No bobbleheads at the Mavs season finale

Boogahz · Post by **Boogahz** » April 20, 2006, 12:34 pm

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/s ... amavs.html

Mavericks lose – but fans win
Everybody at the Dallas game gets a free airline ticket.
ASSOCIATED PRESS

Thursday, April 20, 2006

DALLAS — The Mavericks lost their regular-season finale Wednesday night — and everyone went home happy. Thrilled, actually.

American Airlines took a page out of Oprah Winfrey's playbook and gave vouchers for free flights to an estimated 19,000 fans in attendance.

When Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and American executive Dan Garton announced the giveaway between the first and second quarters, fans jumped to their feet and cheered. It definitely took the sting off an 85-71 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers in a meaningless game.

A television contest also gave home viewers the chance to win an additional 1,000 vouchers. If every fan at the game plus those at home redeem the vouchers, they could have a face value of more than $3 million on American's Love Field service.

In the game, the Mavs, locked into the No. 4 Western Conference playoff seed and playing their backups, were not much competition for the Clippers, also playing their backups. Corey Maggette returned to action and tuned up for the playoffs with 18 points and 11 rebounds.

Kind of a cool way to "reward" the fans. I like that they did not actually announce it until after the first quarter.

Boogahz · Post by **Boogahz** » April 20, 2006, 1:28 pm

I agree.

It was nice to hear this story on the radio this morning after hearing about the 76ers fan appreciation night when not all of the players even showed up, hehe.

Mr Bacon · Post by **Mr Bacon** » April 20, 2006, 1:32 pm

My post disappeared!

Oh well.. summary: should have waited until the end of the game for the real real fans.

Boogahz · Post by **Boogahz** » April 20, 2006, 1:34 pm

Ok, apparently there was a nice hiccup somewhere with the board. Same thing happened to one of my posts in CE..

I read what you posted though or I wouldn't have agreed with my own post!

Truant · Post by **Truant** » April 20, 2006, 1:39 pm

Yeah, I heard about this on the radio this morning.

Very cool, imo.

They were expecting very low attendance because the game had no impact on playoff spots, and several big players were sitting.

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » April 21, 2006, 9:25 am

I'd still rather get the oprah car.