Dallas Mavericks Get Championship Rings

The Dallas Mavericks personalized Championship rings are finally in.

According to ESPN, the customized player’s rings cost around $40,000 a piece, and will be given to Mavs players in a brief ceremony prior to their Wednesday night game against the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Mavs’ owner Mark Cuban paid a total of $1.4 million for the rings for the 15 players and the entire coaching staff. The design is similar to the one chosen by the 2009-10 Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks.

On one side the player’s name are engraved above the team logo with the player’s jersey number. Guard Jason Terry said he also believes the team’s postseason motto, “The Time is Now,” is engraved on the ring.

The Dallas Mavericks won the 2010-11 NBA Championship last June, beating out the Miami Heat in six games. It was the first in franchise history.

Mark Cuban to Mavs Fans - Wait for 2013

Knicks center Tyson Chandler is 1-0 with his new club after Sunday’s season-opening win against Boston. But Chandler’s former team, the defending NBA champion Dallas Mavericks, has lost its first two games, both at home by wide margins.  Dallas was down by over 30 points in each game.

The Mavs gave up early and both Miami and Denver took their foot off the gas in the fourth quarter. Dallas lost to Miami, 105-94, on Sunday, then to Denver, 115-93, on Monday.

Tyson Chandler is not surprised Dallas has gotten off to a slow start.  “Yeah, honestly, I kind of saw it coming because when you put a team in a situation where you say, ‘You’re the defending champions but we’re not necessarily trying to repeat.’ When I say that, I’m not saying they don’t have the pieces there — I obviously think very highly of those guys,” Chandler said. “I say that because they offered everybody one-year deals, so they knew nobody was going to necessarily accept that. You’re basically telling all the players in the locker room, ‘We’re playing for free agency next year,’ after the championship.

“You’ve got veteran guys in the locker room. In this time in their career, it’s tough to face that. They’re going through a little lull right now, but I’m hoping for those guys that it turns around because there’s truly good guys in that locker room.”

Thanks for the kind words Tyson but it’s going to get really ugly in Dallas this season.  The Mavs let go the only three players on the Championship team capable of playing defense Chandler, JJ Barea and DeShawn Stevenson.

Add less than two weeks training camp and two pre-season games for the new old and free agent signs and the addition of NBA cancer Vince Carter and you get exactly what you saw in the first two games, an embarrassing display of professional basketball.  But get used to it Dallas, you’ve got 64 more games of the same. 

In fairness, Mark Cuban provided a decade of exciting, high quality, NBA basketball in Dallas with annual playoff appearances.  The Mavs went from worst to first under Cuban’s ownership.  Nobody expected the Mavs to get through the first round (vs Portland) last season, and honestly, it was a miracle that they won. We shouldn’t expect them to repeat, even if the entire team returned. The combination of unselfish team play throughout the playoffs and the arrogance of the over confident Heat in the finals, resulted in the Mavs shocking the NBA and winning for the good guys. Karma!

I didn’t expect much last season and the Mavs gave me a Championship.  It can’t get any better than that. And I’m willing to give them a pass this lockout shortened season. I expect the Mavs to miss the playoffs.  But maybe they’ll surprise me two years in a row.

Yesterday on local radio, Mark Cuban said this season’s goal was to make the playoffs.  With half the teams in the NBA making the playoffs, you can’t consider that too a lofty goal for the reigning Champions of the league. Brace yourself for some real ugly basketball. 

Good teams are virtually never blown out at home, and, conversely, bad teams virtually never win blowouts on the road. So we have fairly strong information, already, that the Miami Heat and Denver Nuggets are teams with which to be reckoned.

As for the Dallas Mavericks, we can make an even stronger statement: Championship-caliber teams virtually never lose at home like this even once. They sure as heck never do it twice in a row. 

Oh well. The Rangers won back to back AL pennants and I expect them to go deep into the playoffs in 2012.  CJ Wilson ain’t Tyson Chandler. The Rangers could be better in 2012 than they were in 2010 or 2011. The Mavs won 2011 and they’re already done for 2012.

Enjoy the NFL playoffs (even though the Cowboys won’t be participating) and college basketball.  Pitchers and catchers report February 19. March Madness follows.

My Countdown

2011-12 NBA Season is Toast and the Players are Morons

It seems as though there have been numerous indications that the 2011-12 NBA season is toast.

This latest development may officially be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back.

The NBA players rejected the league’s latest offer Monday and have begun the process to disband the union. Translation: goodbye, NBA season.

According to Kurt Helin of Basketball Talk, the union has sent an official disclaimer notice to all 30 teams.

Despite the ray of hope that a potential deal was on the horizon in recent weeks, talks between the owners and players came to an abrupt halt during recent meetings.

Apparently, union president Derek Fisher and his fellow players felt that this drastic move on their behalf was necessary to prove to the league that they mean business and that they’re in this for the long haul.

“This is the best decision for the players,” Fisher said. “I want to reiterate that point, that a lot of individual players have a lot of things personally at stake in terms of their careers and where they stand. And right now they feel it’s important—we all feel it’s important to all our players, not just the ones in this room, but our entire group—that we not only try to get a deal done for today but for the body of NBA players that will come into this league over the next decade and beyond.”

It’s kind of scary how the longer this goes on, the more Fisher starts to sound like a politician. He may be a politician with a point, but a politician, nevertheless.

Neither side has really mentioned how everyone involved in this mess has lost hundreds of millions because of the games missed and the countless more that will be wiped out before play resumes. Team employees are losing money, and in some cases, jobs.

And while the NFL union took the exact same approach with their own lockout, they decertified much earlier in the process.

Just in case you are keeping score at home, Monday marked the 137th day of the lockout; the NFL lockout lasted 136 days.