The Ticket radio station fires producer Mike Bacsik for Twitter comments
Mike Bacsik, the producer at “The Ticket” KTCK-AM (1310), suspended by the station Monday for remarks he made through his personal Twitter account, was fired Tuesday.
Dan Bennett, market manager for Cumulus Media Inc., parent company of The Ticket, said the suspension was issued to allow further investigation. “When we got all the facts and were able to look at the entire situation, we made our decision,” Bennett said.
Bacsik said he was called into the station late Tuesday afternoon and told he was fired after a story on the incident was aired nationally on cable television’s CNN. He said he had hoped to be back working on Norm Hitzges’ late morning sports talk show next week.
Bacsik said he understood why he was fired but was disappointed. He said he wished the station had given him a minute of airtime on Monday to say “how truly sorry I am.”
Bacsik, 32, said he was “drunk at a bar” Sunday night as he watched the Mavericks lose Game 4 of their NBA playoff series to San Antonio. He began sending disparaging tweets that included “Congrats to all the dirty mexicans in San Antonio” and “If I get cancer and I’m going to die I wil blow NBA offices.”
A former major league pitcher, Bacsik is most known in baseball for serving up Barry Bonds’ record-breaking 756th home run in 2007.
Bennett said Bacsik had been “a good employee” and there had been no previous issues. But Bacsik’s final public communication while a Ticket employee reflected poorly on the station.
Bacsik joined The Ticket fulltime on March 1, 2009 to produce Hitzges’ show. He also co-hosted a weekend sports talk show in an effort to learn the business and reach his ultimate goal – hosting his own weekday talk show.
“I know words on paper can sound cold and harsh without emotion,” Bacsik said. “But for the people of San Antonio who probably will never forgive me, I say I am sorry.”
They traded elbows, bruises and fouls, two old Lone Star rivals cracking each other, and somewhere from this scrum the ball fittingly found its way to the man with the bandaged, busted nose
Manu Ginobili(notes) rose from the corner and buried a long, arcing shot, thrusting one more dagger into this Texas blood war.
These San Antonio Spurs don’t scare easily, and that explains as much as anything why they’re one victory from flooring the Dallas Mavericks. They entered the West playoffs as a No. 7 seed and could emerge from their opening series as the conference’s heavyweight. Ginobili’s fearlessness has always given the Spurs reason to believe, but this also now spreads from the youngest on their roster.
George Hill(notes)? DeJuan Blair(notes)?
“They’re not afraid of anything,” Tim Duncan(notes) said.
The Mavericks now realize as much. On Sunday, the teams combined for three flagrant fouls, one technical and an ejection. Eduardo Najera(notes) slung Ginobili hard to the court by the neck, and this was after Ginobili already looked like he’d gone three rounds with a school bully, his fractured nose hidden beneath a mound of tape and gauze. Jason Kidd(notes) andDirk Nowitzki(notes) also received hard fouls.
“It was a brawl, a street fight,” Nowitzki said.
Hill and Blair felt right at home in the middle of it. Young and hungry, both from hardscrabble backgrounds, they have given the Spurs an edge, a toughness, they haven’t always had in recent years. They look the part – between the two of them they have more tattoos than the Spurs’ past three championship teams combined – and also play it. With Duncan making just a single shot and Ginobili missing 12, with Tony Parker(notes) looking almost as ordinary, Hill carried the Spurs’ offense, shedding his defenders with a series of crossovers and step-backs, throwing in five 3-pointers on his way to 29 points, just two fewer than the Spurs’ three stars totaled.
The Mavs couldn’t keep a body in front of Hill or Blair, who scrapped and fought, frustrating the Dallas big men with his limitless energy.Richard Jefferson(notes) scored 15 points and Antonio McDyess(notes) hounded Nowitzki, each also fitting just like the Spurs dreamed they’d fit. Three minutes into the second half, the Mavs led by 12. By the end of the third quarter, they were down seven, losing their grip on the game and maybe the series.
Over the course of a week, Gregg Popovich’s dog pound had somehow transformed from poodle to pit bull.
“We’re not going to back down, we’re not going to take hits and let them keep doing it,” Hill said. “…We can deliver the blow, too.”
One moment illustrated that. Nowitzki became entangled with Blair while waiting on a free throw. Blair stepped into Nowitzki, who flung Blair’s arm off him. The officials hit Nowitzki with a technical, and Blair smiled as he slowly backed away.
“Dirk being Dirk, me being me – and that’s not good,” Blair would later say with a laugh.
