So, um, those Dallas Mavericks have shown that they're pretty good at the playing of basketball recently, no?

Last night, as you may have heard, the Mavs won their 13th in a row — their third double-digit win streak this year — and finished the month of Febraury unbeaten by completely shutting down the T-Wolves 91-65. Dirk went for 23 and 14, and the Wolves scored just 8 points in the second quarter and 12 in the fourth.

Dallas's domination poses a difficult scenario for unaligned fans of the NBA such as myself: what to do with this Dallas team? Cheer against it for being a juggernaut? Root for them because Dirk deserves a championship? Hate them for being owned by Mark Cuban? Hate them for being from Dallas? While they're certainly not as stodgy or dislikable as the dominant Spurs teams of recent years, neither do they have the transcendent beauty of the Suns' style of play.

Hmmm… I think I'm going to play this one safe and go with "cautious dislike." It's a change of pace from my usual "reckless hatred."