About the Dallas Mavericks

The Dallas Mavericks are a professional basketball team and one of seven teams in the Midwest Division of the Western Conference of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Dallas Mavericks play games in Reunion Arena in Dallas, Texas, and wear jerseys of blue, white, and green. The teams name derives from Texass history of cattle herding.

Professional basketball came to Dallas in 1980 when the NBA granted an expansion team franchise to real estate developer Donald J. Carter. The Mavericks entered NBA play in the 1980-81 season. After a horrid debut season, typical for an expansion club, the Mavericks administration soon built a competitive team. The Mavericks draft picks in their first seven years acquired talented players such as guards Rolando Blackman and Derek Harper; forwards Mark Aguirre, Detlef Schrempf, and Roy Tarpley; and center Sam Perkins.

Dallas registered its first winning season in 1983-84, its fourth season, when the team posted a 43-39 record and made its first appearance in the playoffs. Solid scoring from Aguirre and Blackman helped the Mavericks beat the Seattle SuperSonics and enter the conference semifinals before losing to the Los Angeles Lakers. During the next two years the team posted winning records, and in the 1985-86 season Dallas beat the Utah Jazz in the first round of the playoffs before again losing to the Lakers in the conference semifinals.

With a starting lineup of studs Aguirre, Blackman, Harper, Perkins, and center James Donaldson, the Mavericks won 55 games during the 1986-87 season to finish first in the Midwest Division. Dallas lost in the first round of the playoffs to the Seattle SuperSonics. The next year Schrempf and Tarpley contributed solid rebounding to the team and the Mavericks beat the Houston Rockets and Denver Nuggets in the first two rounds of the playoffs to earn a place against the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference Finals. The series lasted seven games with outstanding play from Donaldson, Harper, and Tarpley, but the Dallas Mavericks lost in the deciding contest.

The Dallas Mavericks successful starting lineup was torn apart during the 1988-89 season. Donaldson missed most of the season due to injury, the NBA suspended Tarpley for violating the leagues substance abuse policy, and the Mavericks traded Aguirre and Schrempf. The team missed the playoffs in the 1988-89 season and two years later slipped to the bottom of the NBA. The Dallas Mavericks won only 22 games in 1991-92 and in each of the next two seasons they were close to break the NBAs all-time record for fewest victories, winning only 11 games in 1992-93 and 13 in 1993-94.

Last-place seasons gave the Mavericks the opportunity to draft three of the nations best college players: guard Jim Jackson in 1992, forward Jamal Mashburn in 1993, and guard Jason Kidd in 1994. But injuries slowed both Jackson and Mashburn, and at times the team found it difficult to mold the three talented players into an effective unit. In the late 1990s Mavericks general manager Don Nelson attempted to rebuild the team with a series of trades, including the trades of Jackson, Mashburn, and Kidd. A nine-player deal with the New Jersey Nets, was the largest in NBA history.