Monday Rundown: Where Are You on the Landscape of Dallas Sports Right Now?
It's odd right now
If you didn’t see it clearly
I’d say you ain’t even tried
’Cause with my eyes shut tightly
It’s plain as daylight
It’s the Texas summers that remind you of what it means to live here. The heat beats down on you not only from the sun above, but outside of every door you open. Getting out of your house, your car, or the grocery store means a hot breath in the face. When it’s over 100 for days on end, you start strategizing your time outside much the same way people in Minnesota do in the winter, which is to say you avoid it unless absolutely necessary.
That heat also brings a sort of sports desert along with it. Most hockey fans in Dallas understand that year-round hockey coverage is going to be at a premium. Awesome hockey meetups notwithstanding, it’s not like you can flip on the nightly news and expect to hear hockey talk happening on a Monday in DFW. It’s the hockey offseason, and most Stars fans I know tend to have at least one other sports team to occupy their time.
Sports can be a balm to heat-related depression. Unfortunately, July and August are when three of the main attractions here lie dormant, making the options for sportsing less plentiful than they might be in October. There are still options, though.
Take the WNBA, for instance. The Dallas Wings are a fascinating team for many reasons, but despite the presence of phenoms like Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd (the latter of whom is currently recovering from a right knee issue), the Wings are right on the playoff bubble as things stand now. They’ll be playing at American Airlines Center next season, which should be fascinating, but I think it’s fair to say the Wings have yet to truly capitalize on their recent talent influx. The potential is clearly there, and attendance figures might improve at a bigger arena next year, but some success in the short term certainly wouldn’t hurt either.
FC Dallas is in a similar spot as the Wings, sitting at 7th in the West right now. Petar Musa has been everything you’d have hoped he’d be after Dallas went out and signed him to a huge deal, and he’s one of the top goal-scorers in MLS again this season. But I confess that this team has not really captured my heart over the last few years, even when I’ve attended games at Toyota Stadium. Maybe the revamped stadium will do the trick for me, but I’ve struggled to stay locked in on this team since the departure of Ricardo Pepi. I would be glad to be forced to hop on a bandwagon in Frisco, but it just hasn’t happened lately.
And of course, there’s another team on the playoff bubble in their league. Let’s take a bit more time to dig into that one, and a couple others.
The Frustrating Texas Rangers
Jamey Newberg has covered yet another Rangers season with his typical aplomb, and I remain captivated by the analysis even as the on-field product grows wearisome. The local baseball concern is following up a season of wasted pitching dominance with largely the same lack of run-scoring, and now with their top two pitchers also dealing with injuries of their own.
There have been moments, and the Salute for deGrom is certainly one of them. It’s not quite Claw & Antlers, but it’s not not that, either.
Corey Seager gave the team a boost after his return at the end of July, but his OPS still lingers below .700. And if you subjected yourself to any of the West Coast Baseball the Rangers have engaged in this week, you have suffered as a result. Posting a 2-5 record against the two worst teams in the league is a dreadful way to head into the final quarter of the baseball season, and the Rangers managed it in in their typically excruciating fashion.
I’ll admit that my perception of the Rangers this year has also been disproportionately jaded by my having attended the 9-0 loss in which they were no-hit by the Astros in May. This Rangers offense is incredibly capable of letting down their fans, and I don’t see how you can really harbor much hope that even clambering atop a pitiful AL West will lead to anything more than a quick playoff exit for a team swinging the bat like they have a hole in their collective heart.
I’ll further admit that the new stadium remains a dreary place in which to watch a game. Sure, the air conditioning is certainly preferable to that time in 2007 that my legs turned beet red after a day in the right field stands at the Ballpark, but the cacophonous sound bouncing around the shed more than outweighs the friendlier temperatures. Controlling the atmosphere and injecting sound into it leads to sterility more than liveliness. Baseball is meant to wash over you, not reveberate.
