The 2008 'Best Of DB.com On The Mavs'

Ah, 2008! What a year it was … if not for the Mavs, then certainly for DallasBasketball.com, which continued its rich tradition of breaking stories like a newspaper, dishing irreverently like a radio talk show and failing to be responsible for anything we do wrong, just like everybody else in the sports blogosphere. (On our way to nine years of this, and one of these days, we're gonna get it right.) Our thanks to ya'll for your support, and as you toast your Happy New Year, please enjoy the Best Of … and The Worst Of. … DallasBasketball.com in 2008!

Top 11 Newsy Scoops Of The Year Stuff of import you couldn’t get anywhere else in the world (please tip your waitstaff).

11 Del Harris Tells DB.com He’ll Leave For The Bulls  But now who will we share pre-game cake with?

10 Antoine Wright To Get First Crack At Starting 2-Guard Job. And he tells us tales of his teenage-years friendship with Rick Carlisle.

9 The DMNews and The Star-Telegram To Share Sports Coverage. We broke this on July 28; the announcement came five months later.

8 Mavs ‘Busy And Looking’ At Kaman And Wallace  And still busy and still looking. ...

7 Nolan Ryan To Take Full Control of The Rangers, And Maybe Even Pursue Ownership That was us on Feb. 6, 2008 – a full seven months before SI.com got around to, um, re-breaking it. 

6 Westphal Hired As Mavs VP  Hard news, baby. Eat your heart out, Associated Press.

5 “The KVH Exception.’’ Born here. Best here. In some circles, DB.com's David Lord actually gets credit for citing its value before actually NBA teams thought of it. It's just below the pantheon of "Bird Rights,'' "Jordan Rules'' and "Ewing Theory.''

4 Final Three Candidates Are Carlisle, JVG and D’Antoni  We had ‘The Short List’ first.

3 Sources Say Mavs Have In-House Talks About Artest  But they just talked. Later came some non-buyers’ remorse.

2 Under The Bus The definitive and inside story of why Avery Johnson would need to be fired.

1 Rick’s The Pick: Carlisle Will Be Mavs’ New Coach Yeah that was us with The Shortest List, too.

Top Seven Offbeat Scoops Of The Year  Not all news is “hard news.’’ But that doesn’t mean it’s not the result of hard work. And Avery was a gold mine.

7 DeSagana Diop Reveals To DB.com That He Is 'The Paris Hilton Of Senegal.''

6 Are The Mavs Supporting Obama Or McCain? Oh, and which teammates would you like to see in The White House? Some patriotic stuff here.

5 Avery’s Naked Locker-Room Wrestling

4 Avery Johnson’s Pink Condo Is For Sale 

3 Tony Romo Buys A House ...

2 And It Turns Out To Be Haunted By The Ghost Of Quinn Buckner We’re a regular Ebby Haliday around here.

1 Dirk Tells A ‘Hitler Joke’ 

Incorrect Trio Of Scoops Of The Year We were wrong. We promise it’ll never happen again:

3 TCU’s Gary Patterson Is Probably Gone  Maybe from now on we steer clear from college football … except wait til 2009, when we tell you our Michael Crabtree scoop!

2 Mavs Want Diop To Be A Sign-And-Trade  Actually, the scoop was right; it was the Mavs who were wrong.

1 Players Voice Love Of Avery At Charity Ball  It was all behind-the-scenes, good stuff, and it was all true. The players did love Avery. But they also didn’t love him. It was complicated, apparently.

The Best 12 Of The One-On-Ones We often see blogosphere links trumpeting the news that so-and-so site “scored’’ an interview with one newsmaker or another. Congrats to the kids, but we’ve had real press credentials for 28 years, so around here, we “score’’ like we’re Wilt Gretzky.

12 Reviewing Jeff Pearman's Book "Boys Will Be Boys'' While Simultaneously Interviewing Jeff Pearlman. A bit unorthodox -- especially since we didn't exactly love Jeff's book. 

11 Meet J-Smoove: One-On-One With Josh Smith  The first in-depth interview with him after his summer signing.

10 Rick Barry Analyzes The Mavs  And what’s weird is, he does it for us by corresponding with DB.com 75-Member Staff Mike Bacsik, the Major-League pitcher.

