Meadowlark Lemon

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It's been hard for me to decide whether to write about Meadowlark Lemon, who died on Sunday at age 83, on my sports blog or my entertainment blog.

In a sense, I suppose, all athletes are entertainers, and Meadowlark Lemon, as a member of the Harlem Globetrotters, was clearly an entertainer. But I'm including him on my sports blog because my earliest memories of him are in a sports context.

You see, I saw him play once when I was in elementary school. I grew up in a then–small town in Arkansas about 30 miles northwest of Little Rock, and the Globetrotters brought their act to Little Rock one night. I was probably 6 or 7 years old, and I don't remember now whether I asked my father to take me to see them play or if he surprised me with the tickets.

Either way, we were on hand when the Globetrotters took the court against whoever they were playing that night — the opposing team was merely a prop for the Globetrotters to make their magic, but I didn't know that. I thought it was a real game. I didn't know it was fixed.

And I was definitely entertained — when Meadowlark did his patented sky hook from midcourt. Swish! If he kept making that shot, I thought to myself, the Globetrotters would win for sure.

I began to suspect, though, that it wasn't a legitimate game when the opponents made no apparent effort to keep the Globetrotters from scoring — or doing much of anything else. And my memory is that the Globetrotters did win — handily.

As I understand it, the Globetrotters began as a somewhat legitimate basketball team in the first 15 years of their existence. They played exhibition games, sure, but the effort to win was always there. They were regulars in the World Professional Basketball Tournament, which was held from 1939 to 1948. They even won it once.

But after a fellow named Goose Tatum joined the Globetrotters, the emphasis shifted to entertainment. And no one exemplified that spirit better than Meadowlark Lemon, who was known as the "Clown Prince of Basketball."

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He had been with the Globetrotters for about 12 or 14 years when I saw him play, and he was featured prominently in the advertising for the game.

I can still remember the ads in the newspaper — "Come see Meadowlark Lemon and the Harlem Globetrotters," the ads urged. Notice that Meadowlark got top billing.

To those who are unfamiliar with their history, the Globetrotters, who will be celebrating their 90th anniversary in 2016, seem to be the definition of discrepancy.

A team that calls Harlem its home actually began half a continent away in Chicago, from which all the original players came. Many went to school together. Their coach picked Harlem as their hometown to give them a truly out–of–town–sounding name. Well, also because the players were black, and Harlem was regarded at the time as the epicenter of black American culture.

The Globetrotters didn't play their first home game in Harlem until almost 40 years after the team was formed.

The Globetrotters were also sharply criticized during the civil rights movement of the '60s. Because nearly all of their players were black and their show consisted mainly of slapstick skits, they were accused of "Tomming" for the team's Jewish owner/coach. But none other than Jesse Jackson defended them, saying, "I think they've been a positive influence. ... They did not show blacks as stupid. On the contrary, they were shown as superior."

And Pope Pius XII, after granting the Globetrotters a private audience and seeing them do their "Magic Circle" ballhandling exhibition, exclaimed, "My, how clever these men are. If I had not seen this with my own eyes, I would not have believed it could be done."

The current Globetrotters have met Pope Francis. They made him an honorary Globetrotter.

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Meadowlark wasn't on hand for the meeting with Pius XII or the one with Francis. John Paul II was named an honorary Globetrotter in 2000, and Meadowlark probably missed that one, too. Only nine people have been named honorary Globetrotters, and Meadowlark probably was on hand for the first two — Henry Kissinger in 1976 and Bob Hope in 1977.

Meadowlark played a huge role in the popular success of the Globetrotters, and I am supremely grateful for the memory of seeing him play that night when I was 6 or 7.

A Heart-Stopping Finish

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I seldom watch the NBA — until the playoffs begin. And, even then, I don't usually watch until it has been narrowed down to two teams.

But, yesterday, I sat down and watched most (not all) of Game 3 of the Dallas Mavericks–San Antonio Spurs series.

The Spurs are the top seed in the west; the Mavericks are the eighth seed. It is safe to say most regular NBA observers probably expected the Spurs to win the series fairly easily, especially after winning the first game at home.

But the Mavericks surprised them by winning the second game, and the series moved to Dallas.

You don't have to be an NBA fan to know that these two teams have a pretty intense in–state rivalry going on. I guess it helps to be a resident of Texas — but even that probably isn't necessary.

Anyway, I decided to watch most of yesterday's game.

At first, it appeared the Spurs would seize the series lead. They grabbed a seven–point advantage at the end of the first quarter, but the Mavericks pounded them in the second and led by five points at intermission.

I had my TV on throughout the first half, but I was busy doing things around the apartment so I didn't sit and watch — until the second half began.

That second half was incredible. The Spurs picked up a couple of points on the Mavericks in the third quarter and battled to a two–point lead with 1.7 seconds remaining. It appeared the Mavericks would lose.

But then they inbounded the ball to Vince Carter, who hit a jumper from the corner. Two questions had to be answered: Did he shoot before time expired? If so, did he shoot from three–point range?

There was no question about whether he made the shot. The question was whether he fired it before time ran out. If he did, then the question was whether it was worth two points (which would mean an overtime period) or three (which would mean the Mavericks won).

