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Donnie Nelson (right) in 2007.

Donnie Nelson (Born on September 9, 1962) is the General Manager and president of basketball operations for the NBA team the Dallas Mavericks. Donnie attended Worcester Academy for High School. He is the son of Don Nelson, the former head coach of the Golden State Warriors. In a 2007 Sports Illustrated article ranking the NBA's personnel bosses from 1-30, Donnie was ranked #2.^[1]

Additionally, in a 2009 Yahoo! Sports article Nelson was ranked the 3rd best General Manager of the decade after producing nine 50-plus win seasons in a row and the first Finals appearance in franchise history in 2006.^[2] Nelson assembled the Mavericks team that would later win the 2011 NBA Championship.

Nelson is also one of the co-owners of the Texas Legends of the NBA Developmental League, located in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Frisco.^[3] The team is an affiliate of the Mavericks.

Work with the Mavericks[link]

Donnie Nelson is involved in every aspect of the Mavericks basketball operations. Nelson, who has 23 years of NBA experience, came to Dallas on January 2, 1998 after three seasons as an assistant coach with Phoenix. Donnie was the assistant coach for the Mavericks when Mark Cuban purchased the team in January 2000.

Donnie Nelson has been instrumental in rebuilding a team that suffered a decade-long playoff drought into an NBA Champion. During his tenure, the Mavericks have won 66% of their games, including five 50-win seasons, two 60-wins seasons, and a franchise record 67-wins season in 2007. The 67-wins season was tied for the sixth-best regular season in NBA history. The Mavericks are also one of just six franchises to win 60 games or more three times in a five year span. In all, the Mavericks have won 50 or more games for ten consecutive years. As a result, under Nelson, the Mavericks have also made the playoffs ten consecutive seasons, been to the Western Conference Finals three times, advanced to the NBA Finals twice, and the franchise won their first NBA Championship in 2011.

Nelson has acquired the core group of players on the current Mavs roster through trades and success in the NBA Draft. Tyson Chandler, 2008-2009 6th Man of the Year Jason Terry, future Hall of Fame point guard Jason Kidd, 4-time All-Star Shawn Marion, 2-time All-Star Caron Butler, and Brendan Haywood were acquired through key trades. Nelson was also responsible for adding 2007 MVP, 2011 NBA Finals MVP, and 10-time All-Star Dirk Nowitzki along with sophomore sensation Rodrigue Beaubois through the NBA Draft. On previous teams Nelson played a significant role in trading for players such as two-time Most Valuable Player Steve Nash and All-Star/6th Man of the Year Antawn Jamison, as well as acquiring future All-Stars Devin Harris and Josh Howard via the NBA Draft.

Nelson also coached the Mavericks while his father and former head coach Don Nelson missed time. While the elder Nelson was recovering from cancer surgery in 2000-01, Donnie led the team to a 13-8 record. In 2001-02, he was 2-0 as the head coach. He was the top assistant to his father at Golden State, where he served the organization a total of eight seasons ('86-'94). Nelson was also a regional scout for the Milwaukee Bucks for two seasons ('84-'86).

Olympics[link]

Since 1990, Donnie has served as an assistant coach for the Lithuania national basketball team. In that span, he has helped them win three bronze medals in four Olympiads, a silver medal in the 1995 European Championships and a gold medal in the 2003 European Championships. In appreciation for his contributions, Nelson was awarded the Grand Cross of the Commander by the President of Lithuania in 2004. He also serves as Honorary Ambassador for the League of Industries.

In 1994, Nelson served as a scout for USA Basketball at the World Championships in Toronto. Dream Team II went undefeated on their way to capturing a gold medal that year.

Nelson also serves as the Chief Advisor for the China national basketball team. During his two years of service, they equaled their all-time best Olympic finish (8th) in Athens and won the Gold Medal at the 2005 Asian Championships.

