duncan228
05-03-2009, 12:01 AM
Dallas Mavericks, preparing for Round 2, slow to regain fans' faith after playoff disappointments (http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/050309dnspobandwagon.3e7052d.html)
By Barry Horn / The Dallas Morning News
A note on fickle, faithless fans:
For Tuesday night's fifth and ultimately decisive game of the Mavericks-Spurs playoff series in San Antonio, tickets could be had for $5. That was the going price for $25 seats on the ticket-broker circuit.
Keep in mind that the Spurs, the only big league team in town, are just two seasons removed from an NBA title and have given their fans four championships since 1999.
"I wish I was making this up, but when people sense their team is going to lose, the bottom falls out of the market," said Randy Cohen, owner of Austin-based Ticket City.
Spurs' fans sensed correctly. Their team did indeed suffer first-round elimination that night, leaving the Mavericks to advance to the next round of the playoffs, which tips off at 2:30 p.m. today in Denver against the Nuggets.
But Spurs' fans have nothing on the Mavericks' faithful when it comes to hopping off and on a bandwagon. Of course, Dallas' team owns zero NBA titles, and it can be argued that no basketball team's fans have suffered nearly as much disappointment as the Mavericks' in recent years.
First, there was the massive collapse in the 2006 NBA Finals against the Miami Heat. Up two games to none, the Mavericks managed to lose four straight in the best-of-7 series.
That heartbreak was followed by the 2007 team running up the best regular-season record in the NBA only to be summarily swatted away in the opening round of the playoffs by the bottom-seeded Golden State Warriors.
By the time the New Orleans Hornets bumped a hapless-looking Mavericks team from the first round of the playoffs last season, it appeared to be business as usual. Resignation replaced disappointment.
"People just can't get over the Miami series and then the collapse against the Warriors," said Newy Scruggs, lead sports anchor at KXAS-TV (Channel 5) and afternoon sports talk-show host on "The Fan" KRLD-FM (105.3). "I talk to them all the time about it. They believe the Mavericks owe them one, and they want to collect before they come back."
While the Mavericks continue to sell out American Airlines Center, fan interest in watching them on television has fallen in the wake of the first-round loss to the Warriors.
While an average of 135,660 homes tuned in to Mavericks regular-season games on KTXA-TV (Channel 21) two seasons ago, the average number plummeted to 72,210 this season. The 418,880 homes that watched the Warriors upset the Mavericks in 2007, dropped to 221,585 for last year's first-round loss to the Hornets.
There was a nice uptick to 263,940 homes tuning in during the Spurs series, but that remains down 47 percent from two years ago.
Mavericks owner Mark Cuban was in no mood to discuss television ratings in an e-mail exchange earlier this week. "TV ratings always ebb and flow," he wrote when asked if he hoped the first-round victory over the Spurs might ignite interest in his team. "That's the nature of the business."
He did, however, say early in the Spurs series that winning is the ultimate impetus for fans.
"It's harder when you're not sure," Cuban said. "That's just the way the business works. You want to see them do as well as possible when you're watching them, hoping they're going to win. But when they do win, it kind of gives you the energy to go further, to get excited. And so I think that's what our fans are waiting on."
To be sure, the Mavericks faithless has included more than just locals. The national media have had a hard time taking the Mavericks seriously since the back-to-back playoff debacles.
"I think most people have moved past the Mavericks as a legitimate contender in the NBA," said Mike Tirico, ESPN's lead NBA play-by-play voice who will be on the call for today's game for ABC (Channel 8).
Tirico said he thought the Mavericks were a team headed nowhere earlier this season after calling a hapless Dallas effort against the Boston Celtics.
But in the games against the Spurs, Tirico believes he saw a rejuvenated team, one that he believes has a chance to beat the Nuggets, "although that will be a tough task."
"If they beat the Nuggets, that would put them back on the radar as a force to be reckoned with, but I don't think either Dallas or Denver is better than the Los Angeles Lakers. I think the spot they are both playing for is to be called the second-best team in the Western Conference."
Like Tirico, Chris Webber, a studio analyst for TNT and NBA TV, has changed his mind about the Mavericks.
"At the start of the season, I still thought of them as the team that blew a 2-0 lead to Miami," he said. "But my perception has changed. This is a team that has fought hard and didn't listen to all the criticism."
Still, Webber went on NBA TV on Thursday night and picked the Nuggets to beat the Mavericks in seven games.
Will that be enough for Mavericks fans? Are Tirico and Webber simply easier to sell than Mavericks' fans?
Scott Baima, owner of Texas Tickets, said his brokerage business is starting to sense that "people are getting pumped" for the Mavericks but nothing near the anticipation he saw earlier in the decade. A competitive series against the Lakers would be a real first step, he said. But before that ...
"Everything here depends on what happens in the first two games in Denver," Baima said.
