NBA Playoffs LOOK: Mavs Break 6-Year Streak; Suspend Cheap-Shot Jazz Royce O'Neale?

Late-night drama, stubborn Super Bowl sights, a 50-year drought and a new philanthropic dating app, all in this week's DFW sports notebook.

WHITT’S END: 4.22.22

Whether you’re at the end of your coffee, your day, your week or even your rope, welcome to Whitt’s End …

*They say nothing good happens after 2 a.m., but DFW was reminded Thursday that staying up late can indeed be great.

Way past bedtime on a school night, both the Dallas Mavericks and Texas Rangers won games and exorcised demons in their Houses of Horror. Around 11 p.m., the Mavs broke an 11-game losing streak in Salt Lake City’s Vivint Arena. An hour later the Rangers won a game in Seattle’s T-Mobile Park, where they had been 2-17 since 2020. If only the Dallas Cowboys could’ve kicked-off around midnight in their personal Waterloo, better known as Baltimore’s M&T Bank Stadium.

Melissa Majchrzak/NBAE via Getty Images

Jalen Brunson

Alex Goodlett/Getty Images

72 points, 1 turnover

Melissa Majchrzak/NBAE via Getty Images

11-game losing streak, kaput

The Cowboys have lost more games (53) to the Philadelphia Eagles than any opponent, but their worst win percentage has come on the road against the Ravens where they are 1-5 with an average defeat of 16.5 points. Fortunately for Dallas, no visits to Maryland are on the 2022 schedule.

Not surprisingly, the Rangers’ all-time nemesis are the California/Anaheim/Los Angeles Angels with 497 losses. But, like the Cowboys, they have a stadium in which they’ve won only once – going 1-5 in Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.

The Mavs, which hadn’t won in Utah since April 11, 2016 before Thursday night’s Game 3, have by far the most glaring enemy territory: Los Angeles. Dallas has lost 115 games to the Lakers, including a hideous 21-62 road record at the Forum and Staples Center that included a 19-game losing streak in the 1990s.

The Mavs almost blew a 17-point lead until Spencer Dinwiddie saved the day. The Rangers rallied from a five-run deficit, capped by Adolis Garcia's best helmet-less run since Jason Witten in Philly 15 years ago.

One late night. Two streaks snapped. Those bleary eyes at the water cooler this morning were worth it.

*Looking for my Mavs-Jazz Game 3 ramblings? Baked a fresh batch of feel-good, upset-win flavored “Mavs Donuts” right here. If you’re really hungry, munch of Game 1 and Game 2 while you’re at it. Bon Appétit!

Want to not feel good?

Watch Jazz cheap-shot clown Royce O'Neale repeatedly "hunt down'' Jalen Brunson, and anybody else in the other uniform, for this series of plays that are simply not basketball. Brunson was nearly seriously hurt on one of these.

And O'Neale should be seriously punished for all of them.

*Here we no again. With Cowboys’ Super Bowl talk, that is. Coaches. Veterans. Even newcomers like Dante Fowler – who has actually played in a Super Bowl – just can’t help themselves. To the Cowboys, 26 seasons of failure simply means they’re due. Er, overdue.

*Despite Thursday night’s dramatic 8-6 victory made possible only by a rally from a 5-0, first-inning deficit, wiggling out of a bases-loaded jam in the 8th, a two-out, two-run counterpunch in the 9th and a diving catch by Adolis Garcia to seal it, I fear I need to amend my Rangers prediction. Two weeks ago I guaranteed they wouldn’t lose 102 games this season. Maybe 103? At 3-9 they are off to their worst start since 1987 (2-10) and the days of Bobby Valentine, Ruben Sierra and Charlie Hough. They did, however, turn a triple play this week in Seattle. Raise your hand if you predicted the Rangers would produce a triple play this season before Marcus Semien hit a home run. The $175 million second baseman – who last year clubbed 45 homers in Toronto – has yet to hit one in 50 at-bats with Texas.

*It was cantankerous Cowboys coach Bill Parcells that famously emasculated excuses in quipping “You are what your record says you are.” Rangers’ GM Jon Daniels this week was asked about his team’s slow start and went anti-Parcells. Reasoned Daniels, “We should be better than what our record is.”

*Here me out, because initially this will sound utterly insane: But for a franchise that boasts 7-foot, Wurzburg-born, 31,000-point scorer Dirk Nowitzki, is Maxi Kleber the best tall, German, 3-point shooter in Mavericks history? Also born in Wurzburg, the 6-10 Kleber made eight 3-pointers in Game 2 and his first four in Game 3. For all his shooting accolades and re-defining roles of big men, in a playoff game Dirk never made more than five.

*Really now, did Mom want me to grow up a mobster? Or just dress like one for Easter?