Blair celebrated his 21st birthday just three days earlier. Hill will turn 24 in another week. The Spurs don’t usually win with players so young and with their stars contributing so little. Still, all of their championship teams owned the same trait: From Mario Elie to Stephen Jackson(notes), from Steve Kerr toBruce Bowen(notes), from Malik Rose(notes) to Fabricio Oberto(notes), the Spurs’ supporting casts were cut from the same sturdy fiber that Hill and Blair now share. There’s a reason why Jaren Jackson left the Spurs with a championship ring and Hedo Turkoglu(notes) didn’t. To survive in San Antonio, one must not only withstand the heat of the playoffs, but also Popovich’s personal fire.
Flame-retardant players aren’t easy to find. The Spurs took Hill late in the first round of the 2008 draft, and nearly every other team in the league asked why. The Spurs had moments where they wondered, too. They liked Hill’s length, toughness and work ethic, but a horrendous summer league performance left them questioning whether he’d ever have the offensive talent to match. Hill looked even worse when he initially arrived in San Antonio to work out in the summer. In one pick-up game, he was outplayed by the teen-aged son of Spurs director of player personnel Dell Demps. Popovich went from wondering whether Hill could make the roster to debating whether to he needed to clean out his front office.
But the more time Popovich spent around Hill, the more he found to like. He has since called Hill “my favorite player of all-time,” and there are reasons for that, too: When Popovich barks, Hill looks his coach in the eyes and listens. From players to coaches to management, the opinion is unanimous: We trust this kid.
A year ago, that wasn’t yet the case. On the eve of the postseason, Popovich declared, “These playoffs aren’t for George.” As it turned out, they weren’t really for Roger Mason(notes). Popovich eventually realized his mistake, and Hill contributed in the final couple games of the Spurs’ first-round loss to Dallas.
This season’s playoffs didn’t start much better. Hill sprained his right ankle the first week of April, then tweaked it by stepping on a photographer in the team’s regular-season finale against the Mavericks. He started the playoffs, but was soon given a seat on the bench early in the second half of Game 1 after failing to secure a routine inbounds pass.
Hill’s ankle still troubled him a little, but that wasn’t the true problem. “He just wasn’t ready mentally,” one team official said. “The playoffs are different.”
Hill responded with seven points the following game and 17 in Game 3. On Sunday, he courageously led the Spurs out of their hole. San Antonio has now won three straight games in the series and needs just one more victory to advance to the second round. Suddenly, the West has never looked more open. This also goes back to something Mavericks owner Mark Cuban told a Dallas radio station about the state of the Western Conference field shortly before the postseason began.
“You look down the list,” Cuban said, “and nobody’s afraid of anybody.”
The seventh-seeded Spurs and fifth-seeded Utah Jazz hold 3-1 leads in their series. The sixth-seeded Portland Trail Blazers, like the Jazz, had seen their roster splintered by injuries, yet they just evened their series against the Phoenix Suns. The eighth-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder were supposedly too young, too inexperienced to handle the champion Los Angeles Lakers and they’re headed to L.A. with the series split after four games.
The Mavericks never figured they’d be within a game of elimination this early in the playoffs. They were supposed to be deeper and tougher than previous seasons, a legit title contender, and yet even they had to admit the obvious about Sunday’s letdown.
“We didn’t have composure down the stretch,” Brendan Haywood(notes) said.
Neither team expects the physicality to let up in Game 5. There will be more elbows, more bruises, more hard fouls.
“It’s just getting started,” Mavs guard Jason Terry(notes) vowed. “…It’s going to get a lot worse.”
The Mavericks also reminded themselves of a few other things. They’ve got Game 5 at home and, if they can get to it, Game 7. If they can contain Duncan, Ginobili and Parker as well as they did in Game 4, they’ll take their chances. They’ve also lost the series’ past two games by a combined seven points, so they can’t be thatfar off. Anything to help them believe.
On paper, this looks like a really close series. I would be surprised if it didn’t go six or seven games. There are a few key areas, matchups, and players that I think will swing the series one way or the other. They are:
1. Who stops Dirk? The Spurs no longer have Bruce Bowen or Robert Horry or David Robinson–no shut down defender and no athletic big alongside Duncan. Dirk should have his way with the Spurs in this series. Duncan won’t guard Dirk much–he can’t chase Dirk all over the place. Matt Bonner will probably see some time guarding Dirk, as will Richard Jefferson and Antonio McDyess. The only one of those who can cause any problems for Dirk would be Jefferson, but he’s been such a bust this year in San Antonio, I wouldn’t expect much out of him in the postseason. Gregg Popovich does not like to double team, so I’m guessing that he plays Dirk straight up with one of those three guys–and because of that, Dirk should have a very high-scoring series. In the playoffs, you go as far as your star carries you–and Dirk should be able to carry Dallas against the Spurs.
