Pirate Galaxy » r Jose Moourinho after the match, and the

Building something that lasts in the NBA is hard. Even teams on top live in fear of one butterfly flap that might undo everything -- one injury, one trade gone bad, one unhappy player or even a blip of bad timing in the way contracts are staggered.Its amazing how fast things spin out of control, and how long it can take a team to find its bearings again. Teams crave control. They hoard draft picks to decide who gets to wear their uniform and craft five-year plans that make them feel and act as if they are a step ahead. Sometimes they really are! Play a couple of things wrong, and suddenly youre reactive and desperate, flailing one move behind everyone else.The Dallas Mavericks busting up their 2011 title team to chase free agents wasnt on its own a mistake. Those dudes were mostly fogies, and Tyson Chandler, the one core guy at the outer edge of his prime, has been up and down since signing with the Knicks. You cant control a free agents choice, especially when incumbent teams can outbid you, but it wasnt nuts to think some big name would take the Mavs money -- particularly given Mark Cubans cozy relationship with power agent Dan Fegan.But the Mavs have mishandled most of the things they do control. They traded down in drafts to save money, traded out of them and whiffed on most of the picks they did make. Donnie Nelson, the teams GM, begged Cuban to draft Giannis Antetokounmpo at No. 13 in 2013, but the Mavs instead traded down five spots to open up a few hundred thousand bucks in extra cap space for Dwight Howard. They ended up drafting Shane Larkin at No. 18 as part of a deal that sent away their first-round pick from the year before.Fewer teams had cap room then, but the Mavs could have picked 13th and found other ways to dump money in a pinch.Team building is hard, and it requires major luck somewhere along the way. Most picks below the lottery yield back-of-the-rotation guys or total busts. But to sustain success, you eventually have to hit on a few of them. Roddy Beaubois, the No. 25 pick in 2009, might have turned into a hit had foot injuries not ruined his career. Justin Anderson, the 21st pick last year, looks like a hoppy and versatile wing perfect for the modern NBA. The hits dont have to be Kawhi Leonard at No. 15, or Draymond Green in the second round. One or two Jae Crowders will do.The Mavs had the real Jae Crowder, and included him (plus this years pick) in their ill-fated gamble for Rajon Rondo. Boston got Brandan Wright in that deal, too. Crowder and Wright will earn $12 million combined next season, about 60 percent of Kent Bazemores likely salary. Dallas was brilliant to snag Al-Farouq Aminu on a minimum salary in 2014-15, but then let him walk to Portland to carve out max cap space for DeAndre Jordan.Dallas sacrificed a lot of good under-27 players in the pursuit of great ones, and the odds got worse when the cap boom gave everyone space.?Chandler Parsons is the latest such casualty. He went from bro-in-chief to outcast in record time, and no one will say exactly why. His knee issues certainly frustrated the Mavs, especially given the timing of flare-ups; Parsons appeared in just one of Dallas 10 playoff games over the past two seasons.The Mavs decision that Parsons is no longer a max player offended him, and the market has proved Parsons right; Memphis has offered him a max contract pending a physical that promises to be one of the most suspenseful moments of this free-agency period.Parsons didnt find a groove in Dallas until January, and hes a minus defender. But hes a high-IQ guy who shot 39 percent from deep in Dallas and can shoot, pass and dribble across both forward spots. Hes never made an All-Star team, and hes not a foundational piece. No one knows how his right knee will hold up going forwardBut Parsons is good, and the Mavs cant afford to let good 27-year-olds walk away without a Plan B. Their Plan A appears to have been a double-barreled signing of Mike Conley and Hassan Whiteside, but that left them once again at the mercy of variables they cannot control. Stud free agents want to see players with whom they can grow, but the Mavs have mostly punted on such players to pursue stud free agents.We know by now what Plan B is: Dallas has a list of canny veteran free agents they can nab after everyone has picked over the market, and they will mesh better than any of us expect. Dirk Nowitzki is a rising tide on offense, and Rick Carlisle is one of the greatest coaches in NBA history.It is hard, and perhaps impossible, to bottom out when you have someone as great as Nowitzki. Maybe it is time to try, one way or another. Before the Jordan hostage situation a year ago, Cuban said he had planned to tank had Jordan spurned Dallas. Its unclear how hed have done so without ordering Nowitzki to have some long-overdue surgery, but perhaps its time to do it now.Like it or not, that is a tried-and-true path you can control: lose a lot of games and take a shot at drafting a superstar. That is why Sam Hinkie scorched the earth in Philadelphia -- to eliminate as many of those noisy variables as possible, and draft over and over in the spots with the best chance of turning out a Nowitzki.You can get superstars without doing that, of course. The Mavs drafted Nowitzki at No. 9. The Spurs turned George Hill, the No. 26 pick, into Leonard, and leveraged Leonard