Well, I lot of things have happened since I last wrote a Mavs News report December 5. This is my attempt to catch up (the real world has been keeping me pretty busy). [And I _will_ get this finished tonight.] Robert Pack was activated December 16 and Erick Strickland was placed on IR with a sprained right ankle. The ankle had been bothering Strick since the summer and he was (forced) to rest it by being placed on IR. The Mavs signed Eric Riley and released Kevin Ollie December 17. Ollie had shown a lot of promise, especially on the defensive end, but was hit by the Mavs' need for a big man. Unfortunately he has not been picked up by another NBA team and is currently playing in the CBA. Riley, though not playing lately, has been a pleasant surprise. His conditioning was off, but he would come in for a few minutes and bang some players around and get some rebounds. He survived the guaranteed contract date January 10 and may stick with the team for the rest of the season. Look for him to get a couple of minutes of playing time when the Mavs play an opponent with a big front court and/or Walker/Green/Bradley (2 of 3 or all 3) get into foul trouble. Kurt Thomas decided in December that he will not undergo surgery on his fractured right ankle - he's letting it heal naturally. Samaki Walker split the webbing between the index and middle fingers of his right hand during practice on December 22. The cut required stitches and he wore a protective glove for several games. Unfortunately, it affected his game. In the four games before the injury, Samaki averaged 15.8 points including 27-37 FG and 9.8 rebounds. The 5 games after the injury, he averaged 4.8 points and 4.8 rebounds. In January, he has been great! (more on that later) After missing 14 games, Shawn Bradley returned to action December 29. He performed well in the first two games, was up and down in the next several games, and has struggled in the past 4 games. The Mavs and Don Nelson reached a contract agreement December 30. Nelson is coaching this season under his GM contract. The new contract contains two years for coaching/GM and then three years of GM. Thus, Nelson is contracted to coach through the 1999-2000 season and GM through 2002-03. The contract also has a 7th GM option year for the Mavs. The contract is valued at about $15 million. He will earn about $8.8 million for each of the next two seasons as coach/GM. With the announcement of the agreement, Nelson said that he plans on turning over the coaching reigns to another coach after the 2000 season. We didn't have long to speculate over who that coach would be. Dallas activated Erick Strickland and placed Chris Anstey on IR with a "sprained left ankle" January 2. Strickland continued to struggle mightily until the Seattle game last night (more on that later). Anstey's "injury" was purely to create roster room to activate Strickland. The Mavs again played with IR January 17 when they activated Anstey and placed Bubba Wells on IR with a sprained right big toe. A mere three days after announcing that he wished to turn over the coaching reigns after the 2000 season, Don Nelson hired his son Donn Nelson (here after referred to as Donnie) as director of scouting. That the hiring occurred so quickly was the only surprise. When Don Nelson said that he would like to bring a good, young coach in and have him serve as Don's assistant before becoming head coach, speculation immediately focused on Donnie. The timing was a surprise as Phoenix signed Donnie to a 5 year assistant coaching extension this summer and turned down Don's request to formally talk with his son last spring. Donnie has been an assistant coach for Phoenix for the past 3 seasons and was his father's assistant in Golden State for the 9 seasons prior to that. Don initially announced that Donnie would be the director of scouting for the rest of the season and would become his head assistant at the start of next season and then take over as head coach in 2000-01. The future coaching declaration apparently surprised Donnie as he kept asking reporters if his father really said that. Donnie turned around and offered his father a surprise a few days later. While doing a TV interview with his father, Donnie announced that if he was going to be in Dallas anyways, he might as well be an assistant coach now. Don took the comment in stride and said okay. [My dad was watching the interview and said it was hilarious.] Thus, Donn Nelson is an assistant coach. In addition to the hiring of Donnie, the Mavs named Mark Aguirre as a scout and promoted scout Scott Roth (recently hired himself) to director of scouting. Ron Ekker was moved from his position of director of scouting to assistant coach when Jim Cleamons was fired. Aguirre has been working with the team providing instruction. Shawn Bradley suffered a broken nose early in the 1st quarter of the Denver game January 6. He did return to the game in the 2nd quarter and has not missed any time due to the injury. Robert Pack has DNP-CD in 5 of the last 7 games. He had been struggling mightily this season and found his way into Don Nelson's doghouse. After four years of talks, Dallas finally passed the last hurdle to getting a new arena. The citizens of Dallas approved an increase in hotel and car rental taxes to help finance a new arena for the Mavericks and Dallas Stars (hockey). The vote