Reunion Arena sat downtown beside the glowing ball of Reunion Tower, and on a Saturday night in November 1981, the parking lots looked like a county fair.
Pickup trucks, station wagons, and a few other cars shared the same rows.
Vendors shouted over the crowd, selling foam fingers, buttons, and fake shirts with some interesting designs.
A girl about Bradley's size walked past in a jersey that reached his knees with a shirt of the Dallas Mavericks saying Larry Turd.
Slander names had already started appearing in this world for some reason.
At the souvenir stand, a table of T-shirts was piled nearly to the ceiling, and the line for it curled around a nearby pillar.
Duke had kept the cheapest seats cheap on purpose.
A few dollars bought a place in the upper deck, so a worker could bring the whole family.
Above them, glass suites oversaw the arena.
Duke sat in neither place. He and Bradley took ordinary seats near the tunnel, with two security men a row behind them and a ball cap pulled low over his own face.
It lasted four minutes.
"Mr. Hauser?" A man in a work shirt leaned over, apologizing with his whole body. "My boy would never forgive me. Could you sign this?"
Duke signed the back of a ticket. Bradley slid down in his seat until only the cap was visible.
"Dad," he whispered, "why do people know you?"
Duke considered the question and just shrugged.
Bradley didnt mind and continue with his questions. "Mom says the team is embarrasing, and doesnt make money. Why dont we win Championships?"
Duke could only smile bitterly. "We have bad luck most of the time. Also," He pointed at the ski, "we mustn't forget that it's been raining. Humidity and stuff affects the players."
In the time, that Duke had bought the team since 1972, they had won one championship in 1976... it was in the ABA before they finished joining the NBA, but those count too.
As for the NBA, they were considered a strong team but not really Champions.
Still they sold out almost every game in the West conference.
Only four teams in the league mattered to people who never watched basketball, the Knicks, the Lakers, the Celtics, and surprisingly the Mavericks.
The other three had an advantage.
The Knicks had New York, the Lakers had Los Angeles, and the Celtics had Boston, and those cities carried half the weight.
A team in a huge city could be mediocre for years and still fill a building. In his past life, you could just look at the Knicks since Dolan bought them.
Losers but still sold out everything.
Dallas could not do that.
"You know Bradley, we don't have a big city," Duke said. "So we give people something else."
"What?"
"A story."
The Cowboys had done something similar a few years earlier, when a film company had started calling them America's Team.
The Mavericks did not want or needed to be loved by everybody.
They wanted people to talk about them, and the surest way to do that was to be the team everyone talked.
The starters trotted out to a wall of noise. Loud Boos from the side of the Knicks, and cheers from their side.
Isiah Thomas, a rookie fresh out of college, came out skipping with a smile. Adrian Dantley came out behind him without a smile, looking straight at the Knicks team.
Larry Bird, Maurice Lucas and Bill Laimbeer came out last to the biggest cheers.
Bradley stood on his seat and shouted when he saw Maurice Lucas.
The noise rolled down from the stands in waves. Duke was pretty happy, at least their team was more energetic than those people that yell 'Defense' and clap in the middle of the game.
The game started, and after a few minutes, a Knicks forward drove to the basket and met Laimbeer's shoulder on the way down, flipping and falling on his head.
He went to the floor, and a Knicks teammate shoved the nearest Dallas player which was Larry Bird who quickly avoided anything.
The fight to be quickly was stopped before anything too crazy happened.
Duke was smiling.
"Dad, why are you happy?" Bradley asked, still standing on his seat.
"Look at the people." Duke pointed up the rows. "Nobody's leaving. Nobody's looking at their watch. They love this shi- kind of stuff."
He explained the rest in a low voice, so Bradley could hear.
Heroes were pleasant, but villains were memorable.
A fan in Cleveland who hated the Mavericks still tuned in to watch them, and his Superstation carried the team nearly every weekend, with cable showing them on Thursday nights.
The league would fine a few players on Monday, and Duke would pay for the lawyers who argued the fines down.
It was a small price for a brand.
At the end, nobody had been hurt, the mascot was safe, and the crowd was roaring.
In his past life, a team in Detroit city had borrowed the same trick and called itself the Piston Bad Boys.
Here, Duke had done it first.
The crowd didnt come to see some artistic basketball, they came for the confrontation.
The tone continued mid-way through the second quarter when New York's center Bill Cartwright made the mistake of driving into the lane and tried to catch a pass under the post.
Before Cartwright could even extend his arms, Maurice Lucas met him mid-air.
It wasn't even a play on the ball, it was a physical attack.
Lucas threw a forearm directly into Cartwright's chest, sending the center crashing onto the hardwood.
