nobody expected this.

i've written before about my affinity for teams from my hometown of dallas, texas, so allow me to diverge once again into related subjects. this one won't be as involved as the a-rod entries, i don't imagine, but we'll see i guess. anyways, there are four major teams in dallas, i followed three of them since i was a real lil kid, the stars came around when i was thirteen or fourteen i think, and i never really got into them, which i figure is mostly because they weren't around whenever i was forming my allegiances to the other three teams. there's definitely a pecking order, the rangers come first, they always have, the mavericks are a close second, and the cowboys come third, not really all that close to the other two.

so there have been times where it's been tough to be a fan, especially of the rangers and the mavericks. ironically, the cowboys have been by far the most successful. the mavericks were downright awful for a long time, like when they first started in the early 80s, by the time i picked them up they were pretty good, they made it to the conference finals in 88, losing in seven games to the vaunted los angeles lakers. the decline after that was precipitous. they got terrible in a hurry, even worse than when they first joined the league. bad owners, foolish management, stuff like that. a while later this nerd billionaire bought the team and they started to get good, really good. key to their renaissance was the emergence of a nucleus known as the "big three." the name i was never crazy about, i mean it'd be a good nickname for a guy who needed an extra pant leg up front, but not so much for a group of three basketball players, too vanilla.

anyway, out of the three guys in this lil club, michael finley, dirk nowitzki and steve nash; finley and dirk both got maxed out contracts, the only one who didn't, nash, seemed to simply get unlucky as far as time frames went, his contract just expired and because of his age and the position he plays, he wasn't gonna get a maximum deal. that was kind of a drag for a lot of people, he's a pretty big fan favorite and had more than proven his worth. i can't hardly blame him though, it seemed like he was getting pretty jerked around here lately, his name had surfaced in trade rumors, which was pretty presumptuous, since he wasn't under contract to be traded, which also meant that he could pretty much tell the mavs to go play in traffic if they wanted to sign him simply for the purposes of trading him, especially someplace he wasn't totally sold on going. despite all that though, nobody really thought he'd bolt, at least not so quickly, leaving the mavs definitely worse off in the short term which most likely won't make this next season anything to compare to some of the seasons of the mid 90s, but could make it less enjoyable than the paste three or four seasons have been.

big three. . .pant leg. . .that was a good line.

feeling: impertinent
thinking of: the dallas mavericks give you nothing but action (hehe)
music: "to have and to have not" lars fredriksen and the bastards