Yesterday...When Your Team Was Your Team

Some of you are long enough in the tooth to remember when a player was drafted by the team he would likely spend all - or at least the bulk - of his career serving. Back then, you cheered for your "team," and you knew who they were. You knew their names and their numbers. You knew their strengths and their weaknesses. And you knew they were your team.

Not so anymore. It is a rare bird, the athlete who stays with the team that drafted him. It still happens, mostly with the player a team identifies as the face of its franchise. It especially still happens with such players in the NFL, but not so much in the NBA or MLB. Those entities have stronger player unions, so the carrot-dangling is more attractive, and the bidding more cutthroat. I mean, come on, if you are a truly elite baseball player, you know you are going to end up in New York, Boston, or LA eventually, right?

I realize that as I fly through my midlife crises (yes, they are plural), I am apt to suffer from some Good Ol' Days Syndrome. Nostalgia is bound to set in, and I will view the past with my perfect-fitting, rose-colored glasses. But it was better then, wasn't it? It was better when most of the players on your team stayed on your team. You weren't just cheering for laundry and locale...you had heroes.

Nowadays, if you are, oh, let's say, a Cowboys' fan, for instance, you have to hate Terrell Owens when he plays for the Niners and desecrates the Star, but then love him when he dons the Star and decimates the rest of the league. If he is playing for the enemy, his over-the-top celebrations are annoying and self-serving. But if he is scoring those TDs for the 'Boys, well, we're just having fun, right? What's wrong with a little in-yo'-face celebration, anyway, huh? Grow up! Take it like a man, ya big crybaby!

It is dizzying the way our loyalties and logic change with every new wind that blows a player from here to there or there to here. Every year, we are cheering for a new set of players, but presumably, the same "team." How do I know they are my team? Look at the color scheme and the logo.

Ah well, the good ol' days are gone forever. But, hey, the good new days have brought us the Internet and Blogging...

Hm. Now that I think about it, there might be a little irony in my using today's technology to pine for yesterday.

New York Writer Blasts Cuban.... YAWNNNNN!

The reading of the Filip Bondy article from the New York Daily News across local airwaves today may be generating a lot more heat than light. Bondy's article, titled "Cuban Is No-Rings Boss" is pretty much dead-on, but devious, and possibly destructive, nonetheless.
Bondy manages to draw a couple of Mavericks offside, namely Stackhouse and Jason Terry:
...If you talk to the players, they don't sound so thrilled with the man. Cuban has hijacked the national headlines. Sometimes it seems he is doing so at the expense of Nowitzki and his teammates. He is like George Steinbrenner, when The Boss was younger and at his Bossiest. A couple of the Mavericks worry that Cuban is coloring the perception of this team. Whenever Cuban screams about a call, the players somehow end up sounding like the chronic complainers.
"We don't want to give people the impression we're a whining team," Jerry Stackhouse says. "(Cuban) can be a distraction if you look at it that way. He's always going to be like that. He's not speaking for us. He's just like the fan in the 10th row. Some things are out of our control. Sometimes it does carry over.
We made a conscious decision as a team to lay off the refs."
Cuban will be there again tonight, fussing and screaming. Does the owner cost the Mavs a free throw or two?
"You get on somebody long enough, they're going to have a reaction," Jason Terry says.'

These aren't new revelations. Dirk had already, a good while back, suggested maybe Mark sit down and shut up. The players know the deal. In so many ways, Cuban is a great owner...among the best. He reaches into those deep pockets and spends the money necessary to put a talented, contending team on the floor. He gets emotionally attached, not just to his club, but to his players.
And, he's a flake.
Big deal! Give me a flaky, whiny, over-cheering, blame-shifting, ref-bashing, Stern-hating, national embarrassment Cuban over anything we have ever had in the Mav's owner's box in the past.
If the Mavs were cellar-dwellers no one would care what Cuban or his kids were doing. But they aren't. They are an elite team vying for a championship. So, everything is magnified. Their flaws, their quirks, as well as their obvious on-court dominance.
Look, I didn't grow up hating the Yankees because of Steinbrenner. Heck, I didn't even know who he was. I hated those damned Yankees because they were everything my Rangers never were. Namely, winners. Maybe New Yorkers hate it that the Mavs do what they do with flaky Cuban while their city-slickin' Knicks bring up the rear.
Why on the blessed earth would we in Dallas/Fort Worth allow national (read that, New York) perception to dictate how we feel about our teams or their owners? They don't live here. They don't want our teams to win. They still hold the whole damn lot of us accountable for JFK, for crying out loud. Does Cuban cost us a free throw? Give me a break! If he brings us a title, that is a small price to pay.

Where's The Love?

You may not be a MFFL (Mavs Fan For Life), but if you aren't at least a MFFN (Mavs Fan For Now), get your head checked.

We haven't seen a team this dominant in Dallas since...well, since forever. Not even the great Cowboys teams of the 70s and early 90s enjoyed this kind of regular season dominance. By going 51-5 in the last fifty-six games, your (or at least MY) Dallas Mavericks have done what no North American professional sports franchise has ever done before. Ever! They haven't witnessed anything like this in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Montreal or Pittsburg. These are the facts. They are indisputable.

But turn on Sportscenter tonight. Pick up a copy of SI. Visit any of the major Internet sports sites. And tell me, please, tell me...where's the love? If this were happening in New York or LA or Chicago or any place Mark Cuban isn't in the mix, it would be the biggest story in sports. But it isn't. It's happening right down there at the American Airlines Center. It's happening to the only Cuban, other than Castro, currently known to loathe Miami.

That same Cuban is the primary reason the country hasn't fallen in love with his high-flying, hard-working, world-beating Mavs. When you play the underdog as vociferously as Cuban and the Mavs have for so many years, you just aren't going to be anybody's favorite frontrunner. When media types and basketball fans from around the country think of the Mavericks, they think, "Yeah. Bunch o' whiners."

Remember Duane Wade taking Nowitzki to task for saying the Mavs lost last year's finals, rather than giving the credit to Wade and the Heat for storming back and closing the deal? Remember Cuban responding by saying he really enjoyed watching Wade shoot free throws? That's the language of a loser, man. Blame it on the refs. Blame it on the commish. Blame it on...somebody, anybody but me.

Cuban and his charges would do well to go to the Paul Brown school of sports communication. Brown famously said, "When you win, say nothing. When you lose, say less." Just shut up and play!

At least the little general has the right idea. Avery Johnson won't let his boys rest on their laurels. He only lauds their achievement reluctantly. He finds reason and room for improvement. He says, basically, "Just wait. None of this means anything until we've won the championship.

General Johnson is right.

The only way the Mavs will ever have the national respect they deserve is to get back to the Finals and finish what they started. Win it all and there will be a windfall.

But you don't have to wait for that to happen to jump on the bandwagon. It's already loaded and rolling. All aboard!

MFFN? Durn tootin'.

How You Like 'im Now, 'sheed?

Anybody remember Rasheed Wallace's answer to who should be the league MVP, Nash or Dirk?
He said, "Neither." He contended that the MVP should be someone who plays defense and then asserted that neither Nash nor Nowitzki do.

He was half right. Nash doesn't. Never has. But Nowitzki does...at least now he does. Is he a stopper? Everybody knows better than that. But he works on both ends of the court. And today he worked Rasheed's Pistons for 28 points while leading his Mavs to a 92-88 victory.

Who is the MVP? Nash? Maybe. You could sure argue that the Suns would be nowhere without him. Dirk? I hope so. He has played lights-out all year on the NBA's best team.

I do have an idea who it isn't.

That would be Rasheed.