Lamar Odom

The Dallas Mavericks are a professional basketball team based in Dallas, Texas. They are members of the Southwest Division of the Western Conference of the National Basketball Association , and the reigning NBA champions, having defeated the Miami Heat in the 2011 NBA Finals. According to a 2012... Forbes Magazine report, they are the fourth-most valuable basketball franchise in the United States, valued at approximately $497 million; the franchise is surpassed in value only by the New York Knicks, the Los Angeles Lakers and the Chicago Bulls Since their inaugural 1980–81 season, the Mavericks have won three division titles , two conference championships , and one NBA Championship . In 1979, businessman Don Carter and partner Norm Sonju requested the right to bring an NBA franchise to Dallas, Texas. The last professional basketball team in Dallas had been the Dallas Chaparrals of the American Basketball Association, which moved to San Antonio in 1973 to become the San Antonio Spurs. At the 1980 NBA All-Star Game, league owners voted to admit the new team, with the team's name coming from the 1957–1962 TV western Maverick.
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The University of Rhode Island is the principal public research university in the U.S. state of Rhode Island. Its main campus is located in Kingston. Additional campuses include the Feinstein Campus in Providence, the Narragansett Bay Campus in Narragansett, and the W. Alton Jones Campus in West... Greenwich. URI currently enrolls 14,546 undergraduate and 4,549 graduate students. It is a land grant, sea grant, and urban grant institution. US News and World Report classifies URI as a tier 1 national university, ranking it 160th overall. The University was first chartered as the state's agricultural school and agricultural experiment station in 1888. The site of the school was originally the Oliver Watson Farm, the original farmhouse of which is still maintained as a small museum. In 1892, the school became known as the Rhode Island College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts. The first class had only seventeen students, each completing their course of study in two years. In 1909, the school's name was again changed to Rhode Island State College as the school's programs were expanded beyond its original agricultural education mandate.
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Jamaica is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens. It was settled under Dutch rule in 1656 in New Netherland as Rustdorp. Under British rule, the Village of Jamaica became the center of the "Town of Jamaica". Jamaica was the county seat of Queens County from the formation of the... county in 1683 until March 7, 1788, when the town was reorganized by the state government and the county seat was moved to Mineola . When Queens was incorporated into the City of Greater New York in 1898, both the Town of Jamaica and the Village of Jamaica were dissolved, but the neighborhood of Jamaica regained its role as county seat. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 12, which also includes Hollis, St. Albans, Springfield Gardens, Baisley Park, Rochdale Village, and South Jamaica. Jamaica is patrolled by the NYPD's 103rd Precinct. Previously known as one of the predominantly African American neighborhoods in the borough of Queens, Jamaica in recent years has been undergoing a sharp influx of other ethnicities.
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