New Dawg Blog

NBA star Tracy McGrady makes some fat dollars.  Try $21 million a season to play for the Houston Rockets.  Well T-Mac has a little one who was born in Florida and the baby’s momma wants him to pay up. 

He is currently married and has three kids already.  The court papers says his daughter Tracy was born in the fall of 2005.  One month before his son was born and a year before he was married.

A Florida court says he has to pay up.  Just 54 thousand a year.  Not a month…a year.  Talk about a guy who got off easy.  T-Mac had one heck of a lawyer.

The amount is far less than the $204,000 a year that Pearl Vega, 36, had argued would be more in line with McGrady’s $21.6 million annual income and give their child a lifestyle more equal to that of McGrady’s other children.

Vega’s attorney immediately filed a notice the mother would appeal.

In a trial in December, Vega’s attorneys highlighted exactly what it means to be the child of an NBA star:

McGrady shares a six-bedroom, 23,000-square-foot house with a pool outside Houston with his wife and three children. He spends $5,000 per month on a chef and $1,732 for a housekeeper.

One of the children had a $16,000 birthday party for about 40 children, with a magician, clown, face painter, games and music.

McGrady and his family spend about $45,000 per month for personal travel, sometimes on private jets. The children went on trips to New York, to North Carolina a dozen times — to Florida about the same number — and to Atlanta, California, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the Bahamas, Mexico, the Virgin Islands, and Rio de Janeiro.

They stay at Ritz-Carltons, have private preschool and tutors, and get thousands of dollars of clothes every month.

here is the story.

Jan Hubbard of the Star-Telegram catches up with Mavs point guard Jason Kidd at Team USA Olympic practice in Las Vegas.

Kidd the coach killer says he didn’t lop off Avery Johnson this spring.

Kidd has been accused of being a “coach killer,” a label he has disputed. But he’s aware of the talk, so when Avery Johnson was fired by the Mavericks, Kidd told a friend: “They can’t blame that one on me. When I got there, the players all thought he was crazy. And he was.”

The story just confirms what everyone thought, Avery didn’t let Kidd do his thing so it was a waste to make the trade:

When he joined the Mavericks after the Feb. 19 trade from the Nets, he thought Johnson would employ an up-tempo style that would take advantage of Kidd’s considerable passing skills. Instead, he found that Johnson was a rigid coach who was a domineering presence on the sidelines.

“We ran the first couple of games,” Kidd said. “And then we stopped. A lot of times, our offense was used to set up our defense. We slowed it down instead of getting out and running and putting pressure on [opponents] after missed shots or even makes. We were pretty much — not just myself, but everybody — looking over to the sideline, trying to figure out what was going to be called.”

Kidd is at his best in the open court, operating without constraints and creating easy shots for teammates. But he found that he had little freedom with Johnson.

It was noted during the season that Kidd probably spent more time looking at the sidelines for instructions in three months under Johnson than he had combined in his 13-year career. When asked Saturday if he had any problem with that observation, Kidd said: “That’s fair.”

How did former South Oak Cliff star Darrell Arthur fall so darn far on draft day?  A kidney issue.  Sports Illustrated’s Luke Winn as the details of Arthur’s fall from lotto pick to almost out of the first round.

The gist of it, according to Arthur’s agent, Jerry Hicks: During medical examinations at the Pre-Draft camp in Orlando at the beginning of the month, Arthur’s blood was shown to contain higher-than-normal levels of creatine, which can be a possible indicator of kidney failure or malfunction. “Three teams inquired about those lab results,” Hicks told SI.com. “One called, we talked about it for 3-4 minutes, and they expressed no real concern. On the 24th [of June], Philadelphia asked about it, and I asked them, rather than doing additional bloodwork for them that day, when he had his final workout with Washington on the 25th, we’d do it in Washington.

“We did the bloodwork on the morning of the 25th, and by noon, [Arthur's kidneys] were determined to be completely normal. I received a message from Washington — which is still saved in my voice mail in my office — that everything was normal. Philadelphia received word that things were normal. How this became an issue around the league is puzzling, to say the least.”

It appears that only two of the NBA’s 30 teams had the full story on Arthur’s kidneys; the rest were working off of the rumor mill, the details of which hit the airwaves by the time the first round hit the mid-20s. ESPN broke into its draft broadcast with a report that Arthur was slipping due to an “undisclosed kidney issue.” Arthur’s mother, Sandra, who was sitting beside him in the Green Room, looked up at one of the Garden’s video screens and shook her head. “I knew something had to have happened to make Darrell not get taken higher,” she said, “and that stuff was just not true.”

Mavs owner Mark Cuban is down on the Olympics.  He had two players who will play in the Games in August (Jason Kidd and Dirk Nowitzki)  He told David Moore of the Dallas Morning News:

“It’s not that I don’t like the idea of them representing their countries,” Cuban said by e-mail. “If the Olympics were truly a nationalistic endeavor built on sport and part of the public domain, I would be willing to take risk and support their playing. What I don’t like is that we lie to ourselves and pretend that the Olympians represent our country.

