Heard It Through the Grapevine
Posted by Rob Mahoney on December 14, 2009 under The Grapevine | 
- Mike Prada of the killer Wizards blog Bullets Forever ranked all the teams in the league in terms of their entertainment value. Frankly, I was pleasantly surprised to find the Mavs come in at no. 8. Not too shabby. Here’s Prada’s take: “Sometimes, this team is just, well, exquisite (pardon the snobbyness). Watching Jason Kidd run a fast break is still one of the most beautiful things in sports. Dirk Nowitzki is like an expert craftsman, and while Jason Terry is annoying in the same way Mo Williams is, his all-court game is criminally underrated. But Dallas is also, well, predictable. Everything is pick-and-roll, pick-and-pop, pick-and-isolation to Dirk (okay, the last one isn’t official NBA lingo, but I had to include it). They execute their plays so well, but they’re still the same plays, and that can get old sometimes.”
- “When like stout Duncan when with robotic eyes/He star’d at the Maverick – and all his men/Look’d at each other with a wild surmise –/Silent, upon a tight rope in a Dirkus Circus.” For you, only the finest in Nowtizkian sonnets.
- Dirk can be a free agent this summer if he so chooses, but it’s considered a foregone conclusion that he’ll stay in Dallas. And as much as I like surprises, I’m glad that Dirk doesn’t stray from expectation regarding his possible free agent status (via Tim Povtak of FanHouse): “I’ve always said it wouldn’t feel right if I left the Mavericks…I’ve played my heart out in Dallas for 12 years, so going somewhere else doesn’t sound good to me. I’m not even sure how a championship would feel somewhere else. I know what it would feel like to do it in Dallas….In this business, you know how it is, but I hadn’t planned on opting out,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, I want to finish my career in Dallas. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”
- Germany has been chosen as one of the wild card selections for the FIBA World Championships this summer.
- Only four players in history have shot at least 7 for 7 in a game while also grabbing 18 rebounds. One of them is Erick Dampier.
- Rick Carlisle on the value of the win over the Bobcats (via Eddie Sefko): “When you’re trying to be a special team, these are the kind of games you find a way to win…It’s a gut-check game to win. We were playing behind the whole second half. It’s another game we win shooting under 40 percent.”