It's time to undertake the difficult task of owning Jennifer Floyd Engel.

This post was born out of a simple Twitter comment by our heroin:

@engeljen Jennifer Floyd Engel
Hell, I wanted them [the Mavs] to win.


Here is how much she wanted them to win. Careful here Jen...don't want to be mistaken as a homer.



Forget one and done for the Mavericks; they're done

Nothing died Sunday in Portland, despite contrary reports. Nothing that was really ever real anyway.

What we witnessed with LaMarcus Aldridge and his Trail Blazers slapping an already wobbly Dallas Mavericks bunch around was just further indicators of a team limping through yet another April for another date with yet another premature postseason ejection.

The Mavs are not contenders, not for anything of any weight.

The Ben and Skin radio boys like to claim proprietary rights to "One And Done Boys" as a Mavericks nickname. By all means, it is yours, boys.

In light of recent events in LA, San Fran and, most recently, Portland, that nickname seems overly optimistic anyway. The Mavs already have clinched a postseason spot, so we have at least a playoff series to muddle through. Plans for anything beyond a trip or two to Portland, or whoever ends up as the No. 6 seed, seem dicey, at best.

All signs point to "The Done and Done Boys" or "The Looks Like 2007 Boys" as being better monikers. Or just "The Mavericks" fits, too, because with a stack of 50-win seasons and very little playoff cha-ching to show for them, Mavs basketball has come to epitomize amazing regular season, disappointing postseason.

I know stats say this is the third-best team in the West, has been all year. What the No. 3 seed does not mean is that the Mavs will be the team most likely to challenge either the Spurs or Lakers this season -- or going forward. Because unlike OKC or Portland, who are young and hungry and generally assumed to be up-and-coming, the Mavs are not a team on the rise. This is an aging team trying to slap together one last miracle run for Dirk Nowitzki -- except road trips like this latest seem to illustrate just how unlikely that actually would be.

The Lakers loss on Thursday, while hardly surprising, felt like watching a team who knew it could not win. Teams know, you know? They know when they have what it takes to make a long run, and the danger with an older team like the Mavs is the futility seeps into their game long before they see the Lakers.

Why else would you have Jason Terry confusing a cheap shot with toughness? Toughness is playing hard-nosed defense late in a game, standing up for a teammate, not being fake tough and then launching into diatribe about Matt Barnes being the Charminator when he demonstrates what tough really looks like.

How ironic for JET to be calling anybody soft, a point that Barnes made to his friends at the LA Times.

"I'm not worried about what he's talking about," he told that fine newspaper. "In Golden State, we showed how to beat Dallas. You got in there and take it right to their chin and they back down. I don't see anything has changed since then, so hopefully we will have a chance to see them again."

Get mad. Now ask yourself: Did he lie?

Did Barnes say anything that is untrue? Are the Mavs not a team that crashed and burned against No. 8-seeded Golden State in 2007? Do they not look shockingly like that team even now, four years later? Does anybody see them beating LA in a seven-game series?

Of course, it is hard to imagine them beating anybody in a seven-game series after what we saw against Golden State and Portland. What I learned via content sharing Monday was the Mavs have not beaten a Western Conference playoff team since Jan. 19, a string of eight losses against the very teams they would need to beat to actually contend for a West Finals appearance.

And while coach Rick Carlisle was busy saying, "We're not going to make excuses," his Mavs and a few loyal media friends have been firing them off with alarming speed and seeming belief in recent days.

Four games in five nights. Lots of back-to-backs.

Tyson Chandler's injury. Golden State is a tough game.

And bigger excuses like "if Caron Butler were healthy, then everything would be better/different/more likely" or desperate wishes of "if only Kobe/Timmy D/Bynum/Ginobili were to go down." And if this were the first year we had seen or heard this, sure, we might be buying it. But this is every year; every year there is an excuse as to why the Mavs were not quite good enough.

The reality is: Why does not matter. They are not, and hoping they will be is not an actual strategy getting back to a championship.

No, nothing really died Sunday in Portland.