“They don’t. They have taken relatively low paying jobs working for the Olympics, who in turn sell the broadcast and marketing rights for billions of dollars in profits, all the while creating enormous risk for those of us who pay them for their day jobs that support their families. It’s amazing how players who are free agents won’t participate, but those with guaranteed contracts will.

“I hate the fact that we lie to ourselves and pretend this is about representing country,” Cuban said. “It’s not. It’s about money.”

I wish I were a billionaire and could complain about meaningless stuff.

New Mavericks head coach Rick Carlisle says he wants the club to run next season, “If you’re going to play at a faster tempo offensively, there’s an unbelievable physical commitment,” Carlisle said. “It’s probably going to be one of the tougher training camps. … The summer our guys have in terms of preparation and conditioning is going to be absolutely critical.”

He spent plenty of time talking about how much he wants Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Kidd to be the guys who get the team back to championship form.

He wants Josh Howard back.  Carlisle said at his opening presser that he plans to have dinner with Howard and wants him in the fold, “My first message is that we need him.”

Carlisle praised the work Avery Johnson did and says the roster will undergo some changes.   He says they will keep playing the hard nosed defense Johnson put in.

Here’s what I liked from Rick.  He truly thinks this club can “find a way” to get the roster redone and get back to the playoffs.   He plans to travel to Germany and take time to get to know Dirk.

I liked his confidence that he can coach and win with this team.  I know he is supposed to say that, but I like the body language he had when saying it.  I didn’t think I was hearing a bunch of jive talk.

I liked the fact he saw positives in working with Donnie Nelson and Mark Cuban.  I like the fact he is reaching out to his players and is willing to change the style of play to fit this group of Mavericks.

Give Carlisle credit for trying to pump up Kidd’s worth at the presser.  Kidd is a known coach killer so it’s wise to get him on the side of the new coach and get him to champion his new style.

I like the fact he played with Larry Bird in Boston and sees things from Bird’s game that he could bring to Dirk’s to make it easier for him to play the game.

The guy has a winning record as a head coach and has been to the playoffs five of his six years as a coach in the NBA.  Carlisle is a former NBA Coach of the Year.

Rick Carlisle will be named the next Mavs head coach.   We have been on this story for sometime, so why don’t the Mavs pull the trigger.

Jeff Caplan has the story.

Says Mike Fisher of dallasbasketball.com:

By NEWY SCRUGGS

Special to the Star-Telegram

You can’t fix stupid. Somebody said that the other day, and it sure fits Dallas Mavericks forward Josh Howard’s actions the last few weeks.

The Mavericks can’t trade him now. That’s right. They can’t trade him because they won’t get value for him.

Howard’s play was absolutely horrible in the playoffs against the New Orleans Hornets. He shot just 29 percent from the floor.

Off the court, his actions were almost unforgivable.

The coach asked his players to be focused for the playoffs and cut out the parties. J-Ho decided he needed a birthday bash for himself after Game 4 at a Dallas nightclub.

He should have been ashamed to show up in public. Remember he was el stinko, bricking 3 of 16 shots for a measly six points as the Mavs went down 3-1 in the series.

It was the ultimate disrespect for the head coach and a reason why Avery Johnson is no longer employed by the team. Howard clearly didn’t care what Johnson had to say and wasn’t focused on winning a title.

It was stupid of Howard to go on Michael Irvin’s radio show and proclaim his love for smoking weed in the off-season the day of a playoff game and with his team in an 0-2 series hole. I wondered if he was high to admit to breaking the law, proclaiming “other players use it” as some type of defense, and causing a distraction that was not needed.

Howard’s good name with the Mavericks has taken a beating, and he’s to blame.

He deserved for fans to be upset with him. We know Dirk Nowitzki was sick of Howard’s antics, telling the media after the Mavs were sent on summer vacation:

“Bad timing in the playoffs,” he said. “It’s time to just concentrate about basketball and focus on it… not let any distractions come up.”

Josh Howard isn’t a bad guy. He’s just not a smart one, even if he attended Wake Forest University.

Back in the late ’90s, Washington traded away Chris Webber because he was making dumb off-the-court decisions. He matured while he was with the Kings and rewarded them with some exciting teams while the Wizards went nowhere with good guys Mitch Richmond and Otis Thorpe.

The Mavericks want to avoid that type of personnel mistake, so I don’t see Howard going anywhere. He needs some guidance and probably a drug counselor.

Maybe they can fix stupid.

Newy Scruggs is sports director for NBC 5.

Say it ain’t so D-Wade.  Rumors say he’s dating Star Jones?  What a waste of superstar talent.

Flog that man.  God gives D-Wade, money, power, fame, and TV ads with Charles Barkley and he decides to kick it with Star Jones. 

He plays in Miami!  He can roll down to South Beach and Star Jones is the best thing he can come up with?   Of course the boys from TNT (Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith) were clowing him about Star.

Read the rest of it.

Click here to watch Star-Telegram Mavericks beat writer, Jeff Caplan, and yours truly break down the Avery Johnson press conference.

Did Avery really want the Jason Kidd trade to go down?

Is Dirk Nowitzki really the guy to take them to a championship?

Where does this club go from here?

And why the Mavericks should call the Charlotte Bobcats about players?

 newy@newdawg.com