Recruiting[link]

Nelson's tireless efforts helped crack two walls that once seemed unbreakable. Nelson was responsible for signing the first player from both the Soviet Union (Sarunas Marciulionis) and China (Wang Zhizhi) to NBA contracts. In addition, Nelson holds the honor of being the only American coach to participate in a Soviet National training camp. On June 24, 1998 Nelson engineered a deal that brought a relatively unknown German and an unheralded Canadian to Dallas. Both Dirk Nowitzki (2007) and Steve Nash (2005, 2006) would go on to be named the NBA's Most Valuable Player.

"Donnie has been my biggest supporter from day one," said six-time NBA All-Star and 2007 MVP Dirk Nowitzki. "He works harder than any coach or president in the NBA. He thinks about basketball 24 hours a day."

—^{[citation needed]}

Also for the past two years, Nelson has worked with the NBA’s African Top 100 campaign. This outreach program provides educational opportunities to challenged African athletes.

Nelson is the founder of the "Global Games" in Dallas, which gives area high school kids a chance to test themselves against the top Junior National teams in the world. The games completed their eighth season this summer.

In December 2002, Nelson helped create the Assist Youth Foundation. The foundation's goal is to advance opportunities for underprivileged kids in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex and across the globe.

Nelson is also the co-owner of a new National Basketball Association Developmental League (D-League) team that will be located in Frisco, Texas, a suburb north of Dallas. On November 5, 2009, Nelson and the Frisco team made history by hiring Nancy Lieberman to be their first head coach. She was the first full-time female head coach to lead a NBDL team. The Texas Legends began play in the 2010-11 season.

References[link]

Dream Team in sport, often only as a nickname, may refer to:

• The roster of the 1992 United States men's Olympic basketball team in Barcelona
• Brazil men's national volleyball team under coach Bernardo Rezende since 2002
• FIFA Dream Team, an all-time all-star football team published by FIFA in 2004
• The Puerto Rico national baseball team in the 1995 Caribbean Series
• An era (1991–1994), in the history of FC Barcelona, a Spanish football club
• The Philippines national basketball team in the 1990 Asian Games
• The Dream Team (professional wrestling), professional wrestling tag-team in the World Wrestling Federation 1985–1987
• Dramatic Dream Team, Japanese professional wrestling promotion
• Super League Dream Team, award for players in the European rugby Super League
• Dream Team Australian rules football team, that represented the States and territories of Australia other than Victoria in the AFL Hall of Fame Tribute Match
• AFL Dream Team, a notable online competition for supporters run by the Australian Football League

Dream Team in television and film may refer to:

• Dream Team (TV series), a British television series
• The Dream Team (film), a 1989 American comedy film
• Dream Team (The Office) an episode of the American television series The Office
• The Dream Team (Entourage Episode), an episode of Entourage
• Let's Go Dream Team! Season 2, a Korean television series

Dream Team may also refer to:

• Dream Team (theater), a Stage Management Team located in Terre Haute, IN that worked on shows including Real Girls Can't Win, 1,001 Arabian Nights, and Bad Dates
• Dream Team (comics), a fictional group of Marvel Comics superheroes
• The Dream Team (warez), a cracking/releasing warez group for the IBM PC active 1989–1996
• LA Dream Team, American hip-hop act
• Nickname for the defense legal team in the O. J. Simpson murder case

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Jason Nelson

Jason Nelson is a digital and hypermedia poet and artist. He is a lecturer on Cyberstudies, digital writing and creative practice at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. He is best known for his artistic flash games/essays such as Game, Game, Game And Again Game and I made this. You play this. We are Enemies.

Nelson's style of Web art mergers various genres and technologies, focusing on collages of poetry, image, sound, movement and interaction.^[1] He currently lives in Gold Coast, Australia.

Early life and education[link]

Nelson grew up in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He has a BA from the University of Oklahoma and an MFA in New Media Writing from Bowling Green State University. He began work as a poet, and now has over 30 digital works of art. As of 2009, he teaches Cyberstudies, digital art, and digital creative writing at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia.

