'Hotel Mojo'? Carlisle Leads Mavs Back To Familiar Orlando HQ
DALLAS - During his many years in the NBA, Dallas Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle has been a party to superstitious co-workers. (I think Rick himself would say he subjects himself to a "routine,'' rather than a superstition.) But sometimes, superstitions played out favorably is simply the result of dumb luck.
And maybe the Mavs' living quarters in the NBA's Orlando Bubble will produce the same for Carlisle.
The Mavs coach recently opened up regarding his relationship with the Grand Floridian Hotel, where the team will be headquartered for the COVID-19-postponed restart of the NBA season. It seems that 12 years ago, when he received a call from the Mavs to invite him to interview for the head-coaching job opening, he and his wife and young daughter just happened to be staying at a hotel.
In Orlando.
At the Grand Floridian.
You can read more about the Grand Floridian here, and you can dig into the Mavs' eight-game "seeding games'' schedule here. As they sit at 40-27 - which is good for the seventh seed in the deeply-talented Western Conference - it will obviously be more about performance in those games than anything else when it comes to determining any real chance of Dallas moving up in the standings. (Dallas opens 1.5 games behind the Houston Rockets ... and opens the Orlando schedule against those same Rockets.
This will be about Luka Doncic's magic and Kristaps Porzingis' consistency and "third wheels'' stepping and certainly some luck, too.
But a little "hotel mojo'' never hurt.