9 Randy White Defends T.O., Calls Cris Carter ‘An Idiot’

8 Leave It To Gerald Green The new Mav tells us everything except why, four months later, he isn’t playing anymore.

7 Detlef Schrempf On The Death Of the NBA In Seattle 

6 Fish And Greggo! A visit with a supposed rival, radio guy Greg Williams.

5 Catching Up With Barry Switzer 

4 Donnie Nelson Says Notion Of Mavs As Non-Contenders Is ‘Silly’  Uttered on June 23. Was he wrong?

3 Buzz Bissinger: We Go One-On-One With The Pulitzer Winner

2 Emmitt Smith Intros Obama, Then Visits Exclusively With DB.com

1 Donnie: ‘Our Big 3 Ranks With Anybody’s’  Another summer utterance. Was he wrong?

Top Four Shootdown Scoops Of The Year But other news outlets are wrong way more frequently than we are. Not that we reveal in that or anything.

4 No, People, Lindsey Hunter Is Going To Chicago, Not Dallas 

3 Donnie’s Tells DB.com He’s Not Going To Golden State Shooting down Sam Smith = Not Hardly Fair.

2 Cuban Tells DB.com Mavs Have No Interest In Harrington 

1 All The Wrong Guesses At Who Would Be The Next Coach. Real news outlets, all over the country, dead-serious in pretending they had inside info, offering candidates from Rick Pitino to Bobby Knight. Why didn’t they just read DB.com and steal our info like everybody else does?

Fish’s Top Four Over-Uses Of Movie References Awards We’d use more classic book references, but we don’t read classic books.

4  Laverne & Devean Make A Porno Devean George celebrated a Mavs loss to the Lakers by searching out Kobe, goofing off in the LA locker room and hugging it out with Penny Marshall. We were pissed – and disgusted.

3 Our NBA Draft of Movie Characters.

2 Mike Fisher’s IMDb-approved co-starring role with Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox in ‘Transformers.’ Fish is Method.

1 A whole damn movie review of “W.’’ Our intent was pure and earnest. But maybe a bit much. 

DB.com's Best In Original Photos, Photoshops and Cartoons

5 FISHTOON: “T.O. … Werder. … Obsession!’’

4 Bonding In Bavaria by the gang at DB.com Boards. Dirk and Rick in Germany. … with cleavage.

3 FISHTOON: ‘Wade, You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out!’

2 The Temptation of Devin by Stereolith

1 The Mirror Has Two Faces by Danny Bollinger

DB.com Trend-Setting Awards We’re still learning how to use a Hula-Hoop. But sometimes, we’re ahead of the Game of Cool.

4 The DB.com Staff Gets Pacman Jones A Ticket To A Mavs Game And later, our bodyguard beat the hell outta him.

3 Kidd Buys His Teammates The Ultimate Ear

2  Modano & Hull To Open A Restaurant 

1 That Damned Snowflake Uniform We chased the story like it was the friggin’ Lindbergh baby. And we broke the story! So can we please put it as No. 1?

DB.com Media Pissin’ Matches of The Year We like everybody. Why won’t they like us back?

4 Skip Bayless What a turd.

3 An Unforgiving Fish Still Whips Jean-Jacques Taylor’s Ass At Every Opportunity A few years ago, the DMNews’ self-important fire hydrant of a human wrote that Mike Fisher was old and washed up. Just because that’s true doesn’t mean we have to listen to it. Now get off my lawn.

2 Free Darko picked a fight (or maybe we started it) over J-Ho's National Anthem screwup and eventually Fish got accused of racism. Little do his now-friends at Free Darko realize that he is in fact an Afro-Texan. But anyway, thanks to Shoals, we kissed and made up.

1 ESPN’s Bill Simmons Calls Out DallasBasketball.com. And we’ll leave it at that least he arranges for Cousin Sal to put a hit on us.

The Ladies of DallasBasketball.com

3 Jason Kidd drove a Porschla. And a May.

2 The 15 Hottest Dallas Sportswomen. Ever.  The opportunity to search the internet for naked photos of Babe Didrickson Zaharias.

1 Marcia We were stuck in Hurricane Ike. And if we're ever stuck in a hurricane again, we want to do it with Marcia.

Best Freelancing, Friends And Compliments For DB.com

8 “Well, DallasBasketball.com isn’t just a ‘blog.’ It’s an ‘information destination.’’ – Mark Cuban, during the Blogger Ban controversy.

7 MavsMoneyball Can we be MFFLs and BFFs?

6 Deadspin can’t get enough of us. Same with SLAM magazine. Oh, and Yahoo's Ball Don't Lie, too. Those three, they eat us like M&Ms. In fact, those three links came from three different DB.com stories IN ONE WEEK in July. Also in the running to be our BFFs (we have a big loving heart) are TheBigLead and HoopsHype and SI.com’s rumors section any many more.