2. Kidd vs Parker. Which point guard imposes his will on the series? Parker always lights up Dallas, and Kidd has been playing great basketball since the big Wiz trade went down. Offensively, Kidd can punish Parker by backing him down, but Parker can return the favor by blowing by Kidd on the other end. Parker’s play has been good, not great, this year–and I still don’t think he’s found his stride since returning from the injury. Kidd seems to be very motivated. Advantage: Kidd.
3. Manu vs Matrix. Ginobili has been playing out of his mind for the last month and a half. If he keeps it up, he could be enough to tilt the series to the Spurs. I’m guessing we will see a lot of Marion on Manu. Marion has been great at shutting down big scorers (think Durant). Whoever wins this battle might just see his team win the war.
4. Small Ball? There is a thought that the Spurs will go small: Parker, Hill, Manu, Jefferson, and Duncan. Jefferson plays Dirk, and the Spurs try to out-quick and out-athlete the Mavs. It could work. Or, they could get killed on the boards. Could also make for a VERY entertaining series.
5. Benches. Both teams have good benches. If Jason Terry is hot, the Mavs have a great chance. If Terry lays bricks, it will be a tough series for Dallas. If the Spurs get consistent three-balls from Mason and Bonner, and get dirty work on the glass from Blair, they have a good chance. Will Roddy B. get to play? I don’t think so–not much more than a couple of minutes a half. Put it this way–if he plays a lot, things may not be going well for Dallas. In the last five games of the regular season, when the push for the number two seed was on, Roddy didn’t play much at all. I think that tells us what Carlisle thinks about having him on the floor when it matters.
In the end, I’m taking Dallas in seven. I’ve watched each team very closely this year–I bet I’ve seen 75% of both team’s games. The Spurs have been very good lately, beating the Lakers, Celts, Magic, Cavs, Suns, and Thunder. That’s huge. But Duncan has lost a step, Parker doesn’t look right, Jefferson still looks lost, and–most importantly–they don’t play defense like they used to. The Spurs have the experience and moxie and head coach to win a series like this, but I think Dallas is the more complete team–and they have the home court. This is the best Dallas team I’ve seen (at least on paper) since the late 80′s, and I don’t expect them to lose in the first round.
By the time the fourth quarter was ticking away, the Knicks-Dallas Mavericks game looked a bit like one of those old Harlem Globetrotters-Washington Generals games, with unconscious outside shots, uncanny inside flings, thunderous dunks and little resistance to the spectacular or the routine.
The big difference Sunday was that the crowd at Madison Square Garden did not find this traveling basketball act very entertaining, filling the building with boos before and after the final buzzer echoed.
The Knicks suffered their worst home loss and their second-worst loss over all, falling to the Mavericks, 128-78. The Knicks have dropped eight straight games to Dallas, which leads the Southwest Division.
The Mavericks did not even have their starting point guard, Jason Kidd, and center, Erick Dampier, available. Kidd had flown back to Dallas to deal with a family matter, according to the team’s owner, Mark Cuban, and Dampier rested a bad knee.
“It’s hard to even comment on this game, it was just so bad in every area,” Knicks Coach Mike D’Antoni said. “It’s regretful. But it happened, and we just try to flush it down the toilet.”
David Lee would be the first to push the handle and give the tape of the game a burial at sea.
“It was the perfect storm for about the worst game you could have,” Lee said.
The Knicks exceeded their previous worst home loss by 7 points but fell 12 short of the worst defeat in franchise history — a 162-100 setback at Syracuse on Dec. 25, 1960.
Asked if the effort was there, D’Antoni said, “I hope not, because if it was, we’re in trouble.”
There was a disparity at point guard even without Kidd, whom the Knicks pursued as a free agent last summer before he re-signed with Dallas. Jose Juan Barea contributed 11 points and 4 assists and the rookie reserve Rodrigue Beaubois came through with 13 points, including 3 3-pointers, and 5 assists.
With Nate Robinson sitting out and listed as day to day after straining his right hamstring Friday in a home loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, D’Antoni skipped over the veteran Larry Hughes, who has been openly frustrated over his lack of playing time, and went with the rookie Toney Douglas as the backup to Chris Duhon. But each shot 2 for 7, and they combined for only 12 points and 5 assists.
