Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is not known for his love of NBA referees. He has been fined, suspended and reprimanded numerous times by the NBA for his sometimes harsh vocal and twitter treatment of unlucky zebra types.

Case in point is The Mark Cuban Talking/ Dancing Doll.  Note the placement of the “Choking Hazard“ sticker.  It is rumored that Mark has sent a “cursed” Mark Cuban doll to everyone on the Denver Nuggets as well as the crew refereeing the playoff series. Think it gives us and edge?  Has anyone seen “Chucky’s Revenge”?  Do you see a resemblance?  Open At Your Own Risk!

It was clear that San Antonio had a different game plan from the start.  It was actually kind of bizarre to see Tony Parker consistently step off open three point shots to dish it in to Tim Duncan or another Spurs player.   While Tim generally hits his patented bank shot, it also resulted in several turnovers on Parker’s part.

Parker, while trying to create plays for everyone else, became tentative in his own aggressive style. With Parker not playing the style that makes him great, no one else was able to consistently step up.  Michale Finley, while a great guy and a great shooter, was a brutal defensive liability.  He never really got it going from the shooting side either.  In the end Tim Duncan scored 30 and Tony Parker had 26 and other than Finley,  I could not tell you who was even on the court.

On the other end of the court,  Dirk Nowitzki had his best game of the series scoring 31 pts.  It was clear from his first few shots that his patented fade away had the range that night.  It was  a solid contribution from starters all around.  More importantly was that our role players played solidly. We did not give anything away when Dirk or other starters left the floor.  Josh Howard capped off an outstanding series, with 17 points, 8 rebounds and three steals. He had my permission to blow it out for his birthday!  This birthday celebration was probably more joyous than 2008 when he incurred the wrath of coach Avery Johnson after allegedly passing out birthday fliers in the Mavs locker room after losing to the New Orleans Hornet in the first round last year.  While it would be great to see a re-match in round two as we would have home court,  I would be shocked if the Hornets recover from the playoff record tying Civil War style beat down at the hands of the Denver Nuggets in game 4.

From a AT&T Arena standpoint, the Spurs fans were very subdued from the start almost if, while hopeful, dreading what they ultimately expected when the clock ran out.  Despite a valiant effort from The Coyote, the arena energy never got anywhere near game 1 or 2.  One gentlemen in the suite next to ours wagerd me a bottle of Cristal against a Mark Cuban autogrpahed ball  that the Spurs would take the series.  I usually do not wager but as he was willing to make the wager with the Mavs up 3-1 in the series as well as leading at the half,it seemed like one of the safer wagers I would make in my life.  As someone who has not won in Las Vegas since Bugsy Segal threw down a bet, I could not pass it up.  I will be shooting him an email that I don’t drink and to keep it on ice for the next time the Spurs win a championship.  How long does Cristal keep?  It could be a long wait.

The tweeting was just not the same for game two of the Western Conference Quarter Finals between the Dallas Mavericks and the San Antonio Spurs.  I was not the same.  I got on the plane to San Antonio already tired, fighting a chest cold,knowing that we would not be returning to Dallas until well after midnight.

The trip down on the G550 was non-eventful and passed quickly.  The plane has directv on it. It was a pleasant surprise that the ESPN Monday Night Baseball game featured my hometown Pittsburgh Pirates. As bad as the Pirates have been over the years, they are my team and I always enjoy watching them on the tube.  Watching the game diverted my attention from the pressure in my chest  and from the anxiety of the impending game 2 between my Dallas Mavericks and the San Antonio Spurs.

By the time we were wheels down in San Antonio I felt even worse.  I was tired and beat down despite the excitement of a possible 2-0 Mavs series lead.  This turned out to have a direct karmic relationship to the way  the Mavs would play that night.

We arrived at the AT&T Center about an hour early.  We sat in the same suite as the night before.  The suites in San Antonio are similar to the suites in Dallas except that they are one level up putting us a little further from the action. It is  still a good view and is always good to enjoy the game with family. There is also a television in the suite so we were able to taken in an exciting Celtics-Bulls playoff game 2 before our game started.

I was also happy that this time I had remembered to bring my iPhone charger to fight the dreaded iPhone 2 hour battery drain.   This was the kind of evening however that with every positive came an equal negative.  I left my regular digital 10 Megapixel camera with 35x zoom on the plane.  I would be relegated the crappy iPhone camera that made pictures look like they were being taken from Oklahoma.

