Robert Pack suffered a torn ligament in his right thumb during practice last Thursday and will undergo surgery February 1 to repair it. Once the surgery occurs, he will be out 6 to 8 weeks. There will not be much of the season left (if any) by the time he is ready to return to action. The Mavs are not planning on signing anyone to replace him - when Bubba Wells is ready, the team will activate him and place Pack on IR. The NBA trading deadline is February 19. Unlike last year, the Mavs probably won't make any moves. There is some talk about trading Dennis Scott, but I doubt that will occur as he is happy here and is one of the team leaders and Nelson likes him (despite the reduced minutes he has received in the past few games). No one is showing any interest in the players the Mavs would be interested in trading - Pack and Khalid Reeves. After two years I finally got the real story of what happened between Jason Kidd and Jim Jackson. If you'll recall, during Kidd's rookie year Kidd and Jackson were best buddies - they even visited each other during the summer following Kidd's rookie year. During Kidd's sophomore year, stories started coming out that the two couldn't stand each other. There were rumors that the problem involved a girl and then the Toni Braxton story took center stage. No one could say for sure what really happened [the Braxton story never sounded legit to me]. The rift between the two players escalated and Kidd gave an "ultimatum" during the summer of 1996 that either he or Jackson had to be traded (he later backed down from that stance) and the end result was the blowing up of the team that occurred during the 96-97 season. Here the story of what happened between Kidd and Jackson. Jason Kidd had a steady girlfriend (in fact he was engaged to her at one point, but I don't know where in context of this story). During a road trip Kidd got a different girl pregnant. Move up to the Mavs' Christmas party. Kidd was there with his steady girlfriend and Jackson was there with his girlfriend. Kidd, having had several drinks, was talking with Jackson's girlfriend and made some not so innocent comments to her that Jackson took as Kidd hitting on his girl. Jackson did not like this. So Jackson went to Kidd's girlfriend and asked her what the situation was with the pregnant girl. Kidd's girlfriend, of course, did not know what he was talking about and confronted Kidd with the story. Thus the two no longer got a long. Adding fuel to the fire was that Jackson told the Mavs management about the pregnancy in asking if they had the PR prepared for a possible paternity suit [something the Mavs did need to know about, but Jackson's motives for sharing the information were questionable]. Word of this got back to the players. Jackson's tattle-telling really bothered some of the other players, especially Mashburn. The games: San Antonio 81, Dallas 75 - at San Antonio January 23 The Mavs started the game strong, but the Spurs quickly answered as no other Mavs besides Bradley showed up offensively - Bradley had 8 of the Mavs' first 10 points and 8 of the 13 points in the quarter. The Spurs built up double digit leads in the 2nd and 3rd quarters, but were never able to make it a blowout as Dallas kept hanging in there. The Mavs did make it exciting as they pulled within 3 with 5 minutes left in the game. The Spurs built up their lead to 8 with 3 minutes left, but the Mavs again came back. The Mavs got within 3 points with a minutes left. A Finley steal resulted in a Strickland miss and that was the game. Duncan hit 3 free throws for the final margin. Charlotte 94, Dallas 92 - at Dallas January 24 Hubert Davis and Dennis Scott played limited minutes due to food poisoning. Dallas went up 8-2 and I knew we were in trouble (we were also up 8-2 vs San Antonio). The Mavs played a solid first half and led 56-48 at the half and out-shoot the Hornets 54.8% FG to 38.3% FG. Then, as usual, came the 3rd quarter. The halftime break succeeded in cooling the team off and they shot a woeful 6-24 in the 3rd quarter. Charlotte out-scored Dallas 27 to 12 in the 3rd and led 75-68. The Hornets pushed their lead up to 90-78 with 5:30 left in the game before the Mavs tried to rally back by scoring the next 9 points. The Mavs managed to pull within 2 points three times, but Charlotte answered the first two times and did not have to answer the final one as neither team scored in the last minute (including 2 missed free throws by Matt Geiger). Finley played all 48 minutes for the 5th time this season. Jim Jackson played 2 48 minute games in 94-95 and George McCloud played 3 48 minute games in 95-96 and no other Mavs player played more than 1 48 minute game in a season. Dallas 84, Cleveland 77 OT - at Dallas January 27 The bad news: it was an ugly, ugly game. The good news: we actually won! There were 41 combined turnovers and 21 steals. Some of the low lights: Mavs could not snag the rebound as Cleveland got 7 offensive rebounds before scoring to tie the game at 75-75 (Dallas actually had 2 blocks during that possession as well - but no Mav could not get both hands on the ball). "Not a basketball brain among them" as Dallas had a 10-second half court violation with 30 seconds left and the game tied - not due to a press, just slowly bring the ball up. Cleveland missed with 5 seconds left with the game tied and Samaki nabbed the rebound. Do they call timeout? Nope, despite both Don and Donnie Nelson half on the court screaming for a timeout, the Mavs push the ball up the court and Finley misses a 3 at the buzzer. Dallas shot 34.9% FG and Cleveland shot 38.9% FG. The highlight: Micheal Finley. Only one other Mav reached double figures (Hubert Davis with 10 points). Finley had a career high 39 points and also had 10 rebounds. When the Mavs needed a shot (except for the one at the end of regulation), Finley would provide it. Finley scored 10 consecutive points for Dallas in the 4th quarter and scored 7 of the 9 Dallas points in overtime. One thing I watch during the game is the rebounding difference. At one point during the 3rd quarter Cleveland had 13 more rebounds than Dallas. The Mavs did a much better job on the boards the rest of the game (especially when you consider that Cleveland got 7 boards on 1 possession) as the Mavs were only out-rebounded 51-48 for the game. An advantage the Mavs clearly had as at the free throw line. Cleveland shot 4-5 FT in the 1st quarter (Dallas shot 5-5), and did not attempt a single free throw in the 2nd and 3rd quarters, and shot 2-3 FT in the 4th. Dallas shot 24-27 FT for the game. A lot of the free throw differential was due to Cleveland going away from pounding the ball inside and that Shawn Kemp got into foul trouble after the 1st quarter. Also of note was that Cleveland's 2 points in overtime was a Mavs record low for an opponent. On the lighter side from the game: Tony Dumas stepped on the court wearing #38 with no name on it (his jersey number is 27). My thought was that he must of thought he wasn't going to play (he's only played in 6 games) so he didn't bring his jersey. The truth was that he lost it. Why did that not surprise me? patricia