into pole position for LaMarcus Aldridge. (Still: Ground zero of the Spurs dynasty was a blatant tank job that netted one of the half-dozen greatest players who ever lived). The Rockets transitioned from Yao Ming to James Harden while fighting for the playoffs every year.But that middle road is hard, and it requires maximizing every asset --- drafting well and keeping the cupboard stocked for deals. Its why Sam Presti in Oklahoma City keeps turning outgoing stars into younger players and extra draft picks. He knows he cant afford to be left with stars and nothing else. He wants things he can control -- draft picks, younger players on rookie contracts, matching rights. They are hedges against the unknown, a future he can sell to Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook.The Mavs dont have that, and they are running out of time for Nowitzki. Set emotion aside and its probably best for them to part now. Nowitzki can chase one last ring, and the Mavs can bottom out ahead of a loaded draft in a year when everyone else is trying to win. It probably wont happen -- city and player care for each other too deeply -- but it would be the quickest path to a new foundation.The Knicks have their foundation, Kristaps Porzingis, and maybe that is all that matters. For now, Carmelo Anthony is almost their own, younger version of Nowitzki. Hes so good, they cant properly rebuild. Provide Anthony an average supporting cast and youll be around .500. Fail to do so, and all you have is a miserable superstar.The Knicks and Anthony are stuck with each other. The deal he signed in 2014 has a no-trade clause, and a suitor both acceptable to Anthony and stocked with assets the Knicks want just hasnt emerged. There was some internal hope the Cavs might become that team, but then they won the whole stinking thing.Even had the Knicks wanted to trade Anthony before re-signing him, the timing never broke right. Two years before the expiration of his deal in 2014, the Knicks won 54 games and snagged the No. 2 seed; no team would ever trade its star during a season like that. New York predictably slipped the next season, 2013-14, but Anthony was on an expiring contract by then, torpedoing his trade value.And so he were are, in 2016, with the Knicks building a team designed to make the 2012 conference finals. Theyve made a choice: as long as Anthony is in New York, they are going to try to at least be competitive. The Knicks dont really even see another choice. They might feel differently had they not traded so many picks and players in previous win-now moves, including the disastrous Andrea Bargnani deal. They dont have a lot of tools beyond money and a big city.Each of this summers moves is defensible on its own. They flipped Robin Lopez and Jerian Grant for Derrick Rose because the organization needed a galvanizing spark, and because the free-agent market is thick with centers to replace Lopez -- and thin on point guards better than Rose. OK, fine. If things go badly, the Knicks let Rose walk.Theyre about to sign Joakim Noah to a four-year, $72 million deal despite knee and shoulder injuries that have cramped Noahs game since a magical 2013-14 season in which he finished fourth in MVP voting.Again, fine. The Knicks need leadership and defense, and they are not really getting those things from any of their veterans. Noah is a beloved teammate, and he will help a defense that has been wretched almost every season since the Jeff Van Gundy era ended. He can spare Porzingis the brutality of playing center full time, cede the position to him for 10 or 15 minutes per game, and slide into a backup role whenever Porzingis is ready to start in the middle.Noah can facilitate from the elbows and resume setting nasty screens for his old Chicago point guard. He started looking like his snarling, rebound-munching self again in the month before his shoulder gave out last season. He even made some layups. Noah is hungry to prove he can rediscover his peak form, and even 85 percent of that player is damned good.None of these players is ancient, either. If Porzingis makes a leap in Year 2 or 3, the start of his prime might overlap with the very end of those of some other New York players.But zoom out and the vision is murky. Are the Knicks going to run any triangle with Rose, a non-triangle point guard, spotting up in the corner? Are they a fast-break team? Even if they sign another wing shooter -- Courtney Lee, Eric Gordon -- can they provide Melo enough space to rampage on the block with Noah and Rose clogging things up?If they do end up with Gordon, the collective health risk between Rose, Noah, and Gordon is enough to induce some panic dry-heaving.When the Knicks flipped Lopez for Rose, fans crowed about how much cap space New York could open for next summers insane free-agency class. But Lopez turned into Noah on a richer long-term deal, and if the Knicks commit $30 million combined in 2017-18 salary to Noah and Shooting Guard X, they might have only between $30 million and $35 million in cap space next summer -- enough for one mega-max but not for the dream scenario of two.That estimate includes $0 for Rose. He is a risk-free flier primed for a contract year, but thats exactly why Chicago traded him: to avoid the temptation of investing more in Roses knees after one good season.There is a lot of uncertainty between now and next July. The cap for 2017-18 