The referees, after consulting instant replay, confirmed that the ball left Carter's hands before time expired, then they ruled that he shot from three–point range.

Game over.

Tim Cowlishaw of the Dallas Morning News never seems to be at a loss for words, even if he has to make them up (as William Shakespeare did). That can be a hit–or–miss kind of thing for a journalist, but, as a veteran of sports desks, I know that sports may be the best place for someone who has a way with words to be.

It is part of the joy of sports, which was best described, I think, by Red Smith who, as I have observed on this blog before, wrote that he believed people watched sports events to have fun — and then they picked up the next day's paper to read about the event they had watched and have fun all over again.

Sportswriters (and I include headline writers in this) get into the spirit of whichever sport is in season, and they contribute a great deal to the mood.

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When people read accounts of yesterday's game, the memory that most will have is of the bedlam that followed the referees' ruling, and I have to concede that the word Cowlishaw used to describe the pandemonium — "Vinsanity" — was pretty good.

Actually, though, that isn't Cowlishaw's creation. Carter isn't a rookie. He is 37 years old. "Vinsanity" may go back to his college days, for all I know.

Judging from Gil LeBreton's column in the Fort Worth Star–Telegram, it is old enough to be Vinsanity 2.0.

"Or maybe," he wrote, "considering the many NBA lives of 37–year–old Vince Carter, it was Vinsanity 4, 5 or 6.0 that erupted as the final horn sounded."

Well, it still summarized the finish pretty well — although whoever wrote the headline for Cowlishaw may have been more on track with the reference to "Monta Madness."

Monta is Monta Ellis, who led all scorers with 29 points.

Game 4 will be here in Dallas tomorrow night at 8:30 (Central), and Game 5 will be played in San Antonio Wednesday. I'll be watching.

Len Bias' Legacy

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I've been reading an interesting — and troubling — article by Tommy Craggs at Deadspin.com.

It's about Len Bias, a truly gifted basketball player who was picked second overall in the 1986 NBA draft by the Boston Celtics.

If the name doesn't sound familiar to readers who have not reached their 30th birthday, there is a good reason for that. Bias never played in the NBA. He died of a cocaine overdose two days after being drafted.

He'd been celebrating his good fortune, as just about any athlete in almost any collegiate sport would. When one is a top pick in the professional draft, it is generally taken for granted that he has it made.

It doesn't always work out that way. There have been many examples of top draft picks who — for whatever reason — simply couldn't make the transition from college to pro.

Bias might not have panned out. But I had several friends at the time who were diehard basketball fans, and they all believed he would be a huge star in the NBA. I have never really been an NBA fan, but, at that time, I was more of a college basketball fan than I am now. I had seen Bias play on TV, and I, too, believed he would be a big success at the professional level.

Bias was a contemporary of Michael Jordan — a couple of years younger, I guess, and probably not quite as good, but that wasn't really clear in 1986. Jordan hadn't yet established himself as perhaps the greatest NBA player ever, and he was never the most valuable player in the Atlantic Coast Conference's postseason tournament.

Bias was the MVP of the 1984 ACC Tournament, leading Maryland to a 12–point victory over Duke in the tournament final and a #3 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Both men were ACC Player of the Year — Bias twice and Jordan once.

In 1986, I think it is safe to say that Bias' credentials were more solid than Jordan's. Before he died, he probably was more highly regarded than Jordan, who had been playing in the NBA for a couple of years but had not won his first NBA title.

One can only imagine what the NBA would have been like in the late '80s and early '90s if Bias had not died. At the time of the '86 draft, Boston's undisputed star was Larry Bird, who was named MVP of the NBA finals less than two weeks earlier. But he was about to enter the downside of his career, and he retired half a dozen years later.

At that time, Bias would have been in his prime, ready to take the leadership mantel from Bird. He might even have taken it a year or two earlier, allowing Bird to ease into retirement.

Perhaps he would have led the Celtics to even greater heights. Perhaps the Jordan–led Chicago Bulls would have had a rivalry with Bias and the Celtics that would have exceeded the intensity of the rivalry between the Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers in the '80s.

Perhaps he would have had the can't–miss Hall of Fame career everyone said he would have.

If so, people would remember him for that — and not for the way he died.

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But, apparently, that is what many people do remember about Len Bias.

That may be an even greater tragedy.

Recently, a request for state money to be used to erect a statue of Bias in his hometown of Hyattsville, Md., was withdrawn because of concerns that it would send the wrong message to young people.

Rather than honor the memory of Bias and his many achievements — and encourage young people to hone their skills and follow their own dreams — Maryland will do as so many have done before — focus on a fatal flaw.

I know that Bias showed extremely poor judgment the night he died. But he was 22 years old. When I was 22, I didn't always show good judgment, either. And I frequently paid a price for my mistakes. But I never paid with my life.

Maybe it was a matter of luck that I outlived those reckless years and he did not. Maybe it always is a matter of luck. The luck of the draw.

That's an ironic thought. On the night that Boston drafted Bias, most people probably would have said that he was the one who had lived a charmed life. I certainly would have said that his life was charmed compared to mine.

