Mavericks '08-'09 Schedule Released

You can find all the times and dates here to go ahead and start making your traveling arrangements.  With the price of airline tickets being so high, this is probably a good time to start mapping out which games you can conveniently arrange those business trips and leisure vacations around. 

We have 21 national TV games this year, vs the 23 we had last year.  BDL breaks down the entire league's national games even more...

20+ nationally televised games: Boston (25), Cleveland (25), Dallas (21), LA Lakers (25), Phoenix (25)

10-to-19 nationally televised games: Chicago (10), Denver (16), Detroit (14), Houston (13), New Orleans (12), Orlando (11), Portland (13), San Antonio (19), Utah (11), Washington (11)

2-to-9 nationally televised games: Golden State (8), Miami (9), Philadelphia (7), Toronto (2, one on ESPN2)

One nationally televised game: Atlanta, LA Clippers, Milwaukee, Memphis, New Jersey, Oklahoma City

Zero nationally televised game: Charlotte, Indiana, Minnesota, New York, Sacramento

and on the Mavs?...

• 21 nationally televised games for Dirk and Jason Kidd seems high. Same goes for Phoenix. They should "swap" exposure with New Orleans and Utah. (What? Utah is a fun team to watch. Seriously.)

Mark Stein gives us some of the biggest games to watch this year, highlighting a few of the Dallas games:

Oct. 30: Houston at Dallas (TNT)
The Mavericks are one of two teams (along with Charlotte) that must wait until Thursday for their opening game, giving Mavs fans more time to fret that the Rockets' acquisition of Ron Artest reduces Dallas to the third-best team in Texas.

Nov. 13: Dallas at Chicago (TNT)
Mavs owner Mark Cuban could know by this point whether he has won the race to buy the Cubs, which would make this somewhat of a home game for him and certainly spice up his relationship with Bulls chairman Jerry Reinsdorf, since Reinsdorf owns the White Sox.

Dec. 19: Dallas at New Jersey
Jason Kidd is back in Jersey as a visiting player for the first time since, well, making Jersey matter to the NBA.

Add to this list of some of the "biggest games" for Dallas the usual San Antonio, Houston, Phoenix (4 games this year, not 3 like last), and Golden State (only 3 this year)... but also add in New Orleans to that mix of rivalry games. 

Mike Fisher, Coop, and good ol' Followill discuss the Mavs back-to-backs even further...

B-2-B’s: It’s the toughest challenge in the NBA – back-to-back games – and the Mavs start the season with four of them in the first month of play alone. Most difficult of those? Let’s go with Nov. 3 at home against LeBron’s Cavs, followed 24 hours later by a trip to San Antonio.

   Dallas has just one B-2-B in December. To open March, Coop and Followill will risk running out of clean undies while observing four games in five nights, a pair of B-2-Bs that include games here against Toronto, there against Seattle, here against the Spurs and there against New Orleans. (SA and NO back-to-back will be a big Southwest Division 24-period, eh?)...

 

In total, the Mavericks have 15 back-to-backs this season.  Five of them begin on the road and conclude at home, five are home-away and five are on the road.

   Says Followill:”The 15 back-to-backs is a number comparable to recent years and still lower than many teams in the league; some teams end up playing over 20 back-to-backs. And yes, I also only spotted one of the dreaded four-in-five nights stretches.’’  One more thing about this: Coop is all over the degree of difficulty.

    “It seems to me as if the number of difficult games as the second of the B-2-Bs (they would be hard enough on their own) has increased this season,’’ he says. “At SA, home vs. Orlando, at Houston, and that’s just in the first three weeks of the season! Both of the games at Utah are second of B-2-Bs (and preceded by games against Portland). New Orleans in March, preceded by a game at SA. It looks pretty hard to me.’’

What games are you guys looking forward too the most?