"If the Mavericks show life, there will be a demand for tickets when they come home. If they're down two games to none, well ... people here know what that means. They've gotten used to that."
By Barry Horn / The Dallas Morning News
A note on fickle, faithless fans:
For Tuesday night's fifth and ultimately decisive game of the Mavericks-Spurs playoff series in San Antonio, tickets could be had for $5. That was the going price for $25 seats on the ticket-broker circuit.
Keep in mind that the Spurs, the only big league team in town, are just two seasons removed from an NBA title and have given their fans four championships since 1999.
"I wish I was making this up, but when people sense their team is going to lose, the bottom falls out of the market," said Randy Cohen, owner of Austin-based Ticket City.
Spurs' fans sensed correctly. Their team did indeed suffer first-round elimination that night, leaving the Mavericks to advance to the next round of the playoffs, which tips off at 2:30 p.m. today in Denver against the Nuggets.
But Spurs' fans have nothing on the Mavericks' faithful when it comes to hopping off and on a bandwagon. Of course, Dallas' team owns zero NBA titles, and it can be argued that no basketball team's fans have suffered nearly as much disappointment as the Mavericks' in recent years.
First, there was the massive collapse in the 2006 NBA Finals against the Miami Heat. Up two games to none, the Mavericks managed to lose four straight in the best-of-7 series.
That heartbreak was followed by the 2007 team running up the best regular-season record in the NBA only to be summarily swatted away in the opening round of the playoffs by the bottom-seeded Golden State Warriors.
By the time the New Orleans Hornets bumped a hapless-looking Mavericks team from the first round of the playoffs last season, it appeared to be business as usual. Resignation replaced disappointment.
"People just can't get over the Miami series and then the collapse against the Warriors," said Newy Scruggs, lead sports anchor at KXAS-TV (Channel 5) and afternoon sports talk-show host on "The Fan" KRLD-FM (105.3). "I talk to them all the time about it. They believe the Mavericks owe them one, and they want to collect before they come back."
While the Mavericks continue to sell out American Airlines Center, fan interest in watching them on television has fallen in the wake of the first-round loss to the Warriors.
While an average of 135,660 homes tuned in to Mavericks regular-season games on KTXA-TV (Channel 21) two seasons ago, the average number plummeted to 72,210 this season. The 418,880 homes that watched the Warriors upset the Mavericks in 2007, dropped to 221,585 for last year's first-round loss to the Hornets.
There was a nice uptick to 263,940 homes tuning in during the Spurs series, but that remains down 47 percent from two years ago.
Mavericks owner Mark Cuban was in no mood to discuss television ratings in an e-mail exchange earlier this week. "TV ratings always ebb and flow," he wrote when asked if he hoped the first-round victory over the Spurs might ignite interest in his team. "That's the nature of the business."
He did, however, say early in the Spurs series that winning is the ultimate impetus for fans.
"It's harder when you're not sure," Cuban said. "That's just the way the business works. You want to see them do as well as possible when you're watching them, hoping they're going to win. But when they do win, it kind of gives you the energy to go further, to get excited. And so I think that's what our fans are waiting on."
To be sure, the Mavericks faithless has included more than just locals. The national media have had a hard time taking the Mavericks seriously since the back-to-back playoff debacles.
"I think most people have moved past the Mavericks as a legitimate contender in the NBA," said Mike Tirico, ESPN's lead NBA play-by-play voice who will be on the call for today's game for ABC (Channel 8).
Tirico said he thought the Mavericks were a team headed nowhere earlier this season after calling a hapless Dallas effort against the Boston Celtics.
But in the games against the Spurs, Tirico believes he saw a rejuvenated team, one that he believes has a chance to beat the Nuggets, "although that will be a tough task."
"If they beat the Nuggets, that would put them back on the radar as a force to be reckoned with, but I don't think either Dallas or Denver is better than the Los Angeles Lakers. I think the spot they are both playing for is to be called the second-best team in the Western Conference."
Like Tirico, Chris Webber, a studio analyst for TNT and NBA TV, has changed his mind about the Mavericks.
"At the start of the season, I still thought of them as the team that blew a 2-0 lead to Miami," he said. "But my perception has changed. This is a team that has fought hard and didn't listen to all the criticism."
Still, Webber went on NBA TV on Thursday night and picked the Nuggets to beat the Mavericks in seven games.
Will that be enough for Mavericks fans? Are Tirico and Webber simply easier to sell than Mavericks' fans?
Scott Baima, owner of Texas Tickets, said his brokerage business is starting to sense that "people are getting pumped" for the Mavericks but nothing near the anticipation he saw earlier in the decade. A competitive series against the Lakers would be a real first step, he said. But before that ...
"Everything here depends on what happens in the first two games in Denver," Baima said.
"If the Mavericks show life, there will be a demand for tickets when they come home. If they're down two games to none, well ... people here know what that means. They've gotten used to that."