probably will come in higher than the projected $107 million. New York could off-load Kyle OQuinn, Langston Galloway?and any free agent it signs now.But in the bigger picture, the Knicks are using equity to get these guys: a good center on a value contract (Lopez), a semi-interesting point guard prospect (Grant) and cap flexibility. They havent boxed themselves in, but they have exhausted assets they could have used in gain-an-inch moves that might have primed them for something bigger -- something that better fit Porzingis timetable.With Anthony around, they are not going to wait for Porzingis. But there were better ways to straddle the middle ground while still gathering goodies on the fringes that could pay off down the line.Again: Maybe all that matters is that they drafted Porzingis. Any team hoping to get anywhere needs to find a young star somehow. The Knicks have one. The Mavs barely have anyone young. Even for smart teams with good intentions, the NBA can be a hard place. Authentic Greg Maddux Jersey .Y. -- Marcell Dareus and the Buffalo Bills defence made life miserable for Super Bowl MVP Joe Flacco. Authentic Carlos Zambrano Jersey . -- Brandon Jennings made the most of his first game with the Detroit Pistons on Sunday night. http://www.cheapcubsjerseysshop.com/?tag=authentic-david-ross-jersey . And when it opened, every player was at his stall. Thats a sure sign that a team is in a slump and is searching for answers. "Its embarrassing to be at home and play the way we did," said defenceman Josh Gorges. Authentic Ryne Sandberg Jersey . DAmigo scored twice in regulation and added the shootout winner as the Toronto Marlies edged the San Antonio Rampage 5-4 in American Hockey League action. Authentic Javier Baez Jersey . Scott won the Australian PGA last week in his first event in Australia since winning the U.S. Masters in April. American Matt Kuchar, ahead by two strokes with four to play and even with Scott with one to go, double-bogeyed the 18th after taking two shots to get out of a bunker. LONDON -- Novak Djokovic survived an early setback, and then made it look all too easy.The second-ranked Serb, who has a chance to reclaim the No. 1 ranking at the O2 Arena next weekend, rallied to beat Dominic Thiem 6-7 (10), 6-0, 6-2 Sunday in his opening match at the season-ending ATP finals.Djokovic won nine of 10 games to take control of the match after losing the first set in a tiebreaker. And even that was close.Yeah, a thrilling tiebreaker, Djokovic said. I had, I think, only one set point. He just played a good point. I was in the rally, but he just was going for his shots.Thiem had his first three set points at 6-3 in the tiebreaker, but he double-faulted twice and then put a backhand into the net to make it 6-6.Djokovic had a chance, too, leading 9-8. But he couldnt close it out with Thiem serving, eventually hitting a backhand long. The Austrian finally won it on his seventh set point with a forehand winner, prompting Djokovic to smack a ball into the crowd.After that, it was just about all Djokovic. The Serb reeled off six straight games to send it to a third set, and then broke Thiem twice more to close it out.Even though I lost the first set, I thought I didnt do too many things wrong, said Djokovic, who saved the only break point he faced. It was just the very high quality of his game that prevailed in the first set.In the following sets, it got to be too much for the Austrian, who was making his debut at the tournament for the top eight players in the world.I lost a little bit energy, not much, but just a little bit (after the first set), Thiem said. Of course, against a player like Novak, he immediately steps up. Thats how the second set went.Thiem said he had a chance to meet Manchester United manager Jose Moourinho after the match, and the pair chatted briefly.dddddddddddd Thiem is a fan of English club Chelsea, a team Mourinho has coached in the past.In the late match, fourth-seeded Milos Raonic of Canada beat sixth-seeded Gael Monfils of France 6-3, 6-4.Monfils, who was playing at the ATP finals for the first time, hit a pair of tweeners in the match, but it was Raonic that got the breaks -- one in each half.Djokovic lost the No. 1 ranking to Andy Murray last week, but he can earn it right back in London. If either of the two wins the title next Sunday, that one will be assured of the top ranking -- as long as Djokovic wins another round-robin match on the way to the final.If Djokovic does reclaim the No. 1 ranking, he would finish the season at the top for the third season in a row and the fifth time in six years. Murray is trying to end up as the top man for the first time.With a victory on Sunday, Djokovic can also join Roger Federer as the only players to win the season-ending tournament six times. Federer is not playing in London, sitting out the rest of the season as he continues to recover from knee surgery.Djokovic has had his own injury problems this season, including pulling out of the China Open with an elbow injury in September. In Sundays match, he called for a trainer during the first changeover, but it was because he hurt his thumb on the court after reaching for an early shot.It was just a nasty cut that I had when I didnt manage to return the serve, the first serve, Djokovic said. Just kind of caught the surface, then I cut myself. It was bleeding. I just wanted to stop the bleeding. ' ' '