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On his way out of Houston Friday, Jeff Pendergraph offered up this tweet: "Tough loss tonight. Gotta bounce back for tomorrow against Dallas. Short flight but a long trip already." Those are my italics, but my God, they're deserved. It was the First Game of a Two Game Trip. So yes, the fumes of hope seem to have dried up. If Blazers fell to the small, scrappy Rockets, who were in the midst of their own rough patch, they're only going to have more trouble with the bigger, better, deeper and hotter Dallas Mavericks (ewwww, that was gross).

The Mavs (30-16, third in the west) are in the midst of a resurgence. Shawn Marion has bumped the team back up into the second tier by doing the small things--the same sort of work he thought he above when he forced a trade out of Phoenix. Well, we know how that ended up--atrociously. But getting stuck on a horrible Miami team wasn't even the worst of it (at least the weather was nice). Toronto, on the other hand, was just a complete disaster for Marion, who learned he was not The Man, and never would be. And so, finding his was back to a decent team in Dallas this season Marion happily accepted a role consisting of dirty work--rebounding, defense, etc. It's paid off for all involved.

Dallas are coming off a loss Thursday to Phoenix, and our pal Kevin Arnovitz at TrueHoop put together this great bit of analysis of the team's foolish late-game offense:


Long story short, it means Dirk's likely going to get the shots he should've on Thursday. That is, should the game remain close. I hate to be skeptical, but Vegas is too.

Thankfully the Blazers got the 11-game losing streak monkey off their back on December 22. It was called the second best win of the season in Jason Quick's midseason report (it was also the game Joel Pryzbilla went down).

There isn't much else to say. So I suppose we'll just post a few embarrassing pictures of Dirk drunk (one with Steve Nash too!). At least this way we can feel a little moral superiority. Oh wait... Screw it--we're posting them anyway.

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