And yet I have lived nearly 27 years longer than he did.

Maybe I was lucky that my mistakes weren't final. Maybe Bias was unlucky that one of his mistakes was.

But the fact that he forfeited his life does not mean he should forfeit his legacy.

Dream Fulfilled

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In two days, the 2012 Summer Olympics will begin, and most sports fans will turn their attention to London for two weeks.

But it is worth remembering that 20 years ago today, America's professional "Dream Team" basketball squad made its debut at the Summer Olympics in Barcelona.

The 1992 Summer Games are remembered for many reasons:

• They were the last Summer Olympics to be held in the same year as the Winter Olympics.
• For the first time in more than 30 years, South Africa was allowed to compete.
• For the first time in nearly 30 years, Germany competed as a united country.
• The countries that had formed the Soviet Union until the year before were allowed to compete as a Unified Team.
  
  Under that banner, they won more medals than any other country.

And it was the first time that pro basketball players were allowed to compete; the United States formed its team from the very best the NBA had — Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson.

The 1988 Olympic squad had been quite talented, too, but all the players were college players, and they finished third. Hopes were high in America in 1992, higher than they had been in, perhaps, 20 years — ever since the United States lost a controversial gold–medal game to the Soviet Union at the 1972 Games and refused to accept the silver medal.

For 20 years, that loss to the Soviets had gnawed at the American psyche. Prior to that day, the United States had not lost an Olympic basketball game since the sport was added to Olympic competition in 1936. The Americans had practically sailed through their first eight games, but they found themselves trailing the Russians at halftime and struggling in the final minutes.

With three seconds showing on the clock, the Americans were fouled and a player was awarded two free throws. He made the first and was in the process of shooting the second when the buzzer sounded; the Soviets had called a timeout. The player continued with his shot and made it, giving the Americans a one–point lead.

Under the rules that existed at the time, the ball was live, but play was stopped when the Soviets insisted they had called a timeout. There was some commotion at the scorers' table, play resumed and, eventually, the Soviets scored and won the game. The timeout and the ensuing sequence of events was a sore spot that never completely healed.

Even when the U.S. hockey team beat the mighty Soviet team in the 1980 Winter Games, the loss by the 1972 basketball team lingered and festered.

The Dream Team avenged the 1972 defeat and the disappointing 1988 finish in a big way — they went undefeated at Barcelona, winning every game by an average margin of 44 points. The Americans beat the Croatians twice, including in the gold–medal game, and Croatia did manage to hold the United States to its two lowest winning margins — 32 and 33 points.

The Americans' most lopsided victory came in the opener, a 116–48 win over Angola. The United States never scored fewer than 103 points, and its opposition never scored more than 85. And neither happened in the same game.

The Dream Team was kind of anticlimactic, though.

I mean, with all that talent, all that star power, it was practically regarded as a foregone conclusion that the U.S. basketball team would win the gold medal — and that none of the games would be close.

It all went as expected, too. There was no real suspense, no real drama. Only a diehard basketball fan could probably tell you who the Americans defeated in the gold–medal game.

But, for a true sports enthusiast, the absence of even a hint of uncertainty about the eventual outcomes, rendered the games mildly interesting. The only real issues to be settled were which player(s) would lead the team in scoring and rebounds.

Few championship games in any sport, amateur or professional, have been as lopsided as the U.S.'s game with Croatia. The U.S. did trail Croatia — briefly — in the first half, but that was about as much suspense as there was in any of the Dream Team's games.

When it was over, Sports Illustrated suggested that the Dream Team had been the most dominant team ever assembled in any sport.

I doubt that anyone argued the point.

A Hundred Points The Hard Way

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I don't ordinarily write about basketball.

It was never my sport when I was growing up. I had more interest in baseball and football.

And, in the hierarchy of basketball, pro basketball is the low man on the totem pole for me. I like college and high school basketball much better.

Even in my teen years, I preferred college basketball — my alma mater, the University of Arkansas, was always in the national tournament so I could usually count on being able to watch them play during spring break.

My high school team was pretty good — went undefeated and won the state title when I was a sophomore.

But, for awhile, when I was about 12 or 13, I was a bit of an NBA fan.

One of the stars at that time was Wilt Chamberlain. Actually, he was nearing the end of his career by that time; a young Lew Alcindor (soon to be known as Kareem Abdul–Jabbar) was emerging as his successor as the league's superstar.

But many years earlier, Chamberlain had chiseled his name into the NBA record books with an achievement that I think is not likely to be matched.

I'm talking about the day 50 years ago today when Chamberlain scored 100 points in a single game.

Basketball fans are accustomed to games in which one, if not both, of the teams scores 100 points or more. But the scoring usually is spread out. Even Michael Jordan — who made many of the most amazing shots anyone will ever see — didn't score 100 points in a single game.

And Jordan had the advantage of being able to shoot for three points. The three–point shot was still several years in the future when Chamberlain retired.

So has Kobe Bryant, who scored 81 points in a game in 2006, and, as Ryan Rothschild observes in Sports Illustrated, Bryant scored seven three–pointers — and he still came up 19 points short of Chamberlain.

