4-26 Mavs Magazine

Seg 1: Where Rondo Went Wrong
Seg 2: Mike Meltser, SportsRadio 610 Houston
Seg 3: The Problem With Rebuilding
Seg 4: Free Agency Questions

4-18 Mavs Magazine

The playoffs are here!



OPEN - "A Season of Change"
2:20 - Three Things I'm Looking For
11:30 - Chuck Cooperstein, Voice of the Mavs
26:00 - Amin Elhassan, ESPN NBA Front Office Insider
36:13 - Tim MacMahon, ESPN.com Mavs Reporter
46:24 - Calvin Watkins, ESPN.com Rockets Reporter
56:30 - Mike Tirico, ESPN
1:12:46 - Closing Thoughts

4-5 Mavs Magazine

Segment 1 - Are we taking the 2015 Mavs for granted?
Segment 2 - Ethan Strauss, ESPN.com
Segment 3 - Lee Jenkins, Sports Illustrated
Segment 4 - Marc Kestecher, ESPN Radio

3-8 Mavs Magazine

Segment 1 - The Mavs Path to Success
Segment 2 - Ethan Strauss on Mavs
Segment 3 - Ethan Strass on West, #SSAC
Segment 4 - The Role of Rondo

2-28 Mavs Magazine

Seg 1 - Rajon Rondo - Another look at the 5 big questions and the fight with Carlisle
Seg 2 - Tim MacMahon, ESPNDallas.com
Seg 3 - Kristen Ledlow, NBATV
Seg 4 - Ryan Ruocco, ESPN/ESPN New York 98.7 FM/YES Network

12-28 Mavs Magazine

12-28 Mavs Magazine:

Seg 1 - Rajon Rondo Trade Evaluation - One Week In

Seg 2 - Bob Ryan on Rajon Rondo
Seg 3 - Bob Ryan on Rick Carlisle, Current NBA
Seg 4 - Marc Stein

Buy Bob Ryan's Scribe on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Scribe-Life-Sports-Bob-Ryan/dp/1620405067

Lee Jenkins on Rondo: http://www.si.com/vault/2013/02/25/106289695/rondo

Baxter Holmes on Rondo's intelligence and competitiveness: http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2014/03/09/there-questioning-rajon-rondo-commitment-winning/V8t76hvrsBHOwilw6IYhQM/story.html

Baxter Holmes on Rondo's potential coaching future: http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2013/12/15/rajon-rondo-has-future-coaching/LjRCsv7NAkkxnrFRV6iCIJ/story.html

11-22 Mavs Magazine

11-22 Mavs Magazine on 103.3 FM ESPN:



Seg 1: How Dirk creates alley-oops and thoughts on Kobe
Seg 2: Amin Elhassan - NBA reclamation projects
Seg 3: Amin Elhassan - What's wrong in Cleveland?
Seg 4: Amin Elhassan - Kobe Bryant's comments on contracts

How The Mavs Lose the Big Free Agent and Win Free Agency

Half of the teams in the 2014 NBA Draft had eyes elsewhere as they made their selections. The Chicago Bulls traded their two picks for one pick to save cap space. To their credit, they also added a much needed piece in Doug McDermott to a team that desperately needs to add offense. Houston took a draft-and-stash guy in Clint Capela to keep extra cap space clear. The Knicks-Mavericks trade was Carmelo motivated in some way on both sides. Miami traded up for Shabazz Napier in part because LeBron likes him. 

The draft was just step one of these recruiting and cap motivated moves, yet all but two teams are making them in vain. Carmelo and LeBron can only play for one team a piece. 

So what to do if you don't get either of them? Let's call it Plan B.

However before Plan B, we first have to go back and examine the progression of Plan A.

People bashing the "hope plan" because the Mavs still have financial flexibility just don't understand the NBA in 2014. Were the Mavs supposed to have signed Vince Carter to a longer deal? I think when a guy's been hurt frequently during his career and he's going to be 37 when the deal ends, you did a good job. Dirk was signed for as long as he could have been. They timed Marion to end at the same time. That's not some pipe dream hope plan. That's really smart planning.

Then what? Is a team in a big market with great ownership, good players and an eye on a championship supposed to not take a swipe at the best players in the league? No. That'd be epically stupid. The key is to plan if you don't get them, but not trying to acquire them would be fireable offense.

