GAME TIME

If you looked at your 2008-2009 Dallas Mavericks schedule yesterday you would have seen that it was an off night for the Mavericks.

Well, that isn’t exactly true because the Mavericks played more games last night than they have probably played all season. Ms. Pac Man, pinball, Galaga (my favorite), air hockey, bowling, bumper cars, go-karts, putt-putt, wall climbing and even laser tag were on the agenda last night at the Mavs annual holiday party.

The event, which was held at Amazing Jakes located at the Collin Creek Mall in southern Oklahoma (just kidding anything above Northwest Highway for me is Oklahoma), was attended by 150 children and their families.

The children part of the Make-A-Wish Foundation of North Texas got to play all the childhood games along side the “grown-up” Mavericks.

Amazing Jakes is basically Mr. Gatti’s, Show Biz Pizza, Chuck E. Cheese, and Six Flags under one large roofed space at the end of the Collin Creek Mall. It covers two floors and enough space to hold five football fields. It is huge.

All the players started off by signing autographs and taking pictures with all the guests.

After all that was taken care of the games were on...

Jose Barea raced go-karts and played air hockey. He is definitely better at basketball than air hockey. He is a fairly good driver. The cars are just his size.

Dirk Nowitzki raced go-karts with his new friend Lauren driving the two-seater. She wasn’t a horrible driver but their race ended with them running into a wall. I am just reporting what I saw. I am not judging her driving skills.

Dirk also tried his hand at bowling and even got crazy in the Laser tag room. He was his entire group’s favorite target. They blasted him the entire time. He had no chance at survival.

Brandon Bass, DeSagana Diop, James Singleton, Gerald Green, Erick Dampier, Jason Kidd were all hovering around the air hockey table for most of the night (no pun intended). Strength, age, and height were no advantage for the Mavericks players in air hockey. They were pretty much reaching down to retrieve the pucks from the slots in front of them all night.

Josh Howard, Devean George, and Jason Terry were all playing video games with the kids. Josh was playing a Nascar racing game, Devean was playing pinball and Jason Terry couldn’t walk away from Ms. Pacman to save his life. He was addicted.

Near the end of the event Barea, Green, Antoine Wright, and Shawn Williams got involved in a highly competitive round of putt-putt. Lots of verbal jousting, flat-out disagreements, and flexibility of rules made for interesting entertainment for the crowd.

Barea took the competition with a 22 on the short 9-hole course.