Rothschild writes that it is "a record that seems all but unbreakable." I'm inclined to agree.

Because of his height (7'1"), Chamberlain was known as "Wilt the Stilt" and "Goliath" by many, but his favorite nickname was "The Big Dipper," and that is the name that always comes to mind for me when I think of Chamberlain because, in my mind's eye, I can see him dunking the ball repeatedly as he towered over nearly everyone he faced.

Alcindor was really the first player he encountered in his NBA career who could look him in the eye, you might say — and that was one of the reasons why Chamberlain scored so many points in that game and others. Seven–footers are commonplace in the NBA today, but they were rare in 1962.

Chamberlain also scored so many points because his team, the then–Philadelphia Warriors, permitted him to keep going to the basket long after the issue had been decided, in large part to see if he could score 100 points.

It also seems likely to me that a 21st century coach, faced with the same situation, probably would not allow his star player(s) to continue playing once the game was out of reach for the opposition — even if he wanted to see if his star could surpass Chamberlain.

But I think that record will remain on the books for a long, long time.

The Dunk Heard 'Round the World

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Ever since I heard the news of Lorenzo Charles' death in a one–vehicle accident Monday in North Carolina, I have been thinking of the spring night in 1983 when his upstart North Carolina State Wolfpack upset the heavily favored Houston Cougars in the national championship.

I remember the night vividly. I was working as a reporter for a newspaper in central Arkansas — my first job out of college.

One of my standing assignments was to cover city and county government meetings (I wasn't alone in that; it was a small newspaper staff so everyone — even those whose job titles might make you think they were above such routine duties, like managing editor — had to cover some city and county government meetings) ...

... and such a meeting was being held that night.

But the meeting was scheduled to begin at 6:30, as I remember, and the game wasn't supposed to begin until two hours later.

I had been following the NCAA Tournament closely that year, as I tended to do at that time in my life, and I was interested in seeing the championship game — even though I was sure I knew how it would turn out.

When the meeting wrapped up earlier than I expected, I was elated. It meant I could go home and see most, if not all, of the game.

As I was walking down the hallway of the building in the direction of the exit, I recall a brief conversation I had with a city police officer who was on hand (why he was there, I do not know, unless he was assigned to provide routine security that night).

I told him I was on my way home to watch the game. He wanted to know which team I thought would win.

"Houston," I told him. "No way N.C. State can win."

But I was wrong.

Oh, Houston did race to the lead, but the Cougars squandered it with terrible free throw shooting in the second half. The game was still anyone's to win as the final seconds ticked off.

That was when one of the most iconic moments in modern sports history occurred.

With the score tied at 52–52, one of Charles' teammates fired a shot from 30 feet (it would have been a three–point shot under modern rules, but the three–pointer was still a few years away).

The shot appeared to be coming up just short of its mark when, seemingly from nowhere, Charles came into view, grabbed the ball in the air and dunked it for the winning points.

It was one of those moments when the entire world seemed to stop for maybe a split second — and tried to absorb what had just happened. I have only experienced a couple of these moments in my life, and they are never merely upsets or the unexpected.

They are unthinkable.

It was a time when 12 teams were seeded in each region (the 12th seeds had to win the equivalents of play–in games), and N.C. State had been seeded eighth in its region. That season, the Wolfpack (who lost 10 games in all) had earned the nickname of the "Cardiac Pack" for winning seven nail–biters in their last nine games just to get into the tournament.

Houston, meanwhile, was ranked #1 in the nation, was making its second consecutive Final Four appearance and had the look of a dynasty.

The 1982–83 Cougars went undefeated in the Southwest Conference, losing only three games all season — and, in fact, they returned to the national championship game the following year (but lost to Georgetown).

Six members of the team eventually were drafted into the NBA.

A stunned N.C. State coach Jim Valvano dashed madly around the court, looking for someone to hug, some way to express his delight at winning the upset of a lifetime.

It was for such a moment that the song "The Impossible Dream" was written.

Some of N.C. State's players might have ended up in the NBA, anyway, even if the Wolfpack had not won that game. But the fact is that three players were drafted into the NBA later that year, including the fellow whose lob Charles plucked out of the air and dunked for the winning points — and it is possible that some or all might not have been chosen had it not been for their victory over Houston.

Later, Charles and another teammate were drafted into the NBA as well, bringing to 11 the number of future NBA draftees who were on the court that night.

Charles' NBA career was brief, however, and the Brooklyn native had short stints with some European teams, but his basketball career had been over for more than 20 years. He was operating a bus for the rental company for which he apparently worked when it crashed in Raleigh, N.C.

Sadly, it seems, great things did not happen for Charles after that evening of almost unimaginable glory.

But if you have ever watched an NCAA Tournament game, you are almost sure to have seen in the archival footage Charles' sublime, almost tentative, dunk that clinched a championship ...

... and seized a slice of immortality.

The Day Len Bias Died

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Twenty–five years ago, I was working on the sports desk of the Arkansas Gazette.