#HappyEaster from Al Capone, er, me circa 1968. pic.twitter.com/QqfPjwiNgN

— Richie Whitt (@richiewhitt) April 17, 2022

*On Friday, April 8 I surprised my Big Brother Big Sister lil’ bro Ja and his buddy with floor seats to a Mavs game. They’re 15. Separate from us but also at the game was my friend’s 13-year-old daughter. Everyone had a nice time, the Mavs won and we all went home happy. Except that the same night – at the same game in the same building – a 15-year-old North Richland Hills girl was lured into sex trafficking. She just left her family to go to the restroom and then, poof, vanished. Seen on arena security cams leaving with a male stranger, police found the girl in Oklahoma City 10 days later after seeing her photo in online sex ads. Chilling.

*And just like that, I feel older than Mordecai Brown’s three-fingered glove. In 1972, I was a 7-year-old punk – as opposed to the 57-year-old punk I’ve grown into – just beginning to absorb the wonderful world of sports. The Cowboys won their first Super Bowl in January and three months later here came baseball. Real, big-time baseball. Dad had taken me to watch the minor-league Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs at what was known as Turnpike Stadium in Arlington. But on April 21, 1972 we were treated to Major League Baseball and the Rangers. We went to the first home game at brand spankin’ new Arlington Stadium, sat on those glorious metal bleachers in right-center field for like $5 and when Frank Howard whistled a line-drive homer to center field in the first inning I was hooked. For life. Fifty years later I still love Rangers baseball … and unfathomably am still waiting for their first World Series.

*Hot.

*Not.

*Be honest, if you saw Jalen Brunson and Luka Doncic (and Kleber, for that matter) at the mall you’d think they made their living in a cubicle instead of on a court. Neither are strikingly chiseled like elite athletes, and would likely underwhelm NFL scouts with their pedestrian “measurables.” But as sneaky-strong basketball players, opponents just can’t keep them from dribbling where they want, when they want. Over the last two playoff games Brunson incredibly has 72 points and just one turnover, joining an exclusive 70+point, 1-turnover club including LeBron James, Michael Jordan, Karl Malone, Michael Redd and Jamal Murray.

*Visited the folks last weekend and – as it always does, right? – the conversation turned to … zip codes. They weren’t invented until 1963. So how the heck did a letter ever get delivered before then? Envelopes simply addressed to “Dallas” – or “New York” – magically found their precise destination? Sorta related but not really, don’t even start with the tricky history that claims the fax machine was invented 100+ years earlier. Not buying it.

*With Roger Staubach, Troy Aikman and Dak Prescott teaming together, pediatric cancer has no chance. Good ol’ ’Boys doing good Friday night in Dallas.

*In his newest Corona commercials, Snoop Dogg claims “the best plans are no plans.” Okay, maybe. But ... not while sitting on a beach, in a silk robe, with no hat, no umbrella, no cell phone, no magazine, no nothing. I’d be bored faster than I typed this sentence.

*How bad is the season starting for the Rangers? Their Opening Day starter and de-facto ace Jon Gray explained his second-outing struggles controlling his go-to slider thusly: “It was almost like I forgot how to hold it.” Excuse me while I search for the palm-to-forehead emoji. What. The. What?!

*Our current President has his problems. But he is our current President. Overheard this conversation in the gym locker room this week. 1st Man: “Trump won more counties than any President in history. He won them all!” 2nd Man: “You can’t tell me the guy that won all those counties didn’t win the election. How can that be possible?!” Um, context anyone? In Oklahoma, for example, Trump indeed won every county in the 2020 election. He beat Biden, 77-0. But Biden won a certain county in California, called Los Angeles County. Population of Oklahoma’s combined 77 counties: 4 million. Population of Los Angeles County: 10 million. A year-and-a-half later, how are some of us still not getting this?

Alex Goodlett/Getty Images

Spencer Dinwiddie

Tom Pennington/Getty Images

Maxi Kleber

Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

Luka Doncic

*But wait, there’s more wonkiness regarding the Rangers: Supply-chain issues + shortened spring training = No traditional power-blue uniforms at home on Sundays. For now, anyway.

*Countless dating apps these days for unlimited genres, but this week I was alerted to a new one launching in DFW that allows you to bid on dates with like-minded philanthropists … with the proceeds going to charity. There are apps for singles who like dogs or working out or kink or gardening or art, why not giving? Poze helps you find love and fund change. I dig it.

*Wanna see some of America’s best athletes? Head out to Irving’s Levy Event Plaza next Thursday-Sunday for the USA Triathlon National Championships. Tackling, dribbling and hitting are impressive and all, but let me know when you can swim a mile, hop on a bike for a 25-mile ride and finish it off with a 6-mile run. Rain or shine.

*This Weekend? Saturday it’s a 3-year-old birthday party (Yay?) before Mavs-Jazz Game 4 (Yay!). Sunday it’s diving into HBO Max’s The Flight Attendant (Yay?!). As always, don’t be a stranger.