Mavs aim to push win streak to 13 vs. Nets

Basketball Betting Lines

03/10/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The NBA's worst team takes on its hottest when the New Jersey Nets meet the Dallas Mavericks in Big D tonight.

Despite playing short-handed the Mavs earned their 12th straight victory on Monday in Minneapolis when Shawn Marion posted 29 points to go with 14 rebounds, pacing Dallas in a 125-112 decision over the lowly Timberwolves.

Dirk Nowitzki and Caron Butler added 24 and 23 points, respectively, for the Mavericks, who are in the midst of their longest winning streak in three seasons and are now second in the Western Conference, three games behind the LA Lakers. Dallas last ripped off 13 straight victories during a franchise- best 17-game run from January 27-March 11, 2007. Nowitzki, meanwhile, is now just seven points behind Hall of Famer George Gervin for 30th on the all-time NBA scoring list with 20,701 total points.

Jason Kidd ended with 12 points and 10 assists for the victors, who continued their stellar play despite toiling without high-scoring guard Jason Terry (facial surgery) along with big men Brendan Haywood (back) and Erick Dampier (dislocated finger) in the Twin Cities. Also, one of Terry's replacement in the backcourt, J.J. Barea, left Monday's contest with a sprained ankle.

"When someone is down, someone else picks them up," Mavericks head coach Rick Carlisle said of his team's cohesiveness. "When you get on a roll like this those things have to happen."

Barea and Haywood are listed as questionable for tonight as Dallas opens a four-game homestand but Terry and Dampier will be out until later this month.

The Nets, meanwhile, are playing out the string hoping to avoid becoming the worst team in NBA history. New Jersey needs to secure three wins in its final 19 contests to surpass the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers, who finished that season with a miserable 9-73 record.

The Nets fell to 7-56 on the season Monday in Memphis when Rudy Gay and Mike Conley each scored 21 points to push the Grizzlies past New Jersey, 107-101.

Courtney Lee led all scorers with 30 points on 13-of-20 shooting, and Devin Harris netted 28 points and five assists for the Nets, who were coming off a win over the Knicks and still haven't won two in row this season. Rookie Terrence Williams added 14 points, six rebounds and six assists off the bench.

"We don't like giving teams the head starts we've been giving," Harris said. "Once we correct that, it will be easier to contend in the fourth quarter."

The Nets are a hapless 1-22 against the Western Conference this season and just 4-28 on the road as they try to avoid a home-and-home season sweep at the hands of the Mavs. Dallas last swept the season series in 2006-07.

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FOOTBALL TRASH TALK

NFL Football Trash Talk

Trash talk has a place in every competitive endeavor (except baseball; those stirrup-wearers are too busy chewing on their sunflower seeds and their supplements to worry about what their opponents are doing).

Fantasy sports is no exception. Any intelligent discussion of the subject would probably start with a thesis statement or a definition of terms. Thankfully, this wont be an intelligent discussion.

Let me just say that I am happy to take a place in this space alongside my talented colleagues, even our commissioner. (You should see how she bleats like a demented paper boy about league fees on our fantasy site).

Trash talking, I would argue, is primarily about amusing your friends, their sheeplike demeanors and sloping foreheads notwithstanding. The best place I have found for football trash talking is at www.SportsAlarm.com.

Beyond the entertainment factor, though, I would recognize that the sophomoric ritual has one advantage, when properly applied. It magnifies your fantasy triumphs and mitigates your fantasy failures by transforming the eventual point total into an afterthought. Winning makes it seem like your opponent really is a truss-owning, lapel-pin-wearing nitwit. And in defeat, trash talk can be the air bag to break the fall from your hyperbolic heights. The plug-necked yahoos on your team, you can say, will be sacking groceries by the end of the season.

The best trash talk, in my view, is layered and nuanced. And it doesnt focus only on your opponents team. It picks apart your opponent. The idea is to create a shock-and-awe-scale blizzard of nonsense, and the goal is to make your opponent drop his hands from his keyboard in exasperation.

What team does your opponent root for? Accuse a Giants fan of having a Joe Namath pillowcase. Wheres your opponent from? Give a look of concern no matter his reply, then say, I'll try to type slower for you next time. Is your opponent into politics? Label everyone a tax-and-spend corporate shill.

Cap all that with a liberal application of irrelevance. For instance, dont just conclude by saying your opponent is a twerp who drafts like my grandmother. Say that your opponent is a sweater-wearing, eyebrow-plucking twerp who drafts his team about as well as Zsa Zsa Gabor gave acceptance speeches at the Oscars. By the time your foe makes sense of that, his starting running back will have had puppies.

But what about you? Hmm? Recall a memorable slam? Have a tried-and-true technique? Know someone who seems impervious to insult? Take a moment and tells us about it. Put together some (fit-for-publication) thoughts. You wont be too busy returning phone messages from your friends, Im sure, to reply.

In addition to the trash talking, the Sports Alarm has a huge gallery of high resolution pictures of beautiful women and models in bikinis. The most popular models are: Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Underwood, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Paris Hilton.