Stackhouse suspended, Mavericks flee South Beach... [View All]

[Scurrilous]

Stackhouse Suspended for Game 5

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"Reeling from two consecutive losses to the Miami Heat, the Dallas Mavericks learned Friday that their toughest player, Jerry Stackhouse, had been suspended by the National Basketball Association for Game 5 on Sunday.

Stackhouse hit the 330-pound Shaquille O'Neal, who was driving for a layup, and sent him sprawling into photographers in the third quarter of Game 4 on Thursday night.

Originally called a flagrant foul, penalty 1, the league upgraded it, deeming Stackhouse's contact "clearly excessive," Stu Jackson, the vice president of basketball operations for the N.B.A., said.

"It's just a bunch of baloney, for lack of a better word," Dallas Coach Avery Johnson said on his weekly radio show. "It's just sickening. Our fans should be upset; our players will be. It's just humiliating."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/17/sports/basketball/17nba.html

Mavs move from Miami to Fort Lauderdale

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Coach orders change of venue to get team to refocus

"Dallas Mavericks coach Avery Johnson was serious about ending his team’s “vacation mentality.”

At the coach’s order, the club packed up and left its downtown Miami hotel on Friday and moved to Fort Lauderdale.

“That’s really ... to kind of refocus a little bit,” said Donnie Nelson, the team’s president of basketball operations. “It’s a little bit of training camp, bunker mentality, which I think is sort of a good call.”

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"Fort Lauderdale certainly doesn’t have the same distractions, challenges of say downtown, close to the beach and all that,” Nelson said. “I think sometimes you have to make a change for change sake. This just gives us an opportunity to get back to a little bit more of a training camp type of regimen, refocus and completely cut out the distractions.”

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13372274/



"Thank you, Jerry. Appreciate it." :thumbsup: