The Trump Administration as the 1992-93 Dallas Mavericks

The sheep have concluded that the Trump administration does not merely resemble a bad basketball team. It resembles the 1992-93 Dallas Mavericks, but with more malice and a larger federal budget.

The sheep have revisited the 1992-93 Dallas Mavericks and would like to apologize to the 1992-93 Dallas Mavericks.

Yes, that team went 11-71. Yes, it burned through Richie Adubato before handing the clipboard to Gar Heard. Yes, it often looked less like a professional basketball team than a workplace training video about what happens when no one is in charge. But after further review, the flock has concluded that comparing the Trump administration to that roster is unfair to Dallas. The Mavericks were bad at basketball. The Trump administration is bad at government in a way that is vindictive, delusional, and historically expensive.

Fancy Pants began with Derek Harper, who averaged 18.2 points and 5.4 assists while trapped inside a collapsing franchise. Harper was a real professional marooned in failure. That already makes him nobler than almost anyone in Trump’s orbit, because the average Trump official is chaos in a lanyard. The administration keeps producing men and women who walk into public office with the ethical bearing of a casino escalator and the intellectual discipline of a YouTube comments section. Harper at least seemed to understand that the object of the exercise was to run an offense. Half the administration still appears to think the federal government is a podcast studio with subpoena power.

Janet then turned to Sean Rooks, who started 68 games and gave Dallas 13.5 points and 7.4 rebounds a night. She said Rooks is what Trump officials fantasize they look like: large, serious, and physically present. The cabinet’s actual energy is closer to a regional airport Chili’s after the manager quit mid-shift. Pete Hegseth in particular gives off the impression of a man who thinks leadership is just jabbing a finger at a map, squinting heroically, and hoping no one notices he has the strategic depth of a barstool dare. Sean Rooks, by contrast, at least boxed out. Hegseth can barely box in a sentence.

Terry Davis, who started 74 games and averaged 12.7 points and 9.3 rebounds, was compared to Marco Rubio, but only in the sense that both seem to have spent long stretches of their lives pretending the room around them was more dignified than it actually was. The difference is that Davis did useful work inside a bad system. Rubio has perfected the rarer art of looking like a hostage who volunteered. He has the face of a man who keeps discovering new humiliations in real time and then endorsing them before lunch.

Marvin insisted Jim Jackson was obviously JD Vance, which the flock accepted immediately because both arrived with heavy branding, visible ambition, and the unmistakable aura of a man already practicing his autobiography while the institution behind him catches fire. Jackson at least scored 16.3 points per game after arriving late. Vance mostly scores by attaching himself to stronger delusions. He has the slick, upwardly mobile energy of someone who would absolutely step over a constitutional principle if it delayed boarding.

Doug Smith, who started 42 games, was assigned to Karoline Leavitt because both carry themselves like there is a coherent system in place when in fact they are standing in the middle of an avoidable collapse. Smith was simply trapped on a terrible team. Leavitt, by contrast, has turned herself into the human press release for a government that lies with such frequency and confidence that one begins to suspect the podium itself should qualify for hazard pay. She has the specific energy of someone paid to describe a grease fire as a new kitchen strategy.

Bruce and Frankie then nominated the deeper bench, Walter Bond, Mike Iuzzolino, Morlon Wiley, as the rest of the administration. Not because those Mavericks were untalented, but because their names sound like men who would wander into a Trump policy meeting, denounce the metric system, propose tariffs on oxygen, and then accidentally get put in charge of civil aviation. The sheep said that is more or less how the administration feels from the outside: a roster of underqualified strivers, damaged ideologues, vanity hires, and brittle television men and women, all united by the belief that confidence is a substitute for competence and cruelty is a substitute for strength.

That, in the end, is why the comparison works and why it also fails. The 1992-93 Mavericks were a bad team in an honest way. They lost games, changed coaches, and embarrassed themselves under the bright lights of Reunion Arena and then went home.

The Trump administration has the same broken spacing, panic dribbling, reckless shot selection, and locker-room confidence floating free from reality. But Dallas mostly harmed the feelings of basketball fans in Texas. This administration is taking that same level of dysfunction, adding malice, corruption, and a cult of personality, and then applying it to war, courts, immigration, the economy, public health, and the constitutional order itself.

So yes, the sheep see the parallel. The 1992-93 Mavericks won 11 games. The Trump administration is trying to turn the United States into an 11-win country, then scream at the scoreboard, fire the statistician, and insist the collapse is actually a dynasty.