Nelson is known as a cyberpoet, using multiple media that merge and transform into each other. His style of "mixture chaos" and art nouveau has led to mixed reviews. Some critics^[who?] cannot see past the "characteristic messiness" or "strangeness" in his approach.

Works[link]

Sound, animations, video, and other forms of internet based media are presented to enhance other poetry or art. The media can either be mandatory or available at the conscious decision of the viewer (who can choose to follow links to have media embedded in a piece).

Art and essays[link]

Nelson's art portal, secrettechnology.com, won a Webby award for the Weird category in 2009. Some of his's works include Between Treacherous Objects, The Poetry Cube, The Bonar Gene, Pandemic Rooms.

• Vholoce: Weather Visualiser uses RSS weather feeds to generate a series of aesthetic visualizations.^[2]

• Uncontrollable Semantics uses a basic mouse-follower, uncontrollable semantics pulls together fifty different sound, image and interactive environments. Each environment offers four directions to four terms, four semantics, four named creatures.^[3]

• The Poetry Cube is an interactive poetry cube, where users can enter a sixteen line poem and that poem is then transformed into a multi-dimensional cube. Writers such as Charles Bernstein and Adrienne Rich have poems included in the cube's saved database.

Interactive art and games[link]

Many of Nelson's works require effort and a bit of skill on the part of the viewer. Some are framed explicitly as games, others as elaborate mechanisms for progressing through a series of elements of a work.

• "This is How You Will Die" is one of Nelson's most famous pieces strictly as a work of art - a slot machine for predicting death, using code for an online pokie game and 15- five line death fictions/poetics. Players can win death videos and free spins.^[4]

• Game, Game, Game And Again Game [1] and its sequel I made this. You play this. We are Enemies, are Nelson's most famous works. They are both flash platform games that look like they are played inside someone's stream of consciousness. They have been played over 8 million times combined. Game, Game Game won an Italian Art Award^{[citation needed]} and received mention on many gaming blogs as either genius or insanity in game form.^[5] The sequel was reviewed as an example of independent art game creation.^[6][7]

Other works include:

• The Bomar Gene - an exploration of genes through fictional biographies.^[8]

• Hermeticon: Pop Spell Maker This is a 1980s kids commercials combined with 16th century hermetic texts. After cutting out the hooks, the most compelling spells of our toy and cereal fueled world, the videos were compressed and coupled with mysticism and our new alchemy. Also uses a keyboard driven interface. This artwork is part of a larger series of works called Entanglegrids.^[9]

Awards[link]

Nelson has received awards for his digital poetics (in 2005) and for his piece This is How You Will Die (in 2006).^{[citation needed]}

• This is How You Will Die won the First Panliterary Award for Web Art from the Drunken Boat Literary Journal.
• His art portal secrettechnology.com won the 2009 Webby for the Weird Category.
• "Countries of a Uncomfortable Ocean (which bundles two of his art games) won the Biennale Internationale des poètes en Val de Marne for Media Poetry in 2009.
• "The Bomar Gene" won the 4th International Prize "Ciutat de Vinaròs" on Digital Literature.

See also[link]

Poetry portal

• Electronic Literature Organization
• Hypertext fiction
• Hypertext poetry

External links[link]

• Jason Nelson Art Portal (en)
• Autostart: A Festival of Digital Literature
• http://www.heliozoa.com
• http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2007/11/wildness-in-corner-discussion-with.html
• http://www.arcticacre.com/jasoncv.htm

References[link]

1. ^ Blogspot essay about his work.
2. ^ from secrettechnology.com
3. ^ from The Guardian's Culture Vulture site of the week, July 2006.
4. ^ See also "[ Jason Nelson Speaks from the Machine", with a photo of Nelson giving lecture with "Between Treacherous Objects" featured behind him. The photo was taken at Penn State University.
5. ^ See for instance Joystiq, Jay Is Games, and Wired's takes on it.
6. ^ Boing Boing
7. ^ Wonderland Blog
8. ^ From Heliozoa
9. ^ Entanglegrids at secrettechnology.