So what's the plan when LeBron goes back to Miami and Carmelo goes to Chicago? Back to Plan B.

There are a lot of quality players who are being tossed around as guys who need to be moved for teams to create max cap space. Let's use Chicago as an example. They'll likely need to dump Mike Dunleavy and his $3 million dollar salary to create room for Carmelo. $3 million for a smart shooter who understands how to play and is good for 15-20 minutes a night? Sign me up!

What about bigger fish though? Oh sorry I forgot that term is despised in Dallas. Let's try "all-star caliber player." 

What if Golden State pulls a miracle and lands LeBron/Melo after completing the Kevin Love trade. In order to pull that off they need to dump Andre Iguadala. Forget signing free agent Luol Deng. I'll take Iguadala. That's probably your best case scenario. There are steps in-between too. If teams are going to salary dump good players, take the good players. Deandre Jordan is being floated out there if the Clippers make a run at LeBron. 

Plan B is simply this: use the cap space reserved for LeBron and Carmelo on multiple players that fit. The Mavs did this last year and made their team markedly better. The difference this year is that there are going to be bargains available as other teams scramble as opposed to signing "leftovers" like Samuel Dalembert. Granted, Monta Ellis fell into this category last year wound up being an incredible bargain, but he was a special case as he was considered damaged goods leaving Milwaukee.

The other thing to look for is restricted free agents. The Rockets likely have a handshake deal with Chandler Parsons that allows them to keep max cap space while he remains unsigned. When they chose not to pick up his option, he stays on their salary cap at the number that would have been so that the team retains his Bird Rights, allowing them to sign him going over the salary cap. Since Parsons was a former second round pick still on his rookie deal, that number is incredibly small. All Parsons has to do is not sign an offer sheet elsewhere, because that large number would replace his cap hold then until the Rockets make a decision on him. So how does that effect the Mavs?

If you're Dallas, wouldn't you offer Parsons a little more than he's probably worth and see if Parsons messes with the Rockets? His agent might push him to. Arn Tellum did this with Brook Lopez a few years ago as the Nets were trying to land Dwight as discussed in this podcast with ESPN's Brian Windhorst and Grantland's Zach Lowe. If Parsons accepts the Mavericks offer sheet, the Rockets then have to basically pick between losing Parsons or giving up their pursuit of Melo. If they give up on Parsons, the Mavs add a really good young player. If the Rockets give up their pursuit of Melo, that's one less team the Mavs have to compete with for him. Since the Mavs are highly unlikely to land Anthony, giving up their own pursuit of him isn't really giving up anything.

The point of all of this is the Mavericks have a ton of options. Clearly number one is to land Carmelo or LeBron, but if they don't, they could make some moves that make this off-season anything but a failure and they could do it by taking advantage of other teams who don't plan quite as well.

2-22 Hoffman and Platt

Jeff and I are live Saturdays at 2 pm CT on 103.3 FM in Dallas and online at KESN1033.com. Follow along on twitter @craighoffman and @jeffplatt. We'll also be taking calls at 855-787-1033 and you can text the show at 64636. Type "ESPN" and then your message. Here's what we're doing on Feb. 15th:

2:00 - Mavs discussion

• The Mavs get LeBron'd, survive a turnover plagued first half to beat Philly and get ready for Detroit
• Dirk Nowtiski sits down with Bill Simmons - watch here.

2:15 - Cowboys - Keeping up with the Joneses

• The initial installment of "Keeping up with the Joneses," trying to make sense of the senseless statements made by Stephen and Jerry Jones.
• Just as senselessly, Jason Garrett tries to explain the Cowboys off-season thus far

2:30 - Richard Durrett live from Surprise

• It was a bad, injury plagued week to open Spring Training. We get the latest from ESPN.com's Rangers insider.

2:45 - Best of the Six Pack

• The top "other" stories from the week in sports and entertainment.

3:00 - Amin Elhassan/"Things that make you go hmm"

• ESPN NBA Insider Amin Elhassan joins us as the "smart basketball guest of the week"
• The opposite of smart is dumb. We look at some of the things that made us go "hmm" this week.

3:15 - Johnny Manziel/"Talk To Me"

• We discuss Johnny Manziel's day in front of the microphone at the NFL Combine
• The most fun we have all day, "Talk to Me" - you call, we answer and that's about it.

