Gerald Green scored 18 points. Who's this Gerald Green, haven't even heard of him being on the Mavericks til now or I'm just being stupid and didn't recall the Mavs picking him up.

Anyways the Mavericks took an 11-1 lead early in the game and never trailed the Bulls, beating them 110-102. 6 players had double digit scoring. It would have been 7 as Terry scored 9 points.

This is the one thing nice about the pre-season I like though, you get to see some of the young bench players get some action, see their potential and let their confidence build up so if they're called into action in the regular season, they're prepared.

The Mavericks started their season winning against the Wizards 108-82. Both Nowitzki and Bass had 17 points with Howard contributing 15 points.

The Dallas starters were Nowitzki, Howard, Kidd, Wright and Dampier. It wasn't highlighted but Diop only played 17 minutes and had 4 points, 7 rebounds and 3 blocks. I'm still not sure why this kid is not starting in place of Dampier. Dampier put up similar numbers, only playing 17 minutes himself but doesn't seem to cut it at times. I honestly feel Dampier should be Diop's backup.

Jamison injured his right knee in the first quarter and never returned.

Of course the Wizards are injury prone right now, this is a good sign for the Mavericks as they did not do so well against the Wizards last season.

Dallas shot 52 percent from the field.

This was each teams pre-season opener. Howard was welcomed with mostly warm greetings and cheers, with the occasional boos from the crowd.

Mavericks next game is against the Chicago Bulls this Thursday, October 9th.

As we all know, Westphal was still under contract by the Mavs but was not part of Carlisle's coaching staff. I think the new role and title suits him, he deserves it. It's a shame that Avery couldn't learn more from Westphal while he was a coach.

Carlisle opened the Mavericks camp with running. He's emphasized that the team needs to learn to attack the basket, instead of relying on their set offense that has gone stale the past two seasons.

Also in other news, Eddie Jones can't run. He's already pulled his left hamstring while running on a treadmill before camp started. Tell me why we kept him around? He's just keeping the seats warm, wasting away money for other potential young players to get playing time to prove themselves.

Cuban, release Jones now, he's not much of an asset to the team. I even doubt he's a role model for other players except to slap them five during timeouts and the end of each quarter. He's an paid fan that gets a great seat each game.

This is a little off topic, well not far, it's not about the Mavericks but about Jason Williams. He announced his retirement just after 10 years in the NBA. He was primarily a point guard and was part of the Championship team that defeated Dallas.

So I give Jason Williams props. Only 33 years old. Has a championship ring and probably at least a few million sitting in the bank to live off of, I envy that myself. I wish I could retire in 3 years, have a few million, had a kick ass job playing basketball for 10 years with a championship ring.

What more could anyone ask for really?

So there's some rumors or truth behind it that Mark Cuban stated that the players were the force that drove to fire Avery Johnson. He's stated that most of the players asked that if Avery were coach next season, they would want to be traded. It was mentioned most either spoke of this through generalities or through their agents.

Could this be the truth coming from Cuban? Personally I believe it's probably and highly a partial truth. We all could realize that there was tension between the players and Avery, but I'm willing to bet there was tension between Cuban and Avery as well that lead to his firing.

Josh Howard has issued an apology. We all knew this was coming. You don't disrespect the National Anthem and not issue an apology when you are in the public eye.

So you're apology is accepted Josh. Now can you just shut up and play basketball. If you're going to say stupid things like most of us can or do, make sure there's not recording device around.