The Mavs may win one or none but they are not going to contend for anything of any weight until they fix what has been and is still broken.

Jennifer Floyd Engel817-390-7697

Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/04/04/2974296/forget-one-and-done-for-the-mavericks.html#ixzz1PNPC2YRO

What's that you say about that "predictably" dropped in? Yours truly had Blazers in six? I admit to having little to no faith in anything beyond another first-round gag for this Mavs team.

Why does this matter for the Mavs, when a quick glance at the standings will tell you they are not slated for a Spurs showdown until the West Finals? And that requires beating Kobe, Andrew Bynum and LA first so, in other words, not likely, not happening, not based on what we saw when The Traveling Lakers Show came to town a couple of weeks ago.

What Duncan's injury does (if serious, and who knows with Gregg Popovich) is give the Lakers a teeny, tiny chance of catching San Antonio, and the Mavs a little hope for better than one and done if they fall to No. 4.

And therein lies the single biggest problem for the Mavs: Once they get out of the first round, and even that assumption feels a little dicey considering everything else feels a little déjà vu-ish, like we already have seen this movie and know how it ends.

This is nothing new. I have written it before and argued it every season with my media friends who confuse 50 Ws with a chance. They have been a good team for a long time, which can never quite seem to get over the hump. It feels like luck will be needed this go-around, too, so take Duncan on crutches and hope it leads to a seeding miracle.


Does a coaching change solve core problems for Mavericks, Stars?

Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/04/13/2999037/does-a-coaching-change-solve-core.html#ixzz1PNN8oGGg

Coaching was not necessarily the Stars' biggest problem, and certainly is not the Mavs' biggest. Not that this will stop Mavs owner Mark Cuban from laying another first-round exit at the feet of Rick Carlisle if his team does not regain its mojo from earlier this season. It is one of those realities everybody kind of knows and no one discusses.

It will satisfy a few MFFLs. And solve nothing.

The Mavericks' playoff "problem" has not been who is doing the coaching so much as who is being coached.

The first question I asked Carlisle was about my personal theory that what seed the Mavs end up with, whom they play and where they play does not matter nearly as much as how they are playing. The worry is not so much who but what we saw down the stretch -- the mistakes, the game in Houston, the lack of energy at times, the meltdowns by Jet, the lack of any indicators that they would give the Lakers or Spurs a fight.

If the Mavs lose in the first round and Carlisle loses his job, as is likely, it will be because you cannot fire 12 or they are unwilling to admit the fatal flaws of a few who constitute that number.

We beat The Blakers. One less letter and we're in the West Finals, baby.

Give Mavs owner Mark Cuban credit.

He has a point; this sunshine-pumping shtick is fun. And, really, what is not to love about this Mavs team going into the playoffs on what is now a one-game winning streak?

Even Denver coach George Karl loves this Mavs team, talking about the "great job" coach Rick Carlisle is doing with his "cute offensive stuff." Karl is not one to be a smart aleck. No, smart-aleck-ery is not in his personality at all.

Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/04/08/2986970/whats-not-to-like-about-these.html#ixzz1PNODehQr
The Mavs have not beaten a Western Conference playoff team since Jan. 19, which is a genius strategy, really. Do you see how teams like Denver and LA seem to be trying to steer clear of OKC and face Dallas as early as humanly possible?

This plays right into what I am assuming has been Dallas' plan in playing so mediocre-ly lately. A big nucleus of this Mavs bunch saw what the role of "nobody believes this team will win a playoff series" did for Golden State in 2007 and want to replicate that non-mojo, right down to having everybody chalking them up to first-round fodder.

Mark Cuban is right to question media members' unwillingness to bask in this definition of success.

Mark my words: The Mavs will not slide so far that they give up that No. 3 seed and a second-round date with LA -- mostly because OKC does not want it. Everybody is trying to avoid the team from LA that plays in the Staples Center with the really exciting league superstar that everybody is talking about.

Except the Mavs.

Who know it is not about whether they win or lose, but rather about whether the proper spin is administered.