3:30 - Mavs at the deadline/"Hoffman’s Guide to college hoops"

• The Mavs stand pat at the trade deadline. How close were they? Will they add players as contracts around the league are bought out?
• Your weekly look at college hoops, "Hoffman's Guide to College Hoops" has its eyes on Syracuse/Duke, Kansas/Texas and Marcus Smart's return

3:45 - The NFL Combine - Platt Style/"One Last Thing"

• If you can bet on something, Jeff knows about it. You can bet on the NFL combine. We'll look at some of the fun you can have.
• My final take on a topic we saw this week. This week? How to properly use the NFL combine.

We hope you'll join us!

1-25 Hoffman and Platt

Jeff and I are live today at 2 pm CST on 103.3 FM in Dallas and online here. Follow along on twitter @craighoffman and @jeffplatt. We'll also be taking a lot of calls today at 855-787-1033. Here's what we're doing:

2:00 - Mavs: recapping a disappointing roadtrip

2:15 - Josh Brent discussion

2:30 - Trey Wingo, ESPN's NFL Live 

2:45 - Best of 6 Pack

3:00 - Let’s Fix The Mavs: Call us with your reasonable Mavericks solutions at 855-787-1033

3:15 - Do the Cowboys have a new playcaller?

3:30 - Josh Brent: your thoughts at 855-787-1033

3:45 - Does the NBA play too many games? Read Henry Abbot's article we'll discuss here.

4:00 - Cowboys: Recapping a week of perplexing comments at the Senior Bowl

4:15 - Talk To Me: You call. We answer. And that's about it. 855-787-1033

4:30 - More Mavs discussion and our NBA Power Rankings.

4:45 - One Last Thing - How to actually advance the racial discussion in America

We hope you'll join us!

1-on-1: Nastia Liukin

Thanks for checking out the first edition of 1-on-1. Eventually this will be housed on KESN1033.com but there's a lot of corporate red tape to cut through so for now, this is your home. I sat down with Olympic champion Nastia Liukin about a month ago and it was, in a word, awesome. In two words, it was welcomely bizarre.

Most people you meet have some sort of wall. With famous people it's normally worse. They're guarded and understandably so. Anyone meets anyone and there's some level of reserve. Not Nastia. It was different in the best of ways. From the moment we shook hands and introduced ourselves in Victory Plaza outside our studios, it felt like two friends who had known each other for years. We talked for about 10-15 minutes and then started taping. Before we did, I asked her how much time we had because I had an inkling from how much I had to ask her and how much we were chatting that we could run a little long. She said "let's just start talking." We did for 55 minutes.


As I hope you'll hear in the interview, she's simply a humble person who's accomplished a lot. She worked hard in her field and made it to the top. But that's oversimplifying it by a lot. There were a few moments where the sweet Texas girl had a fire in her eye matched by any fire in the eye of any athlete in the competitive spectrum from Michael Jordan on down. Gymnastics may be a sport based on grace and performance beauty, but it's still a competition and I don't know how anyone can disagree after listening.

All I ask is that if you like what you hear, pass it on. Whether it's privately to a friend or on whatever social media outlets you use, pass it on. The more support this project gets, the more I'll get to do. I've never been more excited about something because one of the things I love about this industry is getting to tell stories. This is as good an outlet as any to do so.

One of the other things I love is to meet interesting people. With all the things she's done and is doing, Nastia certainly qualifies for that. It's a nice little bonus when you find out these interesting people you've followed professionally are good people personally. Of all the things I'll remember from the first edition of "1-on-1," it'll be that Nastia Liukin more than qualifies for that too.

The End of Funemployment

All good things must come to an end, especially when it's your unemployment status. As stupid as that may sound, the last 3 months were a tremendous learning experience and allowed me to do some things that I'll likely never be able to do again in my life. I'll touch on more of those in a second, but in the interest of not burying the lead, the good news:

I've accepted a part-time with ESPN 103.3 FM in Dallas. I will be doing everything from hosting on nights and weekends to local Sportscenter updates during our local and network programming to original podcasts for ESPNDallas.com to some off-air work. It's an absolutely amazing opportunity with my dream company. Everybody knows the affinity I have for ESPN as a company thanks to the number of people who have helped me over the years and my experience there as an intern. This is one of the four owned and operated affiliates meaning I'm actually working for ESPN. Seriously, Mickey Mouse is on my paycheck.