passed by 50.66% (only 1,642 votes). Construction should start sometime later this year and is scheduled to be completed in late 2000 or early 2001. Hubert Davis has been selected to compete in the 3-point Shootout for All-Star Saturday (February 7). Hubert has competed before placing 6th in the 1996 competition. For this season, Hubert is shooting 42.4% (42-99) - but has struggled lately shooting 1-10 over last 5 games - but one of his shots last night that was credited as a 2 looked like a 3 to me. Before the last 5 games, he was shooting 46.1% 3-pointers. And to the one shining point of light this season - Samaki Walker has emerged! In the last 9 games Samaki has averaged 13.3 points including 49.2% FG and 10.2 rebounds. If you take out his foul plagued and not as good performances vs Seattle (8 points and 9 rebounds) and at Atlanta (6 points and 7 rebounds), Samaki has averaged 18.9 points including 50.4% FG and 10.9 rebounds in 7 of the last 9 games. In watching his play on the court, his improvement is incredible. He's more aggressive for the boards (but he needs to working on using the baseline to get position on the offensive boards - if a defender is in front of him when the shoot goes up, he'll often simply turn and head down the court instead of trying to work his way inside). One of the biggest keys to his improvement is his confidence. And another is his patience - he doesn't settle for the quick shot, he waits for the smart shot. Samaki gives some credit to his improvement to the teachings of Kurt Thomas and Mark Aguirre. He says that Aguirre has taught him some of the little tricks. If he keeps improving like he has, watch out world! Now if he can only start hitting his free throws. As for the games, it's probably a good thing I didn't force myself to sit down and write this until after last night's game as I would have ripped into the team royally. The good news: the Seattle game was great! The most surprising thing to me (I actually had a weird feeling all day that they would win) was that it was the guards that won the game. I was expecting strong performances from Bradley (because Seattle is does not have a strong center) and Walker (because of his recent play). I got neither. Michael Finley put on his semi-usual strong performance. He had a national audience and shone for them. Some of the shoots he hit were incredible. But, without a doubt, the star of the game was Erick Strickland. For the first time this season, the Strick that we fell in love with last season reappeared. Strick was hitting the clutch shoots and playing great defense on Gary Payton and even Detlef Schrempf. Don't let Payton's final numbers of 20 points fool year. Payton did not have a good game - and it was largely due to Strickland. Payton only had 10 points in the first 3 quarters and 4 of his points came in the last 30 seconds of the game when the Mavs were more concerned about the 3-point shot and not fouling. Strick would get switched to defend Schrempf on picks Seattle ran and Strick would do a great job of fighting Schrempf for position and denying him the pass. Schrempf did get a couple of easy baskets due to the switched defense, but they did not pass the ball to Schrempf several times due to Strick's defense. The unsung hero of the game is A.C. Green. His scoring numbers don't look good (3 points on 1-6 FG and 1-4 FT), but his defense was excellent and he supplied 7 rebounds and 7 assists. It was a very entertaining game (noticing the halftime score of 65-54 I pointed out that the Mavs scored 62 points in a game this season). The bad news: all the rest of the games. Augh and double augh. First you have the Mavs blowing a 19 points lead with 9:20 left in the 3rd quarter vs Indiana (and a 9 point lead with 3 minutes left in the game) and then they follow it up 3 games later by blowing a 24 points lead with 5:53 left in the 3rd quarter vs Minnesota (and give Stephon Marbury full credit [okay, and the Mavs playing not to lose instead of the way they had been playing for 3 quarters] for Minnesota's comeback). And those were the good games. The rest of the games they were not even in. It's hard to say exactly what it wrong with this team. One is their terrible shooting. They have only broke 50% FG twice this season - vs Denver and Seattle (both wins). Another (that really drives me crazy) is their lack of aggressiveness going after the rebounds. They stand around or head down the court. You go after rebounds, not wait for them to fall in your hands. Not playing with a point guard has hurt the team. They need a player in there who can make the smart basketball decision (like Strickland finally did in the Seattle game). I can't tell you how many times I've watched the Mavs do something stupid, like not fouling to stop the clock immediately, and screamed, "There's not a basketball brain among them!!!!" It has been very frustrating. They have pieces that should amount to a better record than they have. Unfortunately the some pieces have great individual games and others have poor individual games at the same time instead of clicking as a team and helping out when others are struggling. Or they all suck together. Yeah, I have a little frustration vent up that even the great Seattle game didn't get rid of. Hopefully we'll see more games like the Seattle game (with better front court play). patricia