The Knicks (17-26) hung with the Mavericks (29-15) for about a quarter and a half largely because of Jared Jeffries, who scored 12 points in the first for his N.B.A. single-quarter high and added two free throws with 6 minutes 54 seconds left in the first half to cut Dallas’s lead to 42-36.
But then Beaubois nailed consecutive 3-pointers, and the Mavericks were on their way to a 17-7 run that gave them a 59-43 cushion into the locker room at halftime.
Jason Terry also scorched the Knicks from the perimeter, scoring 15 of his 20 points over the first 24 minutes. And the Mavericks’ Drew Gooden had 10 of his 15 points and 15 of his 18 rebounds by halftime.
By the end of the third quarter, the boos were spilling all over the Knicks. Dirk Nowitzki poured in 13 of his 20 points in the quarter. The Knicks were outscored, 38-13, and trailed, 97-56.
“All the guys who came out there, we didn’t have enough fight in us,” said Jeffries, who led the Knicks with 14 points. “We let them get too easy baskets. Every time they shot the ball, they were wide open. They’d go to the rim and get wide-open layups.”
The Knicks’ deficit swelled to 53 points in the fourth, the largest in the league this season.
“Clearly it wasn’t their night,” Dallas Coach Rick Carlisle said after his team shot 58.1 percent from the field to the Knicks’ 33.7 percent, “but we had something to do with it. Once in a blue moon, this happens. Fortunately for them, it counts as one loss.”
The trouble for the Knicks is the losses are starting to stack up again. They have been backsliding, dropping six of their last eight games after a 12-6 run at a playoff spot.
“It’s not good,” D’Antoni said. “But at the same time, we played some pretty good teams. Our defense, we’re just not getting into people. I don’t know if it’s tired legs or just running out of energy a little bit.”
Tough words after a tough loss against the Toronto Raptors were flying around the Mavericks’ locker room Sunday after they got plastered in Canada.
Monday night in Boston, they’ll find out if they can turn those words into actions against a much better team than the Raptors.
The Mavericks played perhaps their worst 12 minutes of the season in the second quarter and never dug out of the hole that would become a 110-88 beatdown administered by Chris Bosh and the Raptors at Air Canada Centre.
You’ve heard of matching a team blow for blow?
The Raps matched the Mavericks blowout for blowout, avenging their 28-point bashing in Dallas as Bosh had 23 points and 13 rebounds and Andrea Bargnani added 22 points Sunday.
“It was disgusting,” Jason Terry said. “I don’t care who you’re playing, you got to come out prepared to fight. Our second unit comes in the game and thinks it’s going to be easy.
“We were prepared, but we didn’t carry that over into the game. Our starters did an outstanding job. For our second unit to come in and play the way we did, it’s embarrassing. I challenge them and challenge myself. I’m part of that group.”
The slow starts that dogged the Mavericks in recent games wasn’t a problem. They clamped down defensively and had a lead to start the second quarter. Then, it completely unraveled.
The Raptors shot 65 percent in the period and went ahead by 13 points.
When the Mavericks opened the second half with five defensive stops, it looked like they would have life. But the Raptors then scored on seven consecutive trips down the court to go up 70-56, and the Mavericks mailed it in from there, utilizing their time by jawing at the referees rather than with ball movement or digging down defensively.
“If you can’t get stops and you can’t score in the half-court, you’re in trouble,” said Dirk Nowitzki, who had 19 points. “Some nights you have to outscore teams. Some nights you have to grind it out with defense. We didn’t do either one.
Mavericks One Basket Short of Comeback, Fall to Lakers 100-95
The Lakers look like the walking wounded with many of their stars (Artest, Bryant, Vujacic, and Gasol) nursing injuries, although they don’t have it half as bad as the Portland Trail Blazers. On the flip side, the Dallas Mavericks have all the keys to get the job done (especially with Josh Howard and Drew Gooden available) and have completed a trade to bring back an old Dallas favorite (Najera).
The last meeting between the Mavericks and Lakers saw Dallas suffer a crushing 35-point defeat from a team that looked like it was firing on all cylinders even without Gasol.
Do the Mavericks come out looking to prove something or fail to defend their home court?
Game as a Whole:
Even an historic night from Dirk Nowitzki (he surpasses the 20,000 points mark) couldn’t save the Mavericks from taking another loss at home. The Mavericks were close through out the game but when it really mattered, they couldn’t lock down the Lakers on the defensive end of the floor.
