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as i sit here watching game 5 of the MOST ENTERTAINING NBA SERIES I’VE SEEN IN 10 YEARS, i’m being reminded of exactly why i can’t stand the dallas mavericks (they’re my nba version of the florida gators): they whine. and whine. and whine. and they really can’t stop whining.

and then they whine.

part of me wants to believe that the reason they choked the nba finals last year is because the Basketball Gods were punishing them for whining so much. and, really, it all starts with their owner: mark cuban, who, as you all know, i love so much.

as a tribute to the mavericks, i’m going to do a short list of the top five whiners on their team:

1. dirk nowitzki: every good whining team needs a leader who spends the entire game flopping ALL OVER THE PLACE and blankly staring at the referee with his mouth agape. seriously, i’m kinda hoping the mavs play a few more games this year just so you can count to yourself the number of times he hits the deck. bill simmons also wrote a good (long) blog post about dirk today.
   
2. josh howard: and this is difficult because i love him as a player, but he’s turned into a real crybaby. because he has such long arms, when he (inevitably) raises his hands in the air to the ref in a show of “how could i have possibly done something wrong?”, it looks even more whiny.
3. jason terry: truth be told, he should actually probably be the number one whiner, but i think i’ve gotten so used to watching him whine over the years (esp. at arizona) that i block it out now.
   
4. devin harris: he’s young, but he has tremendous potential as a whiner. he has the “what, you called a foul on ME?!” look down to an artform now. kobe used to have the best such look in the league, but harris has really taken it to another level.
   
5. avery johnson: a year ago, he would’ve been #3 on this list, but with the enhanced whining ability of howard and harris this year, he’s really dropping. just know that he can break out that one-foot indignation stomp better than any coach alive.

apologies to jerry stackhouse, who just missed making this list, but hey when you’ve got a group of players with such whining ability, somebody has to come off the bench.

just for fun, it’s 9:24 left in the 3rd quarter right now. i’m going to list off every whine i see in the next five minutes on the clock by the mavs:

• 9:07 – jason terry just shoved baron to the floor. technical foul
  
• 9:07 – terry whining about the technical
• 9:07 – avery whining to the ref about the call. shaking his head, stomping off in disgust
• 8:19 – diop fouls biedrins. he doesn’t whine, but dirk whines for him.
• 8:01 – dirk loses ball, instead of going after the lose ball turns to ref and whines about no foul
• 6:53 – howard blatantly fouls biedrins. harris throws up his arms in frustration (right on queue)
• 5:06 – harris blocked, turns to ref and yells
• 4:26 – back from timeout, we see a clip of jason terry speaking animatedly to the ref

so there you have it. that wasn’t even a very good 5-minute clip, since there were few stoppages in play, but i think even then dirk hit the floor (by my count) 4 times.

gosh they whine so much. go (whichever team is playing the mavericks)!