing.  I said, 'I'm chasing you.'"

Hopefully the struggling will finally come to an end.  Here's hoping for a
good game in a half hour.  If not, there's always Vancouver on Thursday
(but then again, we lost in our home-away-from-home (Minnesota) on 
Saturday for the first time in 6 games).


patricia