Two Guys, A Girl, And A Basketball Team

    The GM is one of the most veteran and venerable basketball minds in the world. The president of basketball-ops is one of the smallest basketball superstars in the game’s history. And the head coach of co-owner Donnie Nelson’s embryonic Frisco-based D-League team?

    She’ll be the first female head coach of an NBA-affiliated men’s team in ever.

    Donnie and co-owner Evan Wyly don’t have a team name (there will be a contest to name the “Texas Somethings’’). But they have an arena, an NBA tie (when the franchise begins play in the 2010-11 season, it’ll be the Mavs’ minor-league brother), and they have star power in Del Harris, Spud Webb and, most notably, head coach Nancy Lieberman.

   “Every night, at every game, kids are going to come to these games and meet a basketball legend and end up feeling like basketball celebrities themselves,’’ Donnie tells me.

   And of course, among those "basketball celebrities'' who will be on the scene will be the GM, the ops guy and the head coach.

   Tonight, the Frisco D-League team will make its announcement at a press conference at the Dr Pepper StarCenter in Frisco. After that comes a private "VIP'' cocktail party featuring Nelson, Lieberman, Webb and Harris.

   (Yes, smart guy, DallasBasketball.com wrangled an invitation.)

   “It’s going to be challenging, and it's going to be fun,’’ Del tells me … and I think he’s talking about the D-League challenge as well as the cocktail party, which will be headquartered, like the team’s games, less than a mile from his home.

   General manager Del Harris has 50 years of experience as a head coach, executive and assistant coach. He’s close-as-family with Donnie, Don Nelson and Mark Cuban, too – and he’s about as brilliant a basketball man and as fine a gentleman as we’ve seen around these parts.

 President of basketball operations Spud Webb is a fixture on the Dallas sports scene. The former NBA Slam-Dunk champ was already signed up to serve as an ambassador of sorts for the upcoming 2010 NBA All-Star Game to be staged in North Texas in February. I believe a lot of the hand-shaking he’s done in that role helped convince Donnie that he can do the same at the D-League level.

    Head coach Nancy Lieberman currently works for ESPN as an analyst. She is a legend on the women’s basketball scene, so much so that in addition to starring as a female player, she was given tryouts in NBA Summer League play and also played in the USBL. Lieberman is a Dallas-area resident with experience as a coach in the WNBA.

     But this, obviously, will be a different experience … in many ways.