That 2023 World Series win was glorious, and it will never be taken away from us.1 But the seasons since have been a stark reminder of the depths this Rangers team is capable of, and it’s been the furthest thing from diverting this summer.
Look, I love baseball. I grew up playing baseball. Taking oneself out to the old ball game is a wonderful tradition. But man, these Rangers have made it a chore, and I really wish they hadn’t. There could be no more natural outlet for offseason hockey fans than to watch the Boys of Summer, but even the appeal of temperature control isn’t enough to draw me into the slog that this season has turned into, and that’s a real shame.
The Desperate Dallas Mavericks
Here’s a weird StarsThoughts fact: this after-midnight post on the night of the Luka Dončić trade remains the most-viewed story on this entire website. Mostly, that’s due to timing, as I just happened to be awake when the trade broke late on a Saturday night and couldn’t not write about the most insane NBA trade of all time, but it’s still an oddity that the most popular post at this place has been one about their AAC co-tenants.
The NBA season corresponds almost exactly to that of the NHL, but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been offseason stuff to follow. Patrick Dumont has learned a lesson or two, including that It Is Bad to Set Fire to an NBA Fanbase. The last few months appear to have been a calculated exercise in trying to right an impossibly bad wrong.
Nico Harrison was always going to pay for making one of the dumbest trades in sports history, and he did so when he got axed less than a year after making said trade. The basketball team found itself in rough shape last season, finishing just above Memphis and Sacramento last year. For all you basketball novices out there, it is exceedingly rare for it to be a good thing to be mentioned in the same sentence as both Memphis and Sacramento. (Probably this is true even in non-basketball contexts, though I admittedly know Sacramento much more intimately than I do Memphis, so we’ll table that digression for now and avoid further offense to any Memphisites.)
Since the height of the Mavericks’ foolishness, they’ve pivoted to taking their anger out on the Dallas Stars. Maybe that’s just typical Adelson Stuff, or maybe it’s a more devious plan to capitalize on obscure clauses and squeeze every bit of revenue out of the AAC that they possibly can, regardless of how much the fans in Dallas suffer as a result. I don’t know, but it’s hard not to suspect something sordid, given recent history.
In most cases, you’d be right to say that we just need to focus on the team’s actual performance on the court, but the actions of the family that Mark Cuban regrets having sold the team to kind of supersede those normal imperatives. To give the Mavs credit, they’re certainly trying. Hiring Masai Ujiri and firing Jason Kidd is pretty clear evidence that Patrick Dumont has been diligently reading his copy of “How to Fix a Massive Mistake and Win People Back Over,” and the absurd stroke of luck that was the Cooper Flagg lottery pick only furthered his goals on that front. There is a path back for this ownership that really oughtn’t have been there after the Luka trade.
To be blunt, I don’t think I can ever really see my way to rooting for a team owned by the same people who made the Luka trade, but I know the diehard basketball folks out there probably feel differently. To that end, the Anthony Davis trade and the installation of an Actually Competent leader in Ujiri might mean the world to moving on. It’s only potential meaning right now, though.
Even with Flagg, the Mavericks still have quite a ways to go, even if Dereck Lively II manages to stay healthy this season. I just don’t hear the Mavs talked about with nearly as much love as I did five years ago, even when they were losing. There is something really special about an athlete being on a first-name basis citywide the way Luka was, and you don’t sell that kind of relationship for magic beans without suffering some amount of lasting consequences. Some scars never truly heal.
Anyway, we’ll see what the Mavericks have in store this season, but for now, they’re probably the very last team any Stars fan would choose for their itinerant rooting interests. Let’s wrap up with the boys.
The Exhausting Dallas Cowboys
Stars fans will tune into at least one game played at the Death Star over the next six months, on account of the Stadium Series matchup between the Stars and the Golden Knights on February 20. It will certainly be a spectacle, because that is what Jerry World is for. Comparisons to the Winter Classic in the Cotton Bowl are inevitable, but don’t be fooled: this will be entirely its own thing, for better or for worse.
