It's Tomorrow's Bedtime There . . . I Think

- They're here! They're here! Four years of sport flirting, foreplay, and heavy petting has led up to this -- the Olympics. Meant to be a celebration of brotherhood through competition, these days they're more like a sort of organic billboard for whoever's got The Cash. Whatever; my favorite player's there, Team USA looks ready to paddle tushies, and the VCR had damn well better work.

- It's official, yo. The 2008-2009 schedule for our Dallas Mavericks was announced day before yesterday. Opener -- which begs the question who came up with these matchups -- is against the Rockets on October 30. I am so there. Mr. Ming, I respect you, but your ass is going down.

- Our draft pick, Shan Foster, signed a contract to play for a year in Europe. I'll admit I'm a little disappointed we're not going to see him in action right away, but all things considered it seems a smart move. The Mavs still have his NBA rights, and if he distinguishes himself he's got a decent shot at making the team sometime in the next couple years.

- And because I can't go more than a day without an update on my guy, Dirk's been selected as Germany's flagbearer for the Olympic opening ceremony. For that? Joyous. For the haircut? Not so much. That does it; no one's allowed near Dirk with clippers, ever. Gentlemen, the Roman skullcap doesn't look good on anybody.

I'm doing this from memory, so bear with me. This is from Magic Memories on Ice, two-time Olympic gold medalist (men's singles) Dick Button:

"The Olympics are sometimes critizied for being overblown in proportion to an athlete's overall career. And that may be. But the test of the Olympics is for man's ability to call upon himself for the best he has, at the time he has to have it."
-BJ

We're Having Fun Now

Ahhh . . . that's better.

It's interesting -- one could take the Mavs' Summer League so far as an example of team cohesion. In the course of three games we go from an almighty ass-whuppin to a game worthy of some chest-beating. Shan (you pronounce that Shane, Misters Maggot-Brained Announcers) Foster and Reyshawn Terry both looked salty. The team spent a lot less time in Offensive Half Court Hell; defensively they were a wall.

I don't think it was an even matchup, to be completely fair. This was the Timberwolves' first Summer League game, and they had a lot of the same problems as the Mavs did at their inauspicious debut.

I hadn't taken that into consideration. A lot of these guys are first-year players, or they've been overseas (I can't even imagine playing a sport at any pro level while living in another country). And they're trying to gell as a team given about a week's worth of practise, when they know full damn well they're probably going nowhere -- back to the D-League, back to Europe, back to where-ever. And considering that turning pro voids your college eligibility . . .

I'm not hunting up excuses. I'm trying to understand how this all works.

Anywho, the rest of Summer League should be interesting. I think I understand what Coach was saying when he said he was looking for shooters -- in major game situations the opposing defensive strategy seems to be Pile People On Dirk with double- and triple-teams. Why? Because it works. I'm going to need to research this a bit more, but it squares with what I've been reading; Dirk's a perimiter player, and his instinct when double-teamed is to fall back with a jump shot. When he's well defended, those shots don't sink.

The downside to multiple defenders on one guy, of course, is it leaves the rest of the offensive team underdefended. What I think the Org is aiming for is a scenario where the Bad Guys double up on Dirk, Dirk passes out to Jason Kidd, Kidd finds the underdefended player and passes to them for a jump shot or a layup. This Plan B depends on two things; Jason Kidd's offensive playmaking abilities and a reliable scorer on the floor.

As usual, if I'm full of shit, tell me so I can find out you're right and learn something. (Please don't take any name-calling personally. I hate being wrong.)

One more thing about Summer League; at about the nine minute mark in the second quarter there was an offensive rebound I wish the announcers would've paid attention to. T-wolves sent up a jump shot, it was waaaay short, and one of the Mavs leapt and caught it mid-air.

Here's my problem; since the throw was a shot and not a pass, and since the ball was going down, would that rebound actually be a goaltending violation? Once a shot's on the downward arc, hands off. Or is it since the shot was clearly short it didn't count as a shot? Was that a no-call on the part of the refs? The zebras are in training too, in Summer League.
-BJ