5 DB.com Is Honored On Hardwood Paroxysm’s “Table of Elements.’’ Even though we flunked science.

4 Tim MacMahon and Eddie Sefko of the DMNews, Richie Whitt of the Dallas Observer, the FrontBurner gang at D Magazine, Randy Galloway and Jan Hubbard at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Art Garcia, Bob Sturm at the Ticket, http://sturminator.blogspot.com/ Newy Scruggs at NBC5, Wally Lynn at ESPN, Greggo at ESPN, and voices-of-the-Mavs Cooperstein and Followill. All big shots – and in a sense, competitors of ours. Yet all willing to throw our little operation an occasional bone of credit when we do something right. Thanks, fellas.  

3 “Fish is the best journalist in the world. I’d trust him with my life.’’ – Jerry Jones, in June 2008, to anyone who would listen as he nursed a drink in the bar at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

2 And Toward Me He Charged: Me And Charles Haley for Deadspin. Our “Tales From The Darkside of The Locker Room’’ contribution makes bananas and death threats sound fun!

1 Swingtown  The Dallas Observer asks us to break the lid on the Dallas “swingers’’ scene, complete with a trip to the notorious “Cherry Pit.’’ We come out unscathed, with no STDs but maybe with a Katie Award?

Top 12 Oughta-Be-Trademarked Nicknames And Catchphrases (a.k.a., TheUberMan Cup)

12 Jerry StackMouth  After he almost ruined the Kidd trade by winking about how he’d boomerang back to Dallas.

11 “Grow Some Bacsiks!’’ In honor of the balls shown by our friend Mike Bacsik and his willingness to pitch to Barry Bonds – fatefully, as it turned out.

10 “BrokeStack Mountain’’ All about Avery’s manlove for grossly overused Jerry Stackhouse.

9 KIDDIRK

8 Milkface  Unfortunately, we figured out the meaning just in time to be embarrassed with Devin Harris. … and just in time for him to leave town.

7 The Inch-High Point-Guard Guy. It's a compliment, JJB. And at least we know you are neither "Mexican'' or a "Smurf.''

6 8X50 

5 Premature eJamesculation

4 The LIBB “The Lightning In A Bottle Boys.’’ The Animal, G-Money, AW, Shawne. … All it takes is one of these guys to really bust out. ...

3 The Triangle of Trust 

2 Ivory Johnson  A pre-emptive nickname for Rick Carlisle, fingers-crossed that he wouldn’t simply be a more pale version of Avery Johnson.

1 A five-way tie: “Clichévry Johnson’’; “Red AuerBlack’’; The Miracle Worker’’;“Honest Ave’’; “The Lil’ Johnson.’’ We could go on and on and on. … and plan to, if Avery doesn’t shut his wide ol’ pie hole.

Top Eight Mavs Potent Quotables (at-large media category)

8.“My goal throughout the rest of my career won’t change. I want to win the championship. That’s what I’m playing for.’’ – Dirk Nowitzki.

7. I’m looking for a few assholes here.’’ – Carlisle at camp.

6 “I call that ‘Poisonous journalism’ … ‘Is the coach really confident in Kidd?’ It’s poisonous journalism, try to poison the people. That’s what I’m really disappointed about.’’ – Avery, questioning those who would dare question him for sitting Kidd in San Antonio last February. 

5 “Step away from your crack dealer.’’ --  Cuban to a Sporting News writer who asked about trading for Kidd.

4  “We all know Avery ran a little dictatorship.’’ – Dirk, to start this year’s camp.

3 “His ass will be grass, and me, Donnie and Mark would be the lawn mowers.’’  -- Carlisle, on Shawne Williams.

2 “That's not the Josh Howard that y'all seen. That was ‘The Idiot.’’’ – J-Ho, at Media Day to begin this season.

1 “We don’t want to keep sucking on that pacifier.’’ – Avery, on March 9, a comment that at the time we insisted was “ill-advised’’ and hinted at “a developing situation.’’ And then, for subtlety, we placed next to the quote a cartoon of a ticking timebomb.

Top Four DB.com Mavs Potent Quotables (DB.com exclusive category)

4.“You know, I actually smile a lot. You just need to catch me at the very right moment.’’ – Erick Dampier to DB.com.

3 “The only way to get me out of here is with either a pink slip or a pine box.’’ – Donnie Nelson to DB.com, speaking on his future as the GM here.

2 “We have a Big 3 that ranks with anybody’s.’’ Donnie to DB.com, on June 20.

1 “You can’t control what the ball do. It's craazy, man.’’ – Josh Howard, recorded by DB.com for the purpose of infamy.

 

111pm dec 30 2008

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