The Mavs came out like I felt, tired and slow. The floor energy draining faster than my phone battery.  San Antonio had clearly made adjustments from the previous game.  Every shot was contested. Every Dirk drive to the lane a battle for inches of forward movement.  Every Tony Parker drive uncontested.  I expected the Spurs to come out hard, doing everything possible to show that game 1 was the exception to the rule.  What I did not expect was the Mavs to be a step slow and an inch off the rim from tip to finish.  No one would dispute that Tony Parker had his way  going to the basket, making the Mavs look like they had never seen his skill set before.

The tweet action on my end mirrored the Mavs play.  I was feeling worse as the game went on.  Other tweeters noted that my tweet action was down from the previous games.   San Antonio fans taunted that I was a “fair weather tweeter”.   In reality I was simply not feeling well.   The overall tweet dialogue was lively and equally distributed between Mavs and Spurs fans.  The pro-San Antonio tweets became bolder and more frequent as it became clear the Mavs would not challenge that night.

In the end the Mavs started and ended  like I felt the entire night, tired and lethargic.   Halfway throught the 4th quarter I was tweeting for anyone who had mstered the Star Trek science of teleportation so I could byass the plane right to my bed free of the forced shots, forced drives to the basket and forced tweets.  Teleporting away from the final act of a “classy’ San Antonio fan below us throwing objects into our suite as the game ended.  A forced and artificial night all around ending in a dissapointing but not disheartening  dominating Spurs victory.  The best part of  Game 2 was hitting the pillow when I finally got home about 2 am.   That was the only part of the night not forced.   You can view the Game 2  Iphone photos of the game on my Facebook page.

My last playoff trip to San Antonio was the 2006 playoffs.  That was an exciting series!  It epitomized the San Antonio Spur-Dallas Mavericks rivalry.  Five out of the seven games were decided in the last minute including an incredible game 7 overtime win. On the downside, with great rivalries of powerhouse teams often come boorish fans.  As we exited the AT&T Center after a game, I  found myself being harassed and threatened by drunken Spurs fans. That is not  an indictment of San Antonio or its fans, it can happen at any arena.  It however is an unfortunate experience that  stands out from the trip that caused some apprehension leaving the AT&T Center last night.

The Mavs ultimately went on to the NBA finals where we unfortunately lost to the Miami Heat in a what many view as a historic collapse from which the Mavs have never recovered.

That was 2006-2007.  A different Mavs team.  A different Spurs team.  A different Western Conference.  The road trip to The AT&T Center in San Antonio for game 1  of the 2008-9 playoffs was markedly different in almost every area.  The Mavs and Spurs are both older teams.  Both have game-plan altering injuries to starters. The fans at the AT&T Center this time around were without exception, friendly courteous and respectful of our team allegiance.  The biggest difference from 2006-7?   I was Twittering.  Other Mavs fans were twittering.   Spurs fans were twittering. The national media was twittering.  We were twittering the pre-game. We were twittering the National Anthem. We were twittering our fears and excitement with the ebb and flow of the game.  We  were “trash-twittering”.   In addition to twittering the game,  I also “Twitpic’d“  the game.  The camera deficiency  of my iPhone made it difficult to get any good shots but it was fun to give the people with who I “twitteract” real time context of the trip.  This included photos of Mark’s G-V on which  I was fortunate to get to travel to the game.  It included our brief tour of the River Walk.  It included the suite where we all sat and enjoyed the game.

I interacted  with  tweeters around the world who shared  not always my enthusiasm for the Mavs but the Spurs as well and simply enjoyed the instantaneous “power of the tweet”.  Tweeting the excitement of the moment was almost as much entertainment as the game itself.  Many tweeters were at work or places that they did not have access to the game or scores.  They were getting their  information on the game solely from my tweets. I was having so much tweet fun that  I found myself getting just as anxious and agitated about the battery drain on my iPhone as as I was about game score. I had to intermittently  shut down the phone to conserve tweets for important game moments and observations.  When the game ended I was able to tweet the Mavs victory news across the twitter universe.  Many others did as well.  I suspect that post game, Mark Cuban tweeted his game thoughts. Mavs and Spurs players tweeted their thoughts, National media tweeted theirs.. Think any refs tweeted?

The NBA has gone from “Love It Live” to  “Tweet It Live”.   It adds another dimension of fan experience to the game.  I hope the NBA embraces it.