It was a morning paper so the folks who worked on the copy desks worked nights. Everyone worked weekends, but one's nights off generally were determined by seniority. As one of the most junior staff members (at that time), my days off were Mondays and Tuesdays — not exactly prime time.

That's important to note, though, because it was on Tuesday, June 17, 1986, that the annual NBA draft was held. My memory is that it was held in conjunction with the NBA Finals that year, but I could be wrong about that.

I do know that it was televised, and I remember watching it briefly with some friends — long enough, anyway, to see that Maryland's Len Bias had been selected by the Boston Celtics.

Larry Bird brought championship basketball back to Boston, but he was about to turn 30, and he had struggled with back issues. The comments I remember hearing and the articles I remember reading in mid–June 1986 suggested that Bias was going to be groomed to step in and take over the role of star player when Bird retired.

He couldn't miss, the experts said. With Len Bias, the Celtic dynasty would be in good hands.

The day after Bias was drafted, I returned to work to pull my graveyard shift on Wednesday night. I had to be back earlier the following day — I worked the sports wire on Thursdays in those days, which meant it was my job to constantly scan the wire for sports news.

I always enjoyed working the wire. When I arrived in the office to work it (a shift that typically began about two hours earlier than my usual shifts — and ended two hours earlier as well), I did a preliminary scan of the wire's contents so I could tell the editor who was in charge that evening what we could expect.

Then I would pick wire stories on sports events from all over the world and ship them over to the editor, who would decide where to put each article, assign a headline size to each and turn the stories over to the folks who were handling the copy editing that evening.

It was a procedure that had taken shape over a long period of time. The Gazette was the oldest continuously published newspaper west of the Mississippi. The system that was in place when I came on board was the product of years of evolution.

Usually, working the wire came down to the accounts of games in whichever sport happened to be in season, but there were times when unexpected stories demanded our attention. If a story was big enough, I might combine the best elements from all the wire services the Gazette received — and the Gazette subscribed to about half a dozen news services.

Nothing noteworthy happened that Wednesday night, but when I got up the next morning and switched on my TV, there was a sports story that I knew immediately would dominate my activities that night — and for many days to come.

Sometime during the night (as the wire editor that day, I learned a few hours later that it had actually been sometime around daybreak), Len Bias, the NBA's #2 draft pick less than two days earlier, had died of a cocaine overdose.

He was only 22 years old.

I can't tell you the tsunami–like ripple effect this had — not only in sports and on college campuses but throughout American society as well.

When Bias was taken in the draft by the Celtics, he was widely expected to be at least one of the greatest players ever to play the game — if not the greatest. He would rewrite the record books, some people said.

And he might have. We will never know.

It does seem likely that, if he hadn't died, Bias' career would be over by this point. We would know if he set all those records that he was expected to set and if he won all those titles he was expected to win.

We didn't know much on this day 25 years ago, but we did know that Len Bias would never accomplish all those things.

Sports fans grieved as much for the potential that would never be realized as they did for the life that was cut tragically short. The circumstances were different but the sensation was much the same a few years later when Hank Gathers collapsed and died during a Loyola Marymount game in 1990.

Len Bias was like a shooting star in June 1986. He burst onto the scene and left almost as quickly as he had come, leaving the aging Celtics in a funk they wouldn't shake off for many years.

His legacy lives on, though, says Jeff Barker in the Baltimore Sun, and his life story continues to influence the sport in ways that no one could have anticipated in 1986.

His death continues to influence people beyond the universe of basketball, writes David Steele in The Sporting News.

"His almost unfathomable death lingers as a cocaine deterrent," observes Barker. "He also maintains the power to rivet players and fans despite being from a wholly different basketball generation."

That's great, but even Barker gives in to the eternal, unanswerable question: What would Bias have accomplished?

Barker closed his piece with speculation from one of Bias' teammates — that, had Len Bias lived, people would be mentioning his name today in the same breath with his greatest contemporaries, like Michael Jordan, and the stars of today.

Sadly, no one will never know.

Dallas Is Title Town Again

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The NBA season is over — and, for a football fan like me, that is good news. It means we are that much closer to autumn.

I don't know if the NFL will resolve its issues and proceed as planned with the 2011 season. I am primarily a college football fan, anyway, so I know that my Saturdays, at least, will be unaffected.

As long as I can remember, football has been king in Texas. I didn't grow up here, but my parents did, and my father has always been a football fan. As nearly as I can tell, football hasn't been replaced at the top of the list of the public's affections — but you could probably get some arguments on that around here today.

Last night, the Dallas Mavericks won their first–ever NBA title.

There are all sorts of ironies in that, I guess.

When I was growing up, there was only one professional sports team in Dallas — the Dallas Cowboys. And they were known, for many years, for not being able to "win the big one." They finally did win it all, of course, but not until after other teams arrived and began carving out their niches in the local sports market.

The Mavericks came into existence in 1980. Of the major sports franchises in the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, its tenure here has been the shortest — except for the Dallas Stars, a hockey team that moved here from Minnesota.

And yet, until last night, that hockey team had brought the only championship to Dallas in the last 15 years.

The Cowboys have enjoyed a lot of success when they have played in Super Bowls — but they haven't played in one since 1996.