When I went back to Newhouse in February, I talked to a number of classes about networking. This job is a direct result of the networking excursion I took in January. While in Bristol I met with a man named Rob Savinelli from the talent office who suggested I meet with Tim McCarthy in New York. Tim suggested I reach out to Tom Lee, the program director in Dallas. Tom and I talked and while he had nothing at the time, he certainly helped me look elsewhere and gave me feedback. He then had something open up. We talked. He's now my boss.

What you're probably wondering is "wait...you did all that without a Syracuse connection?! I didn't think that was possible because a) it's you and b) you went through 3+ people in the media industry and that's not mathematically possible." The person who introduced me to Rob? His boss. Laurie Orlando, SU alumnus. Go Orange.

To my younger friends who may be reading this: network and do it when they don't need you and when you don't need them. It didn't matter if I was happily employed, Tom is someone I would've wanted to talk to. I did need him and even though he didn't have anything, he was willing to talk. A few weeks later, circumstances changed and here we are. I couldn't be more excited to work for Tom because I know he wants to see me get better. He and his team are going to coach me which is something I've wanted at this level on a day-to-day basis since I graduated. This excites me far more than being on the air in a top 5 market.

This 3 month period taught me a lot and allowed me to do a lot. I learned a lot about financial responsibility and planning. When "do I have enough for rent?" is a real question, you don't have much of a choice. Luckily the answer was always yes. I got to travel and spend time with people in a fashion that I never would be able to if I was in school or employed. I got 3 weeks in New York. I got 2 weeks in Syracuse. Those trips were amazing and I'm so glad I got to take them.

I got to work on stories and write in a way that I wanted to. There are no editors (except that time Professor Nicholson called me and reminded me I can't spell) and there are no rules. It's how I want to express my opinions and my take. It's seeing a story like who the hell is this Marshall Henderson dude and going with it because I can. It's a journalistic innocence that can't be found anywhere else. I wasn't being graded. I wasn't being dictated to or constrained. It was just fun.

What I'll remember most about this period in my life though is not something I learned or somewhere I got to go. It's something I was reminded of and that's just how good people are. It's not hard to find the worst of society. Go to any website and scroll through the comments section. Go on Twitter. Go to a Rutgers basketball practice.

Throughout the past three months though, I've seen the best in people. It started immediately with so many members of my actual family, my JPZ/AER/SU family and other people I've met along the way reaching out with support. It was Matt Llewelyn reaching out and saying if I needed anything from a meal to a job, he was here for me. I told him I'd meet him for lunch and I've spent the past 3 months working for him which is how the answer to "do I have enough for rent?" was always yes. I also have a totally new appreciation for the the restaurant industry, something every human being who's ever eaten in one should have.

It was my friends in Syracuse who put me up during my stay or perhaps more accurately in some cases (hi Corey, who's office was my suitcase storage facility) put up with me. Oh and yes Fitz, you can have special recognition because you stepped up big time and lord knows you love the attention.

Saving the best for last I cannot thank my family enough. My parents who were there for me on the worst days, never lost faith and always gave me what I needed, whether that be support or a reality check (i.e. I'm going apartment hunting this weekend and not to the Final Four...thanks Mom...kinda). My grandparents who put me up in New York for nearly a month and would have let me stay longer if my parents didn't make me come home. My aunts, uncle and cousins who would check in and see how things were doing and if I needed anything. You guys are awesome. I don't know how you go about classifying "the best family in the world" but I know I wouldn't trade you for anyone else.

Last but not least, I want to thank you. I have no idea who "you" are but you've found your way here. I launched this site to initially announce my unemployment which was on December 7th. It's now April 4th and nearly 7500 people have read and listened to what I've had to say. I remember the first post I did and seeing the hit count start to climb and going "woah, I have an audience." In my industry, having that audience is everything. It was that tiny bit of affirmation that despite my employment status, I was doing something right.

This site will obviously be scaled back now that I'll have real work to do. There will be at least one more podcast that I'm hoping to do tonight. There will be blogs this weekend on the Final Four and thanks to Heather Prusak they'll be supplemented with the great work by CitrusTV, who is in Atlanta. Past that, this will be an outlet for me to talk about things outside of Dallas and maybe a few in. So until next time, thanks for reading, thanks for supporting me and I can't wait to get started on what's next.

Craig