Dallas signed free agent Gary Trent to a 1 year, $1 million contract on Saturday. Trent is a big enforcer type player who can play tough defense and rebound. He will play mostly small and power forward with the Mavs. He started his NBA career with Portland 3 seasons ago and was traded to Toronto during last season. He has had a couple of dubious off the court incidents, but claims that his problems are all behind him (and if they do flair up, the Mavs are only committed to him for a year). Not too much info during the Trent press conference was worth repeating (glad to have him, glad to be here, ...), but Nelson had me laughing when someone ask Trent what his thoughts were about the possibility of the Mavs making the playoffs. Before Trent could answer, Nelson popped in with: "Don't answer that. They'll kill you. They'll absolutely kill you." If you recall, Nelson said last summer that he felt the Mavs might be able to compete for the 8th spot in the West and the press dragged him over the coals for that comment. As expected, the Mavs signed Steve Nash to a 6 year, $33 million contract extension with a player opt-out clause after the 5th year. Teams are allowed to sign players in the 3rd year of the rookie contract (1st round picks) to contract extensions before March 13. The Mavs are still working with Samaki Walker's agent to try to sign him to an extension, but Nelson reports that is going slower. Nelson named Nash and Finley as team captains. The Dallas Morning News mentioned very briefly that Ace Custis is going to Greece, but I haven't heard any more details. The Mavs held an open practice last Friday night and it was a mad house. I've been to many open practices before and there has never been that many people there. It's amazing the turnout you can get when the phrase "free tickets" is added. The official report was that there were 9,200 people there - and it probably wasn't too much of an exaggeration. I arrived about 6:15 (doors opened at 6) and had to park way out in the back lot and had a 5 minute wait to get into the front doors (and those of us trying to get in the doors weren't waiting for tickets, you had to stand in a line at the ticket booths to get tickets). They were on their last box of free t-shirts when I got through the door (they gave away 5,000 shirts) and they were out of the free tickets to the Phoenix game by 6:45. The scrimmage was fun to watch. I was thrilled to be watching live basketball, even if it was a little sloppy - you can ask my mom about the grin on my face and the sparkle in my eyes. I don't put too much stock in the players' performances as training camp had just opened the day before and the team had only 2 practices before hand. And I was pleasantly surprised that it was a full scrimmage (including refs) and not just a practice with a short scrimmage at the end. The game consisted of four 8 minute quarters. The players were split into two teams: (let's see if I can remember them) the White team had Finley, Nash, Walker, Nowitzki, Davis, Anstey, and Reeves and the Blue team had Strickland, Green, Pack, Bradley, Custis, and Buckner. Surprisingly, the Blue team beat the White team by about 7 points. There is no question that the MVP of the game was Erick Strickland - he was on fire hitting almost everything and finished with 37 points. The White team pulled within 2 late in the 4th, but Strick's hot shooting pushed the lead back up towards 10. The players were running up and down the court in the first half, but the 4th quarter was much slower with the team running more set plays and using more of the shot clock (of course, the Blue team was trying to run the clock down towards the end). [Again, it was only one scrimmage after few practices and a long layoff, so I wouldn't put too much stock into my following observations of individual players.] Samaki looked great and led the Blue team with 24 points (don't quote me on the numbers). He was hustling all over the place and grabbed a large number of defensive rebounds (there weren't many offensive boards any where - I think I can count them on one hand). But he did get called for a number of fouls (as announcer Kevin McCarthy said, "Foul on Samaki Walker. That's his eight."). Nowitzki was not that impressive. He hit a couple of shots, but seemed timid out there and stayed purely on the perimeter. He did hit almost all, if not all, of his many free throw attempts. Finley was quiet in the first half with about 6 points but exploded in the second half and finished with 22 points. Nash's performance did not impress me. He was a non-factor points wise (got his 2 points very late in the game) and there weren't too many set plays in place for him to run. He did grab a couple of rebounds. [But, I've read a couple of other reports about the game that liked his performance. ] Anstey looked very good. He was running around all over the place and grabbed a number of rebounds and scored a number of points. Reeves did his job when he was out there [again, someone else said he looked disinterested, but I didn't see that] and Hubert hardly got any minutes. A.C. Green was pumped for the game and played very well. And amazingly, he hit almost all of his free throws - he was Samaki's favorite foul target. Pack looked good. He was also very enthused about the game. He's still more offensive minded for a point guard than some would like, but he's always been that way. Bradley was as frustrating as always. He looked like he hadn't work on his game much in the off-season. He couldn't grab rebounds and couldn't hit layups - he even got posterized by Samaki with a monster dunk. He got a smattering of boo's for a couple of his mis-plays. Ace Custis performed well, but it doesn't matter any more. Buckner didn't impress me at all, but I've heard that Nelson has liked him in practice and he might stick with the team a little longer (due to the shortened season, teams may be allowed to carry 14 players until 2 weeks into the season). [John Williams wasn't there.] patricia