If you’ve been reading my Observer articles or listening to my radio show, The Invasion, on 1310 The Ticket, then you know I am a Dallas-area guy through and through. I grew up here, graduated from Rockwall High School, and the teams that I bleed for are all local teams: the Dallas Cowboys, Texas Rangers, Dallas Stars and Dallas Mavericks. That said, perhaps the most intriguing relationship I have with a Dallas team is with the club that is pursuing its second NBA Championship — the Mavs.

It’s an interesting one, because I was a little kid in the ’80s and went to high school in the ’90s. That timeline also means I was a Michael Jordan kid. I was obsessed with Air Jordan like so many others around my age were back then. Every single kid in America at that time wanted to wear the famous 23 when playing basketball.

I wasn’t even 10 years old yet when the Mavs of the late ’80s were good. I remember the names and watched them with my Dad because I played youth basketball; despite those teams peaking with a run to Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals in 1988, none of the Mavericks then were Michael Jordan. I wasn’t really a Chicago Bulls fan. I was a Michael Jordan fan, but just as the Bulls were becoming very good in the late ’80s, the Mavericks were starting to suck. Badly.

And I do mean suck. The Mavericks of the 1990s were pure trash while Jordan and the Bulls were winning title after title. Even living in Dallas and going to Mavs games, if you were an early ’90s kid, you were probably a Bulls fan. The Gatorade commercials were correct — I wanted to “be like Mike.” By then, I was a teenager, and admittedly, I was stoked when the Cavs drafted Jim Jackson in ’92 and Jamal “Monster” Mashburn in ’93 and topped those picks off with Jason Kidd in the ’94 draft. And yet, the Mavericks, somehow, still very much sucked.