A collective OOHHH rattled through the arena concourse, instantly followed by cheers.
Down in the courtside seats, a local slapped his thigh, spilling half a beer over his shoes.
"That's how you guard the paint!" he bellowed, throwing his fist into the air.
Beside him, whistles came out as they enjoyed the match.
Even the traveling New Yorkers sprinkled throughout the stands, who loved the Knicks were grinning through the violence.
"Holy hell, they're actually trying to break him!" shouted a guy in a leather coat, pointing at the floor with an unlit cigar.
He turned to his buddy wearing a Knicks jacket. "Look at that! You can't even get mad at that! That's old-school ball right there! Players in the Knicks flop too much."
His friend just shook his head in disbelief, laughing aloud as Bill Laimbeer casually stood over Cartwright, hovering just close enough to talk trash before walking away with an innocent, palms-up look to the referee.
The Knicks tried to push back, but the Dallas Bad Boys suffocated them mentally and physically.
On the very next possession, Micheal Ray Richardson tried to pick up Isiah Thomas full-court.
Isiah didn't just dribble around him, he used a blindside screen set by Laimbeer that caught Richardson squarely in the sternum.
Richardson hit the floor like he'd run into a brick wall.
The noise inside Reunion Arena turned deafening. The crowd loved villainy.
Up in the stands, fans were leaning so far over the railings that security had to yell at them to sit back.
A group of Texas college kids began chanting, "KNOCK 'EM DOWN! KNOCK 'EM DOWN!" every time New York crossed mid-court.
Then came the psychological aspect.
Adrian Dantley backed his defender down into the deep mid-post, taking seconds of physical bumping and head-fakes to draw a foul, casually flipping the ball into the hoop as the whistle blew.
On the wing, Larry Bird was walking backward down the court, staring straight into the Knicks' bench and chirping relentlessly before the ball even passed through the rim.
"You better send two guys next time! He can't guard me!" Bird barked, clapping his hands together as the home crowd went wild.
The fans in Reunion Arena didn't want the game to end. They stayed in their seats long after the horn, stomping their feet on the concrete.
The game ended with a pass from Thomas to Bird in the final seconds, and the arena shook as Dallas won by 12.
"Dad are we the bad guys?" Bradley turned to look at him confused, seeing a Knicks player covering his face to prevent a nosebleed.
Duke waved his hand dissmisive. "Nah. Hal Jordan likes the Mavericks, do you think he would support a villain?"
Bradley nodded quickly. If his favorite Green Lantern was a fan of this team, it must be for a reason.
___
On the way home, Bradley pressed his nose to the car window.
"I'm collecting the dinosaur toys at McDonald's," he announced. "I... still need five."
"Is that so?"
"Mom says there's no room in her budget for it."
"Then we won't tell your mother," Duke said, and the car pulled into the drive-through lane.
Margaux was very stingy with her money, only paying for Bradley's basics without spending much on anything else.
She had been mad at Duke for the past year, since Duke hasnt created a Trust and put everything on Bradley's name.
He wanted to wait for a time, before doing that. After all, Bradley already had a trust fund that he could get after he turned 18.
The Happy Meal was only two years old at this point, a cardboard box printed like a circus wagon, and children all over the country were already trading its toys at recess.
He ordered six Happy Meals and got every toy, the cashier looked at the tall security men ordering the happy meals and decided not to ask questions.
Duke handed four of the boxes through to the front seat. Of course, he keep the toys.
"For the team," he said. "Share them."
"Yes, sir," said the largest of them, who had never in his life been given a Happy Meal, he was Marcus nephew.
Back in the apartment, Bradley dropped his cap and headed for the couch and the Atari.
Duke went looking for the second box Nolan had sent, a small one he had ignored all day.
He quickly found it, and inside lay a transparent blue plastic device that fit in both hands, with a small screen and a plastic logo.
A label on the back read PROTOTYPE 1917.
He turned it on.
A grid of chunky black and white squares appeared, and the pieces began to fall. A tiny speaker in the case beeped out a quick Russian folk tune.
Duke stared at it. It was crude, with a screen a little different than expected, but it worked, and the engineers had finished a prototype in months.
He had expected years.
He went back to the living room to show Bradley.
The television was still glowing and the Atari was still on, and Bradley was asleep on the couch with his mouth open and a plastic dinosaur in each hand.
Duke turned off the television, lifted him gently, and carried him down the hall to bed. He set the dinosaurs on the nightstand, side by side.
Then he sat in the kitchen with a glass of 7-up, and the handheld in his palm.
The pieces fell. He turned them and slid them down, one after another, and he did not look at the clock for a long time.
___
Next chapter Atari and Japan.