As for the football club, what can I really tell you about the Dallas Cowboys that you can’t learn in absurd detail from Bob? I won’t even begin to try to break down the eternal dysfunction that is The Biggest Team in Sports, but their record speaks for itself:
Those Mike McCarthy years sure do feel like the opening and closing of the championship window of the Dak years, at least to an admitted casual. A 33-year-old quarterback can certainly still win a championship, but aging curves don’t lie. His job is tougher now than it was five years ago, even with great targets to hit.
But perhaps you feel optimistic, especially after the signing of Von Miller yesterday. Perhaps you feel like this Cowboys team could be the one. Even this year’s Dak Prescott is still a far better quarterback than he’s often gotten credit for, and Bob did a good job not too long ago at reminding everyone of that fact. If Prescott can squeeze another year of top-level QB talent out of the position for Dallas (while remaining healthy), then they certainly have the surrounding pieces to make the most of it. CeeDee Lamb is still elite, and the defense is a fearsome bunch indeed. They also have a kicker you may have heard of, on account of Brandon Aubrey is one of the best ones to ever do it.
I’m not naïve or anything. I know how the city of Dallas (and the NFL at large) will revolve around the Cowboys when the season begins in September, because it does so year-round. But man, the Cowboys are about as far removed from Normal Sportsing as Manchester City are from being a Neighborhood Soccer Club.
The owner of the Cowboys is a man Forbes lists as the 128th-richest person in the entire world, and he has chosen for decades to cosplay as his team’s GM. You know this. Pretty much any objective party will tell you that Jerry’s decisions have largely been to the benefit of his ego more so than to the benefit of the team, but when you’re richer than 99.9999% of the people on planet Earth, you don’t have to care about that. You can operate your team like you’re playing Madden ‘05, where the only people who judge you are ones you can tune out with the click of a button.
Maybe the Cowboys will Do Something this year. Certainly their owner will do his best to ensure that they are Talked About, but we know enough by now to remain confident that the Cowboys will be regular members of the news cycle regardless of whether the athletes succeed or fail. The point isn’t to win, but to be seen doing whatever it is they will do. By that measurement, I suppose the season can already be deemed a great success.
So, for Stars fans looking for alternative local teams, where does this leave you? I purposely avoided discussing high school and college teams, but I know those are near and dear to many folks’ hearts. Sports aren’t about rationality, and that’s true whether you’re just a fan or the owner of the richest team on the planet. They’re about the drama and the hope, the tension and the possibilities. Rooting for a sports team is a trust exercise where you know you’re going to fall and not be caught, at least some of the time. We sign up to suffer.
Have you managed to stick with the Rangers even through their recent and depressingly familiar doldrums, on account of their being the only championship team of the Metroplex since the Mavericks climbed the mountain in 2011? Do you still retain hope that this time, the Cowboys won’t hurt you? Have you forgiven the Mavericks for ripping out the city’s beating heart for reasons that amount to little more than negligence and egotism?
Or perhaps you’re all-in on the Wings or FC Dallas, specifically because they aren’t drawing all the headlines. Maybe you prefer staying off the beaten path until the hockey season kicks back into gear in October. Certainly you have options in Dallas, but none of them have gone as far in the playoffs in recent years as the Stars. Success counts for a lot, but being Big in Dallas still tends to have more to do with how you are talked about than about what you have actually done.
That’s why I think hockey fans might be the most interesting litmus test of all when it comes to DFW sports fandom. Where do your allegiances lie, when the ice has yet to set? I want to know how other people process the many and varied options of fandom in this place, because the picture is as crowded as it is clouded.
If you’ve chosen to add another team to your rooting interests, I can only imagine that you have a good reason for it. I’d love to hear what those reasons are, even if they aren’t rational.
Here’s another disclosure: I actually didn’t own a TV until that playoff run, when I finally caved and bought one in order to watch the Rangers do what they could in the Fall Classic. I do not regret that decision.