Sweeps period

Sporting News, The, Jan 20, 1997 by Bill Minutaglio

It is late in the day. Cleamons is lingering at the Mavericks' new practice facility. There is the possibility of more change.

"You just have to realize when you are spinning your wheels and when you are moving forward," he says slowly.

"Is there a fine line? There is always a fine line between love and hate."

Just yards outside the arena and offices, there is another fine line. The fetid Trinity River is crawling below dank banks. For decades, no one ever knew when it would flood-when it would rise like a sorrow and smother homes.

There is, writer David Halberstam said in an interview, a kind of collective curse that floods Dallas--that prevents him from being enamored of its sports franchises. They exist in a the city where a president, maybe something resembling a dream, had been submerged. The Mavericks have been one of the losingest NBA teams of the 1990s. Smothered, cursed, by bad luck, bad choices.

"What we are trying to do is change the culture of this organization," Zaccanelli says. "Quite frankly, after the last six years, after being 220 games (actually 240) under .500, it had gotten to the point where that culture hadn't been very positive."

Zaccanelli thinks The Godfather is a classic. And he probably knows that when Don Corleone told the undertaker to use all of his "powers" to change the look of his bloody, mortally wounded son ... it was the ultimate example of Image Meaning Everything.

"The image is of an organization that is struggling," Zaccanelli says. "We have to change the image."

As he tasks, he glances across the width of Reunion Arena. Someone is slowly entering.

Black shirt, black pants, black boots-all black except for the thatch of white hair, a snowy divot on a sand trap of scalp. The fat gold slab that passes as his wristwatch dwarfs his small hand. He blinks through his glasses at the lights beaming down. He has a wrinkled smile. The former Mavs owner--the man who believed his Christianity could salvage a young man's soul--is entering his former domain. Donald Carter, since he brought the NBA to Dallas 16 years ago, was the unyielding, unchanging culture. His trademark cowboy hat even became part of the team's logo. He prayed with problem players, and he gave them--and veteran coaches and managers--second, third and fourth chances.

But the critics, the players and the way a city can summon up impatience and nervous is-will, all began to work against him. After 16 years, he surrendered to Perot Jr. and Zaccanelli. Now there is even a rumor the team will forever change its logo, its immediate image, the one with the jauntily angled cowboy hat that symbolized Donald Carter.

This night, Carter inches to his seat with that hat in hand. Alone, he slowly settles in. In the huge arena, he looks as small as a child. Zaccanelli watches for a second.

"If you add it all up, if you look at the numbers," he says, "I'm not sure that too much change is possible."

Bill Minutaglio is a writer for the Dallas Morning News.