You can’t really ask Dirk to do much more than he did tonight (30 points and 16 rebounds) but his teammates sure left something to be desired. Jason Terry managed only 7-points, Erick Dampier had 5, and the previously hot Barea has cooled significantly (scoring only 6 points). The game should not have come down to scoring but the Mavericks just didn’t have the intensity they needed to keep Jordan Farmar, among others, from scoring when it mattered.
Looking at all the other stats for the game, the Mavericks were just behind the Lakers in almost every category. If the Mavericks and Lakers do meet in the playoffs, Dallas has to figure out how to get a few extra possessions, which can make the difference against this squad.
Junior Miller of Sports Radio 1310 The Ticket dissects the dirk/bird debate
Sparky Anderson was once asked to compare Thurman Munson to Johnny Bench. Sparky replied “Don’t embarrass any catcher by asking me to compare him to Bench.” This wasn’t a slap at Munson, it was just the truth. Bench was the best, and no catcher was going to compare.
I feel the same way when I hear the constant comparisons of Dirk Nowitzki to Larry Bird. In fact, it may be the sports topic that most makes me want to end my 25 year non-vomit streak (and I grew up hating the Celtics!).
The subject is, in fact, the reason that I started this blog. I was listening to BAD Radio one day, and heard the King of Blogging, Bob Sturm, utter the phrase “Put Dirk on those Celtics teams with Parrish and McHale and he would probably have a couple of rings.” After calling a wrecker service to come and tow my car out of the ditch that I had driven into upon hearing that, I emailed Bob. I love Bob. Bob’s sports brain is huge (quickly). But I told him that I thought his comment gave too much credit to Dirk, and not nearly enough to Bird. I told him I had many thoughts on this topic, and that I should probably start a blog so that I could get all of my thoughts on this subject out in a way that I can’t do on our radio show. A few weeks later, voila–I’m blogging! Oh crap! What have I done?
The Sacramento Kings pushed the defending champions to the brink of defeat Friday. The possible return of their star rookie could drive the Kings over the top Saturday night at Arco Arena.
With Tyreke Evans expected back in the lineup after missing the last three games due to injury, Sacramento will look to snap a three-game losing streak to the Dallas Mavericks.
The Kings (14-18) led the host Los Angeles Lakers by as many as 20 points in the first half Friday, but fell 109-108 as Kobe Bryant hit a game-winning 3-pointer at the buzzer. Sacramento forward Ime Udoka(notes) missed a pair of free throws with 4.8 seconds remaining with the Kings up by two.
“We got everything we needed, performance-wise, from everybody that played, and we couldn’t close it out,” said coach Paul Westphal.
Sacramento has lost three of four games this season with Evans sidelined. Prior to Friday’s loss, Evans said he would be ready to go against the Mavericks after spraining his right ankle in a 112-103 double-overtime loss to the Lakers on Dec. 26.
Aaron Brooks felt in a groove, and that was all the Houston Rockets needed to pull out another close victory over the Dallas Mavericks.
Brooks scored 30 points, Shane Battier made a tiebreaking 3-pointer with 2:11 left, and Rockets beat the Mavericks 97-94 on Thursday night.
“I wanted to extend the defense a little bit and open up Carl (Landry) on the inside a little bit,” Brooks said. “I feel we did a great job doing that. I’m going to go out there and play hard and shoot when I’m open and whatever happens after that, I’m going to roll with it.”
Brooks followed Battier’s 3 with one of his own for a six-point lead with 1:35 remaining, and the Rockets held on when Jason Kidd missed a potential tying shot from behind the arc in the final second.
It’s not uncommon to find the Dallas Mavericks at the top of the Southwest Division and the Memphis Grizzlies at the bottom of it.
Though that’s again the case as the teams enter their second meeting of the season, the gap between them is rarely this narrow.
The Grizzlies go for their season-high fourth straight win – and their unprecedented fourth in a row over the Mavericks – as the clubs meet Saturday in Dallas.
The Mavericks (20-9) are on pace for their 10th straight 50-win season and second division title in four years, while Memphis (13-15) is in the Southwest cellar and in danger of its fourth consecutive last-place finish.
However, the Grizzlies are 7-3 this month and have won 12 of 19 since a 1-8 start. They beat Golden State 121-108 on Tuesday night for their 13th win, a mark they didn’t reach until their 48th game last season, on Feb. 4.
