Mavs Wednesday Practice: Your All-Access Pass

  Rick Carlisle is monitoring the progress of three important people who have lockers in the Mavs dressing room. Josh Howard is in there. Shawn Marion is in there. And also taking up stall space: Mother Nature.

    JOSH SCRIMMAGES AND SPEAKS: Within the structure of the Mavs’ practices, it was a scrimmage. Within the structure of the NBA definition, it was a “contact drill.’’ Whatever you want to call it, Wednesday marked a watershed day for Howard, who has been sidelined since May after undergoing ankle surgery.

   “I was able to get out there and give it a shot,’’ Howard said in that near-whisper of his. “I’ve got to work through the pain. It's the first time I actually did any contact stuff, so I’ll have to keep doing rehab.''

    “Rehab’’ means continuing work with trainer Casey Smith. It means more stretching and more tension-bearing stuff. It means using whatever that furniture-like apparatus is that Josh has at home. It means ice -- "He went through about half of the stuff,’’ Carlisle said, “and then we iced him down’’ – and it still means a wait-and-see approach to participating in an actual game.

    But once everything’s right, maybe it will be more right than ever for Howard, plagued by ankle and wrist problems for the last couple of seasons.

    "That was the whole purpose of the surgery,'' Howard said. "Being still for, like, 23 weeks, and you start back doing contact stuff, you're going to have aches and pains.''

     And more waiting. But Wednesday was a start.

    As Josh said, “Any day out there is a good day.’’

    ‘NO UNDUE RISKS’: That was Carlisle’s catchphrase as he spoke about both Howard’s eventual return and about the caution being taken with Marion. At the same time, like any coach, he’s a kid waiting to unwrap Christmas presents when it comes to the tantalizing idea of having the healthy tandem of Marion and Howard at his disposal.

   “Whenever (Howard) is out there, our team gets a little more energized,'' said Rick, and obviously, the same compliment can be paid to Marion. “But we’re not going to take any undue risks. … Whenever we do get them back, there is going to be a dynamic that we have to make sure we get right.’’

    At this point, it appears neither will play Thursday at home against Detroit or Saturday at home against Cleveland. But eventually …

    “We have two weeks (before the start of the regular season),’’ Carlisle said. “We’ll be ready to go by the seat of our pants to make adjustments.’’

   ONE-ON-ONE WITH KIDD: I engaged Jason Kidd in a lengthy conversation (about a lot of things, most of which will end up in print in the coming days). But at the top of my list was wanting his review of Howard’s play. Kidd is a glass-is-half-full guy when he speaks, but he can’t control his facial communication cues; if he doesn’t like something, his faces scrunches up. If he likes something, he beams about it.

    “He looked great,’’ Kidd told DallasBasketball.com. “It was pretty much like he hadn’t missed a beat.’’

   And Kidd was beaming.

   MUSICAL CHAIRS AT CENTER: The coach continues to state that both Erick Dampier and Drew Gooden are important chess pieces in Dallas’ plans at center. He used this week’s two preseason games as examples of how that applies.

    “We’ll need Damp against the monsters,’’ he said. “He’ll play against (Cavs centers) Shaq and Ilgauskas. And then there’s Detroit, and they do a lot of different things, so we’ll have a lot of different things to look at there.’’

      JOSHING JOSH: Howard was joking around about how a “shooting guard’’ – his probable new position -- gets to shoot.

    “The (shooting guard) shots a little more jump shots, from what I’ve seen,” Howard kidded. “I don’t think (the transition is) going to be too difficult. Me and Shawn are pretty much the same type of players. We’ll just have to find a different way to score besides shooting jump shots all the time, I’ll say that much.”

   This statement – behind the laughs – bears further examination. …

   FISHELLANEOUS: The last two players on the floor: James Singleton (which seems to mark a trend there) and Quinton Ross, both of whom were lured into a lengthy game of HORSE with assistant Darrell Armstrong. … JJ Barea was impressive during a long-range shooting drill but was less impressive as a fashion plate. He is now wearing the same tight leggings favored by Shawn Marion; you know, the black ones with the orange piping that looks like the guys borrowed some long underwear from leather-skinned mascot MavsMan. … Another Carlisle quote regarding Howard: “The season's too long to take a risk and have the thing go into a yo-yo effect where it's OK one day and the he misses two.'' … A specific drill I noticed that seems designed to take advantage of a future Roddy Beaubois strength: The stop-and-pop jumper. Roddy, working against Armstrong, repeatedly drove left, trying to push D.A. off-balance, and then unleashed the pull-up jumper. It turned into a pretty good game of one-on-one, Armstrong still the master of drawing the charge, Beaubois hopefully a future master at getting a shot off the dribble-drive.