Thursday Mavs Practice Report: AUDIO from the AAC

Reviewing Utah and previewing New Orleans. The "Josh Watch.'' Jet adds to the confidence talk. The Mavs’ interest in Shaq. … and Chris Paul. … and don’t forget Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade. … Kidd vs. Devin. … Deadspin digging DB.com. … and of course,  DallasBasketball.com’s patented “DB.com’s Audio from the AAC’’. … all part of the Thursday Mavs Practice Report:

ITEM: Remember a couple of weeks ago when coach Rick Carlisle said he was unwilling to provide a “Josh Watch’’? No prob.

We’ll do it.

The Thursday Josh Watch: To our eyes, he looked as healthy as can be expected – just like he did in keyed the Wednesday blowout of Utah. That, plus the fact the Mavs issued no new news on the ankle, leaves us hopeful that he didn’t experience any major overnight problems with it.

Also, J-Ho’s eye did not look as swollen as it did the night before, but he did have a Band-Aid over it.

 ITEM: Coach Carlisle sees Josh’s health as more of an X-Factor than Josh himself. (Funny. Josh also refered to himself as an X-Factor here.) Listen below for more.

 ITEM: Jason Terry on clinching a playoff spot: “We can’t be happy or satisfied. We still have a lot of work to do.” And Jet, what about the Mavs being in the playoffs for the ninth straight year? “I wanted to make a point that when I came here, we made it every year,’’ Jet said. “I don’t think it was ever in question that we would make it this year.”

Confidence? Jet's always had it. But as we wrote this morning, it's now oozing out of this locker room.

 ITEM: It seems that Gerald Green is Daryl Armstrong’s new project. As we observed a couple of days ago, they do a lot of work together. They went through some more one-on-one drills today. Color us “hopeful.’’

 ITEM: Good work from Tim MacMahon of the DMNews on two fronts:

1Tim made a nice observation on Kidd and Devin and New Jersey. It seems the Nets are missing Jason Kidd a little more than some might think – maybe even more than the Nets themselves might’ve thought.

 And just for the Jason Kidd haters, take a look at his stats compared to other guards in the league this season.

2^nd in rebounding

3^rd in steals

6^th in assists

7^th in blocks

25^th in turnovers (Devin is 5^th)

2 Tim also dug up a rumor'y scoop of sorts with his Mavs-Like-CP3 story. Tim is careful and smart here, framing it as "rumor'' and a "word-is'' sort of thing. But he's got a lot of fire to go with the smoke. So we make this another log on another fire -- the fire that says Dallas is mindful of trying to make big moves this summer. (We know, we know, you've heard it all before.)

So we have the Shaq flirtation. (The DallasBasketball.com exclusive that even Deadspin is digging.) And we have Chris Bosh stuff that won't go away. And there's even that Sefko-fueled/Fisher-followed Wade angle stuffed into the back of our filing cabinet. 

But that's for the summer. Let's get back to practice. ...

Wanna check out what coach Carlisle and Jet had to say?  

DB.com AUDIO at the AAC

Coach Carlisle

Jason Terry

As always, you can get Angry Trey’s thoughts on the Mavs and whatever else I feel like writing about over at AngryTrey.blogspot.com

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449pm apr 9 2009