It has been pretty dry around here ever since — except for the Stars' Stanley Cup a dozen years ago.

There were a couple of false alarms. The Mavericks lost the NBA title to Miami five years ago, and last fall the Texas Rangers went to their first–ever World Series — but lost to San Francisco.

But Dallas sports fans have been patient — even when the Super Bowl came to town and the Cowboys didn't come close to playing in it — and their patience has been rewarded with an NBA title.

Now, to a football fan, that's almost like a consolation prize — but there are many basketball fans in this area and they gathered all over the city — but especially, I suppose, the American Airline Center, where the Mavericks play their home games — to watch the game and then celebrate the outcome.

Team owner Mark Cuban says he will pay for the traditional championship celebration parade. The details for that haven't been announced yet, but I imagine I will watch the parade from the same spot I watched the NBA Finals.

And count the days that are left until football season.

A Must-Win for Mavs?

I was having an e–mail conversation with a friend of mine shortly before the Dallas–Miami game on Sunday.

I asked my friend if he thought Dallas would win the game. He wasn't sure, but he did say he believed the winner of the game would go on to win the series — and, hence, the NBA title.

I agreed with him — but, I will admit, it was a pretty safe bet. The teams split the first two games, which meant the series had become a best–of–five. The winner would only need to win two of the remaining four games while the loser would need to win three.

While I don't know the exact numbers, I think the finalists have split the first two games about 40% of the time since the NBA introduced its current schedule in the finals — the first two games played at one site, followed by three games at the other site, followed by the last two games at the original site — about 25 years ago.

By the time the game tipped off on Sunday night, I had heard from numerous sports writers — in both interviews and columns — that the winner of the third game had always gone on to win the whole thing.

That must mean that history is on the side of the Miami Heat, who held on for a two–point win.

Sean Deveney of The Sporting News sums it up for many when he says Miami is "clearly ... the much better team."

I would admit that Miami has been the better team in the first three games. But much better? Clearly better? I don't think so.

As I have conceded on many occasions, I am hardly an expert on the NBA. I am, at best, a casual observer. I haven't followed the NBA closely since I was a kid. I usually don't get interested in the NBA until it reaches this point in the playoffs.

Nevertheless, there are some things that I know — and that I will continue to believe until I am proven wrong.

One is that, although home court/field is an advantage in the early going, by the time you reach this stage of the playoffs, home means little, if anything, beyond being able to sleep in one's own bed.

For a true champion in any sport, a game is played within the confines of the playing surface, and whatever is happening outside those boundaries is separate from what is taking place within them.

Oh, sure, I suppose some of the younger, inexperienced players may be affected by opposing fans' efforts to distract them, but not championship–caliber veterans.

I think my point has been proven in the first three games of this series. The home team won the first game; the visiting team has won the last two.

And the last two games were decided by two points each. One was a great comeback (although, when compared to the epic comeback against Oklahoma City in the previous round, Dallas' come–from–behind victory in Game 2 wasn't as impressive — at least not numerically).

That doesn't necessarily suggest that anyone has dominated things yet.

Actually, it reminds me more of this year's Triple Crown in horse racing. The winner of the Kentucky Derby had to come from way behind to win that race, then almost did the same thing but came up just short in the Preakness a couple of weeks ago. Now, the horses will run in Saturday's Belmont Stakes, which is the longest of the three races.

The winner of the Derby has proven to be the fastest horse at the end of the first two races. His speed and endurance could well pay off in Saturday's Belmont when his rivals start to fade.

After three games of the NBA Finals, you knew that someone was going to have two wins — at least. Regardless of what led up to them, the final margins suggest that the teams were competitive at the end — and that suggests that the rest of the games in this series, however many that turns out to be, will be entertaining.

That makes me believe that tonight's game is not a must–win for the Mavericks — although a loss will certainly make things much more difficult for them.

It is an important game, though. If I were you, I'd watch.

Will Third Time Be the Charm for Big D?

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It's been a long time since a professional sports championship came to Dallas.

Ironically, that championship was won in hockey.

This is a city that, for decades, was accustomed to being a legitimate factor in championship conversations. More than that, it is part of a state that has long been accustomed to being a factor in such discussions.

Usually, it has been in the context of football — but it has been nearly 15 years since the Cowboys played in a Super Bowl.

For that matter, Dallas as a city has been away from the national sports radar through most of the still nascent 21st century.

Sports supremacy has been tantalizingly close in recent months, though.

The Texas Rangers have been playing baseball around here for 40 years, and they brought a World Series to these parts for the first time last October. They didn't win it, but they brought it here, and they gave local fans a taste of what it is like to host the Fall Classic.

Most sports fans around here might not have noticed, however, if the Dallas Cowboys had lived up to their preseason hype. When the season began, local fans knew that the Super Bowl would be played in the Cowboys' new stadium, and many believed the Cowboys were practically a lock to become the first team from the host city to actually play in a Super Bowl.

But the Cowboys stumbled out of the gate and never came close to competing for a playoff spot. The Green Bay Packers won the Super Bowl as the NFC's representative.

