Game 6 coming up

When I wake up in Egypt tomorrow morning, Dallas-Miami Game 6 will probably still be going. I hope to see the Mavericks clinch their first NBA Championship. Most people outside the state of Florida do too.

I remember the first year the Mavericks existed, 1980 or so. At that time I had a newspaper delivery job in the early mornings, and I remember looking into the sports section on that cold November morning when the NBA season had just started, and saw a boxscore for a Dallas team, which I didn’t realize was slated to exist that season for the first time. I’m pretty sure they had Mark Aguirre, though.

For a few years they played the drafts as brilliantly as any team had ever done, and improved steadily each season, but then seemed to plateau and even regress by late in the decade.

No, I was off by a little. Their original 1980 draft pick was Kiki Vandeweghe from UCLA, who had a reasonably good NBA career but not a great one.

In 1981 the Mavs had a great draft, taking Aguirre from DePaul #1 and Rolando Blackman from Kansas State #9, a deadly shooter.

In 1982 they blew it with Bill Garnett from Wyoming at #4, their first really bad pick. That summer I was enrolled at Lute Olson’s basketball camp in Iowa City, and still remember the Iowa players (who would hang out and talk with us kids) mocking Dallas for that pick. One of them, whom I won’t name, laughed that the ESPN highlight clip for Garnett was a layup. A layup! This player couldn’t believe it.

1983, Dale Ellis and Derek Harper. Not a bad bounceback, though both would eventually play their best basketball for other teams.

1984, Sam Perkins (solid choice) along with the forgotten Terence Stansbury from Temple. I have no memory whatosever of the existence of Stansbury, and I was a rabid basketball fan in those days.

1985, Detlef Schrempf, Bill Wennington, and Uwe Blab. Their judgment was now starting to fade. Schrempf was solid, Wennington a journeyman, and the other German, Uwe Blab (taking Europeans was considered a huge exotic risk in those days) didn’t amount to much.

1986, Roy Tarpley from Michigan. Tarpley! Tarpley at his best was incredible, the equal of almost NBA center. Substance abuse issues did him in. There was a story I heard once that police were called to his house on some false report of something or other, but smelled something funny and asked if he minded if they looked around a bit. He told them to go ahead, and they went into the kitchen and saw a bunch of cocaine spread out on the counter, and he was arrested. Not sure if that’s apocryphal or not, but it would fit Tarpley’s general cluelessness, which undercut incredible talent in his case. I loved watching Tarpley play at Michigan and even for the Mavericks.

In 1987 they don’t seem to have had a first-round pick, so I’ll stop there.

But by 1988 they had pushed the mighty Lakers to Game 7 in the West Finals. Not bad! But the next year they collapsed and missed the playoffs completely with a losing record. No memory of why that happened, but it may have been a Tarpley injury or suspension.

They missed the playoffs for 10 straight seasons and 11 out of 12, hitting rock bottom in ’92-’93 with a horrendous record of 11-71, one of the worst in history.

In fact, after pushing the Lakers to the brink in 1988, they didn’t win another playoff series until a first-round win over fading Utah in 2001. And they weren’t a serious threat again until 2003. Essentially, they lost 15 years as a franchise– a whole generation.

But more importantly, we all want LeBron to lose this year in particular. He can have next year, or the year after that.