I flew all the way down to Dallas last week, and learned that Mark Cuban and his Dallas Mavericks really were serious about their locker room blogger ban.

Which leaves us ... where exactly? With questions. I have heard them from other journalists, from bloggers, and mostly from readers. My best attempt at answers:

Why are you so calm? Why didn't security guards haul you screaming from the building?
It sure some Jerry Springer action would have been good for the TV cameras. But I don't think it would have been good for bloggers.

The world's suspicion is that we bloggers might be raving lunatics. By being professional journalists, and reasonable people who not only do not drool on ourselves, but also shower, smile, and shake hands, we make the Mavericks look like the nutty ones for banning us.

Also, it has never really crossed my mind that we bloggers might lose this fight in the long run. It's important that Cuban's cute little idea not catch on among other owners who might have some beef with some blogger. But more and more serious-minded writers and readers, on mainstream media sites and on independent sites, are realizing that blog software is useful. So, knowing we're going to win makes it hard to get too stressed.

Why insert yourself in the middle of this? Why torment the basketball fans who read TrueHoop readers with all this media theory? It's not about basketball. It's not even really about TrueHoop.
There are a lot of reasons. The main one, however, is that when the powers that be take rights from people, and no one says anything, there is a tendency to then assume that no one was harmed. So, in short, I think it pays to pipe up. (I'd quote this, but it would make it seem like I had a really inflated sense of the gravity of this issue.) It is important, I believe, that as many people as possible say: "Hey, that's mine. Don't take that."

What's more, as best I can predict, I'll be an NBA blogger for the next, oh, four decades, so I'm pretty invested, you know? I have no interest in being a junior reporter who gets into the locker room on special occasions.

And for those readers who are not interested, I'm sensitive to that, I really am. I think this is only my fourth post about the whole deal, and I have been careful to keep up with the other things going on in the NBA, too.

Did you talk to Mark Cuban in Dallas?
Hoped to, but only ever saw the man from a great distance. And getting close wouldn't have helped much as he prefers to be interviewed from his stairmaster in the locker room (d'oh!) or by email.

He and I emailed back and forth a ton last week, but he wouldn't let me publish much of it. (And most of what he told me was similar to what was on his blog anyway). At game time I already had a whole slate of questions in his inbox, waiting for on-the-record responses. Still waiting.

Is the Mavericks locker room really overcrowded?
No. Reporters who have talked to me are unanimous on this point.

The visitor's locker room is smaller, and bloggers are allowed in that one.

Is there a risk of a flood of blogger credential applications?
I've seen no evidence, and I'd want to be assured such a problem exists before we install the fix.

The technology has been there for years for every single Mavericks fan with a printer to be a "newspaper" publisher, too, but it's not like we have a big crisis figuring out who to credential among newspapers.

If you are looking for blogs that cover NBA teams a lot and with any seriousness, there just aren't that many in any one market.

I recently talked to an independent Mavericks blogger and asked him if he had ever applied for a credential. He said it had never really occurred to him.

I have a hard time believing the Mavericks have a real problem there.

What's more, as I wrote before, if there ever is a flood of applications, I really don't think it will be a mighty challenge to sort out which bloggers are serious-minded, and which are not.

If it proves to be too big a burden for teams to manage, one reasonable option would be to have the Media Bloggers Association, or someone like them, step in.

I talked to the MBA's founder, Robert Cox, last week. He is a journalistic veteran, with a solid grasp on the many relevant issues. His association has worked with the likes of PBS, Newsweek, and the U.S. District Court in DC. (Remember how there were bloggers in the Scooter Libby trial? The MBA got them in with talk of high standards and professionalism.) The MBA vets blogs, and those they believe to be reputable can join the MBA, which comes with certain standards and practices similar to those that govern the work of mainstream media.

Those most blog-phobic NBA teams, that can't bring themselves to sift through the many credential requests could limit their consideration to those bloggers who are MBA members. Then if things go awry with a certain blogger, the MBA can help to enforce professionalism. And if the bloggers prove to be obstinate maniacs -- everyone's big fear, I guess -- then the bloggers could lose their MBA membership and thus, quite likely, their access.

What's this ban really about?
I still haven't met anyone who thinks Mark Cuban's stated reasons -- a shortage of space in the locker room, and no ability to distinguish which bloggers are worthy of access -- are the real reasons.

Instead, everyone seems to think that Cuban took exception to Dallas Morning News blogger Tim MacMahon for some reason or other. That notion is supported by the reality that Cuban personally ejected MacMahon from the locker room on February 29, even when the team did not yet have a policy prohibiting bloggers. (Several people confirm this.)

If everyone I have talked to is right, that means something else must be driving this.