Now, it is the Mavericks' turn — that's Dallas' NBA franchise — to try to do what the others could not.

They dispatched the Oklahoma City Thunder, four games to one, in the Western Conference finals, and they await the winner of the Chicago–Miami series.

No one knows how long the Mavericks will have to wait on that one.

Miami can finish off Chicago with a single win. Chicago needs three straight wins to turn back Miami.

If the series goes seven games, Dallas will have a week to prepare for its next foe. If the Miami–Chicago series is completed tonight or Saturday, the championship series will start on Monday.

Folks around here don't seem to care when the dance begins. All that matters is that the dance can't be held without them.

And my guess is that a line is going to start forming for tickets soon, if it hasn't already. They go on sale Saturday morning. The latest weather forecast calls for daily highs in the 90s, but I have no doubt that people will be camping out for the next couple of nights.

There is clearly a sense in this city that destiny is beckoning.

But the thing is, people around here always feel that way when the local team is playing for a title. They felt that way when the Stars won the Stanley Cup in 1999 — even though most of the Stars' "fans" that year probably were more appropriately bandwagon jumpers.

They felt that way when the Rangers faced the San Francisco Giants in the World Series last year. (Much was made locally of the "long–suffering fans" who had waited 40 years for a world championship, but I recall little being said of the long–suffering Giants fans, who had been waiting almost 20 years longer for a world title.)

That probably isn't uniquely Texan. The fans of every team in every sport believe they are entitled to a championship — until, at some point, their teams are eliminated and they must face the truth that most fans must accept at some point.

The fans around here aren't ready to accept that truth. Nor is it necessary for them to do so.

Oh, sure, there are some naysayers. Some say the Mavericks won't be able to handle the Miami Heat, their most likely foe.

And that may be true.

But that doesn't really matter right now.

The Promised Land?

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Here in Dallas, Texas, there is a sense of inevitability settling in after last night's astonishing come–from–behind triumph over Oklahoma City in the NBA Western Conference finals.

The Christian Science Monitor called it "one of the most jaw–dropping comebacks in NBA history."

That may be true. I've seen some pretty amazing comebacks in my life, but nothing to compare with what happened about 200 miles north of here last night.

I'm not an NBA fan, but I will admit that I have been watching more lately. However, I had given the game up for lost. I left my TV on and went about some other things in my apartment. I could monitor the game, but, having conceded defeat, I didn't feel I needed to sit and watch it.

I changed my mind a few minutes later.

Down by 15 points with about five minutes to play, the Mavericks doggedly chipped away at the upstarts from OKC, forced the game into overtime and, as Eddie Sefko writes in the Dallas Morning News, never trailed in overtime (after never leading during regulation).

When the Mavericks returned to Dallas early this morning, a couple hundred people were on hand to meet them.

Today the giddiness and disbelief from last night seems to be morphing into supreme confidence, even cockiness. Sure, I heard one man say, there have been teams that have come back from a 3–1 deficit but not many.

Not many, but some. To pull that one off, it seems to me that a team has to be loaded with playoff veterans with the discipline and the concentration to remain focused on the task at hand.

I have my doubts that Oklahoma City can do that.

But as my friend who used to cover horse racing during our mutual Arkansas Gazette days like to say, there is no such thing as a sure thing.

It could happen. It isn't likely, but it could happen.

However, I will assume that the Mavericks — who would have to lose at home not once but twice for the Thunder to leapfrog them into the NBA Finals — will face either Miami or Chicago for the NBA title.

That would mean that the Dallas area will have hosted

• the World Series


• the Super Bowl and


• the NBA Finals

within a single calendar year.

As far as I know, that would be a first.

Mind you, I'm not talking about cities that had teams that participated in three major professional sports championships within a calendar year.

(I think New York came close to that when the Jets played in the Super Bowl in January 1969, the Mets played in the World Series that autumn and the Knicks played in the NBA Finals in the spring of 1970. Technically, that exceeded a calendar year, but New York did win all three.)

The site of the Super Bowl is decided years ahead of time. It has been played annually for 45 years, and, while it is not the NFL's explicit policy to prohibit cities without NFL teams from hosting Super Bowls, no city without an NFL franchise has ever hosted one.

And no host city's team has ever played in one.

For awhile, folks around here figured the Cowboys would be the team to change that. It didn't happen. Instead, two of the Cowboys' old postseason rivals met in the Super Bowl in February.

But it was played here in Dallas. In October, the Texas Rangers brought the World Series here for the first time — and now it appears the NBA Finals will be played here, too.

I think that's a first.

When the Bucks Didn't Stop

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With the exception of the folks who live there, most people don't seem to be paying much attention to the 40th anniversary of Milwaukee's only NBA championship.

But it's worth thinking about as the NBA careens toward what would have been thought to be an unlikely championship series when the season began — no matter what the pairing may eventually turn out to be.

Later today, the Dallas Mavericks, who have had all week to savor a four–game sweep of the two–time defending champion Lakers in the second round, will learn whether they will face Oklahoma City (formerly the Seattle SuperSonics) or Memphis (originally a 1995 expansion team) in the Western finals.

