In Dallas, Showtime Means the Movie Is About to Start

Before Dallas Maverick rookie Jamal Mashburn left Kentucky to play in the NBA, he read Magic Johnson’s biography, especially the part about the wild parties, the women throwing themselves at the players, the adoring throngs of fans at every stop.

When none of those things happened to him, Mashburn asked veteran Fat Lever why life in the NBA wasn’t what Magic said it was. Lever told Brad Townsend of the Dallas Morning News what he said to the rookie:

“I told him, ‘This isn’t L.A. And we’re the Mavericks.’ ”

Trivia time: What school holds the record for the most consecutive NCAA championships in one sport?

Turnabout: In his 1990 autobiography, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar took pride in the fact that he refused to wear high-top shoes. Detroit columnist Joe Falls notes that Kareem now appears in Reebok commercials endorsing high-tops.

Where’s Don King? West Virginia and Nebraska, the only college football teams that went undefeated in the regular season last year, both want to play in the 1994 Kickoff Classic, a season-opening game at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N. J.

One problem--no one has offered to sign them up.

That was Woody: Archie Griffin, who won the Heisman Trophy twice while playing for Woody Hayes at Ohio State, says his old mentor didn’t know anything about drugs.

“Woody thought uppers were dentures,” Griffin said.

Just a memory: Joe Carter’s World Series-winning home run continues to pop up on TV screens and radio talk shows, but not around the Toronto Blue Jays’ clubhouse.

“Cito (Gaston, the club’s manager) has let us know it is time to turn the page,” Carter said.

American dream: Cuba’s Jesse Ravelo won a Pan American Games gold medal for boxing in Canada in 1967, listened to the Cuban national anthem, then walked away. But when Ravelo left his country at age 16, he did not leave boxing.

He boxed until 1983, but he also started coaching in the U.S. Army in 1978 and last year became head coach of the Army team that won seven gold medals and four silver medals at the military championships.

It pays to win: According to the Amateur Athletic Foundation’s SportsLetter, when the Anaheim Bullfrogs won the inaugural Roller Hockey International season, it raised the team’s weekly player salary from $314 a skater to $880.

Macho Julio: Ron Borges of the Boston Globe says one of the reasons for Julio Cesar Chavez’s loss to Frankie Randall “is that he has grown so pampered he pays an aide just to remove his socks.”

Trivia answer: Arkansas, with 10 in a row in men’s indoor track.

Quotebook: Basketball analyst Dick Vitale: “When you mention the top players in the country, you’ve got Purdue’s Glenn Robinson, Duke’s Grant Hill, California’s Jason Kidd and UConn’s Donyell Marshall. And then there’s a big drop-off in talent.”