Fan Fiction Fridays: The Mavericks' Draft Night

Hey, guys. Introducing a new segment here, since it's a slow day. Might be good, might be awful. Hopefully, if it's popular enough to deserve semi-permanence, we'll get some reader submissions. Until then, here's submission number one, from me, with some suggestions from MarkTobo:

Entering the room, Dirk brushed a lock of blonde hair from his sharp, skull-like forehead. "This is the draft room, huh?" he said. The small office, full of sweaty looking people on phones, gleamed dully in the fluorescent lights like an egg shell, or old bone The air smelled of despair, sexual frustration...and something else...Dirk's keen, athletic eye spotted the stack of pizza boxes in the corner.

"If you gentlemen will excuse me..."

"Tell me the plan again, Donnie?" Cuban said, coming to stand beside his right hand man, arms crossed, casually, over his black, adult medium t-shirt. "Sure," Donnie said. "The deal is, we recognize that having zero assets of any kind has impacted our flexibility to improve and our desirability to free agents. So instead of trading down from something to nothing, this year, we're just going to trade down from something to PROBABLY nothing."

"Uh huh. Good."

"This pizza is delicious," Dirk said.

When the first two picks were announced and neither was Nerlens Noel or Alex Len, and neither was a point guard, excitement swept the room. "Do you think..." scout #1 whispered to scout #2. "Shhhhh..." said the other. As David Stern hesitated on pick #4, the only sound in the room was Dirk scarfing pepperoni. It was Cody Zeller. Four picks in and Noel, Len, and all the point guards were still on the board.

"Are we really going to do this?" Cubes asked, in a whisper. "Get one of our three targets? In a draft?"

"Donnie!" someone shouted from the phone line at the front of the room. "It's the Kings! They want to give us the 7^th pick!"

Donnie gasped, then rallied. "Only if it's Noel! I'd hate to give up a VINCE CARTER or a FUTURE FIRST ROUNDER for any of our other very talented targets, or even Ben McLemore, who is still on the board and very highly rated by us!"

At that moment, with all three PGs left on the board, and a dynamic move in the potential future, Donnie was surfing a wave of pure whatever Donnie's version of adrenaline is.

Just then the word came in that not only was Noel going sixth, he was traded to the 76ers for Jrue Holiday, not only stealing the Mavs' trade target but adding another team in front of them that needed a point guard. Just like that, the mood in the room was eclipsed, like the sun.

The phone guy spoke, timidly. "Should we...should we pull the trigger anyway? I mean...that's at least one point guard gone?"

Donnie paused, but then shook his head, fiercely. "No. I'm not giving up Vince Carter for anyone but Noel. That 36 year old whose game is largely based on athleticism is part of our future or my name isn't Donald Nelson, Jr."

Cuban watched, in frozen horror, as Burke went to the Wolves, McCollum to the Blazers, and MCW to the 76ers, back to back to back, two picks before the Mavericks' turn. The room fell, at last, deathly still.

"Oh my god," Dirk said, breaking the sudden silence. "There's a whole extra pie over here!"