The theory that has been on MacMahon's blog is that he blogged somewhat sympathetically about the website, FireAvery.com, which calls for the ouster of coach Avery Johnson. (One of several posts around that time questioning Johnson.)

Most nights, MacMahon is the only credentialed blogger in Dallas, so banning bloggers would have been a tidy way to ban MacMahon, and make a show of supporting a coach, without having it seem petty and personal.

What's more, MacMahon's FireAvery.com post was fresh on his blog at the moment he was ejected from the locker room.

However, several credentialed media members have mentioned FireAvery.com one way or another. And the rest of them have not been banned.

Others in Dallas suggest that Cuban may be on an anti-blogger kick to protect Jerry Stackhouse, who was upset -- according to several sources -- when he read something on MacMahon's blog.

Sources at the Morning News say this McHahon post drew Stackhouse's ire. It is fairly innocuous, but includes some speculation about Stackhouse's thinking now that Jason Kidd is a Maverick: "No more wondering what his role is or complaining about not being able to get in a rhythm."

One of MacMahon's editors acknowledges there was an issue with Stackhouse, but thinks that is not the likely explanation. (I plan to talk to Stackhouse later this week.)

"Tim MacMahon and Jerry Stackhouse had a conversation in the locker room on Friday, before Mark Cuban told MacMahon to leave the locker room," says Bob Yates, who is the Deputy Managing Editor for Sports at the Morning News. "Tim left his conversation with Stackhouse thinking the issue was resolved."

So, literally no one I have talked to thinks this is about space in the locker room, and the best available theories have to do with MacMahon having written this or that about Avery Johnson or Jerry Stackhouse that upset Mark Cuban.

Nobody likes the idea of an owner hand-picking unpopular journalists for expulsion.

Do you, as a blogger, even need to get into the locker room?
Yes! That's the time and the place that the NBA and the teams have settled on as "media time" for players. That's when they talk to the people who tell the fans what they are like.

I actually emailed Mark Cuban links to several stories I had written based on locker room interviews. From getting Eddy Curry to talk about William Wesley, to Chauncey Billups saying that the 2006 All-Star Game was not a well-played event ... locker room access has been an essential ingredient of TrueHoop. (On the very night I was in Dallas I wrote an extremely hard-hitting story about dancing, based on a locker room conversation.)

Also, as many an editor, including Yates, will tell you: it's important for the players to have a chance to clear the air with the media. If you write about people, you need to be around somewhat, so that they can confront you if you got something wrong. "We don't shoot from the weeds," says Yates. "We don't run and hide. Being in the locker room is one of the ways that our writers are accountable to the people they write about."

I'll be honest: I'm in a phase of life where I have very young children. Also, as someone who publishes continuously, I lose a lot when I am traveling and away from the internet. So, to the degree it's possible, I try to cover the NBA by phone and email and during business hours.

But at some point, if you're going to know what you're talking about, you have to go to the primary source, and see it for yourself. I go to games, and I go to locker rooms -- which is just about the only place one can reliably talk to a player you don't have some kind of connection to. I'm also lucky that back before I had kids, I logged a lot more time in locker rooms, which is how I know half the NBA people that I now know.

If you think about the next generation of sportswriters, a lot of them can't pay the mortgage with the crumbs they can get as an entry level mainstream media writer. (It's brutal! In Madison, Wisconsin I was paid ten cents a word. No expenses, no benefits. Do the math on that career.) So they have other jobs, and write about basketball in their free time. Thirty years ago, those guys would be learning the newspaper trade. But now some of them are learning the blogging trade. Either way, the best of them will be the stewards of the basketball information in the decades to come. No good keeping those people out.

What is the long-term solution?
NBA credentials come from the NBA, not teams. So if there is some clarity needed on issuing credentials, it'll have to come from the NBA, and I suspect it will.

Dallas situation aside, I don't think the long-term problem has anything to do with blog software, however. I think the real deal is that no one knows these bloggers. Until that changes, bloggers are more of a threat than an asset.

Players, owners, coaches, and franchises are all under a lot of media scrutiny all the time, and getting comfortable with the local press corps is part of the PR department's job. With some excellent exceptions, bloggers are, by and large, strangers to the NBA teams they write about. And there will always be resistance to strangers in the locker room.

Teams will want to go slow, and that's normal and human. Some bloggers may experience what some traditional journalists have found: if you don't have a lot of connections/mojo/audience/influence, and if you're writing in a manner that's difficult for the team, access can be an obstacle. That's something all journalists have to deal with, and bloggers will too.

Some bloggers might get excluded because they don't have enough readers. Or because they aren't doing professional enough work. Or, because they antagonize the team. Those are the obstacles, that for better or for worse, all journalists face.

But there is no sense in excluding journalists because of their software.