Those three franchises have precisely one title between them — and, if Memphis defeats Oklahoma City today, it will be certain that the representative of the Lakers' conference will be seeking its first league championship.

The same can't be said of the championship series in the East that is slated to begin tonight after the Oklahoma City–Memphis game concludes. Both of the teams in that series — Miami and Chicago — have won NBA titles. Miami beat Dallas five years ago, and, as for Chicago, well, surely you remember the Bulls' dominance of the 1990s.

(I don't really have to recite the story of Michael Jordan for you, do I?)

I'm not a devoted follower of the NBA. In fact, I seldom get interested in professional basketball until things get to this stage. So I could be all wrong about this. But my guess is that the winner of the East is going to be the favorite heading into the championship series, no matter who wins the West.

To mildly misquote a phrase from Bob Dylan, though, I would not feel so overwhelmed. There might be some good karma for the winner of the West — especially if it turns out to be Dallas.

Forty years ago this spring, the Milwaukee Bucks (who had only been in existence for three years) won their first and only NBA title.

Many things were different then. The NBA, like all professional sports leagues, was much smaller; so, too, was its playoff field.

Kareem Abdul–Jabbar was on that Milwaukee team. But, although practically no one ever mentions it anymore, that wasn't his name at the time.

In the 1970–1971 season, he had not yet converted to Islam — and he was still known by the name he played under at UCLA — Lew Alcindor. He was definitely a dominant player, just as he had been in college, and he won Rookie of the Year the season before when he led the Bucks to a 29–win turnaround (the most impressive in league history to that point) and nearly took them to the NBA Finals.

The Bucks won it all the following season, but I always felt they did so not because of Alcindor but because they acquired Oscar Robertson — and took some of the pressure off Alcindor.

I was in elementary school that spring. There were few hockey or basketball teams in my part of the country in those days. Baseball (particularly the St. Louis Cardinals) usually grabbed everyone's attention until the football teams began their conditioning drills for the fall.

That spring, though, all eyes in my little town were on the NBA and Lew Alcindor. My memory of that time is that he drew most of the attention — and that was as it should be, I suppose. He did win the MVP award for the championship series.

But what so many people forget is how Robertson — long before the three–point shot — piled up more than 20 points in the first half of Game 4 and staked Milwaukee to a lead over Baltimore that it never relinquished.

Afterward, the Milwaukee coach said Robertson had been "unbelievable" on that day, and he had been.

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No one could have matched Willis Reed's gutsy performance in Game 7 of the previous year's final series — but Robertson came close, clearly finishing off the Bullets that day.

The game, as I remember, was all but over by halftime. The second half was a mere formality.

Remember what I said about that karma stuff and the Dallas Mavericks? Well, I was thinking about the fact that, 40 years ago, the Bucks had to beat the Lakers to get to the NBA Finals.

Dallas has already topped the '71 Bucks with its victory over L.A. The Mavericks swept the Lakers in four games; the Bucks went 4–1 against the Lakers (but they did have to face Wilt Chamberlain).

In those days, the Lakers hadn't won an NBA title since long before they left Minneapolis in the early 1960s. They were considered competitive but hardly formidable, always a bridesmaid but never a bride.

They certainly didn't carry the aura of a two–time defending champion.

Perhaps their victory over the Lakers will propel the Mavs to their first NBA title — just as it did for the Bucks 40 years ago.

It's All About Lebron

I haven't seen the ratings for Lebron James' hour–long self–lovefest yet.

I know. A few months ago, I wrote in this blog that it was all about Tiger Woods. But that was following Tiger's public "apology" — which, it is worth noting, did not require anywhere near an hour.

Of course, neither did Lebron's announcement. Well, I'm guessing it didn't take an hour to make it. I didn't watch the show.

And, in fairness, Lebron's announcement was an ESPN exclusive. It wasn't shown live on several networks simultaneously — the way Tiger's apology was.

But it did include sponsors, which makes it a commercial endeavor, whereas Tiger's apology was treated as a "news" event.

So, while I still believe that it was all about Tiger back in February, I believe it's all about Lebron now.

Both were shows, not really news events, although there were kernels of news to be found in each one. But they were faux news events. Tiger's sorry he cheated on his wife — how many times? Lebron's going to play for the highest bidder?

What were the odds?

I was amused yesterday when I saw an article at NPR.org, which suggested 20 ways that Lebron could fill "the other 59 minutes and 45 seconds."

Of course, the hour did include commercial breaks, and the revenue from the commercials was earmarked to benefit Boys and Girls Clubs, which is a good thing.

But make no mistake about it.

This production was really about Lebron.

I guess it shouldn't surprise us, this obsession with themselves that so many celebrities seem to have these days.

At its worst, it can be seen in the blatant narcissism of Lindsay Lohan's ongoing saga. But it is everywhere, really, to varying degrees.

So Lebron is not alone.

And he certainly doesn't appear to have been alone last night. If his ESPN "special" was, in fact, a media circus, as Richard Deitsch writes for Sports Illustrated, there were plenty of clowns running around.

And some people have the audacity to suggest that this is "reality" television.

Whose reality would that be?