Link here.

For those who can't be bothered to read, it's a "joint venture" between the Cowboys and the Mavericks to host the All-Star Game at the New Cowboys Stadium

I guess it's an interesting, not confirmed yet though: they said they'll announce it during the season opener.

We had a recent featured poll relating to this, so talk has been around for a while.

Personally, I would've liked to see one at the AAC rather than a football stadium though. I wonder how much weight Jerry Jones threw around. I love the atmosphere at the AAC and I always wanted to see how Dallas and Cuban would treat an All-Star Game. Arlington better make this good.

Basically, I hate to reopen old wounds, but seems to me that the Mavs have suffered year after year of bad postseason defeats. Apart from those losses in that Finals collapse, anybody willing to share their opinions on the most painful Dallas playoffs defeats. I'll give reasons for the options on the polls:

-2002: Won a split in Sacramento, then lost two heartbreakers in the AAC to go down 3-1. Go back to Sactown and get toasted.

-2003: Total and utter collapse. That magical Game 5 win away from home, come back to Dallas, build a double-digit lead, then blow that lead in the final quarter as Steve Kerr and Stephen Jackson drop three-point bomb after three-point bomb. They just couldn't miss.

-2004: Two last-gasp defensive plays pulled out of the ass by Peja Stojakovic: you know, the guy who's one of the best defenders in the league. Bundled out early, last games for Jamison (meh), Walker (meh), and Nash as a Maverick.

-2005: Nash comes back to Dallas, drops a three bomb on Terry to tie the game up, then we go on to lose in the extra period.

-2006: I don't know whether the Game 3 collapse was worse than the one in the 2003 WCF. Probably so, since it was later in the game and it would've put us a game away with four chances to clinch. Instead, the momentum turned, and that bad call on Josh and Wade's free-throws win Game 5. We go back to Dallas down 3-2, shoot bricks and lose narrowly (again).

-2007: #1 loses to #8. Horribly outcoached and outplayed.

-2008: A piss-poor effort in Game 4 to defend our homecourt where we missed a lot of shots and didn't attempt to go to the line. Kept things interesting in Game 5, but ultimately end up losing.

There we go. That's quite a list. I love this team, but my heart's been broken so, so many times. Make your picks, people.

...they were expecting to get at least four runs a game right?

If you guys read the Astros preview article at astros.com (link) for Sunday afternoon's game against the Brewers (Wolf's debut), they mention at the end of the article in the notes section that:

-*The Astros are 40-20 when they score at least four runs*.

-*They are an awful 7-36 (16.3%) when they score less than four runs.*

When we made that frickin' awful trade for Tejada, we were expecting the retooled offence to get us at least four runs a game, even with low OBP, right? That hasn't happened, and it seems that the pitching has done their part of the deal by holding our opponents to a reasonable score.

I was sifting through my library of videos (movies, basketball and baseball games, Youtube clips and basketball mixes, etc.), and I stumbled upon a Josh Howard mix. I searched for the original link on Youtube...

Of course, we all know how Josh used to play when the plays weren't run for him. But this is a living reminder: I think I saw one jumpshot in that: the rest were in the paint, driving, putting down a nasty slam. There were several instances where he took on a defender one-on-one with his handles, then drove to the rim and scored. What would he have most likely done nowadays? Pull up for a fadeaway.

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

My stance towards trading Josh has lowered a little though: somebody just needs to tell him to either shoot a thousand of those types of jumpers a day over the off-season, or to mix the two together and he should be back next season even better.

I was talking with a Houston buddy (Rockets fan) today on MSN, and the idea came up for me that maybe a higher-tempo offensive system would work better with Kidd.

He's been good at running the floor, slipping passes through gaps...I don't think he's played a n upfront half-court system since about 2003. Maybe if they play a lineup Kidd, Terry, Howard, Bass, Dirk and aim to up the tempo and let Kidd have targets to pass to on a break, the offence will free up and take pressure off the guys to try and score on isolations. The team doesn't have the inside D to play proper half-court basketball right now.

Naturally, none of this stuff will happen because Avery is such a control freak. But it's an idea.

I found one that appears to be even worse than some of the regular "bad" Spurs fans. They're either pathetic trollers, or people with demeanors representing the Spurs...boring...generally fair...fundamental.

Anyway, how bout someone rate this Spurs fan overreacting to a couple of slightly squiffy fans here at the Nuggets-Spurs game thread:

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/conversation?gameId=280103007

on a scale from 1 to 10 (1 being on fire and 10 being Tim Duncan.)