ESPN

As part of the festivities for the Texas Legends' season opener Saturday, former head coach and current assistant general manager Nancy Lieberman will have her jersey retired at Frisco's Dr Pepper Arena.

Saturday's 3 p.m. game against the Austin Toros will be broadcast in the Dallas area on KTXA Ch. 21.

Here's the Legends' opening-day roster, which was released Thursday:

The NBDL’s Texas Legends are adding more well known names to the organization’s basketball staff.

Sources with knowledge of the moves told ESPNDallas.com that the D-League franchise will this week hire former Mavericks forward Sam Perkins as a big-man coach and Basketball Hall of Famer Marques Haynes of the Harlem Globetrotters as a front-office adviser.

Sources said that the Legends, who are co-owned by Mavericks president of basketball operations Donnie Nelson, will also hire former Maverick and Dallas native Jason Sasser to work in player development alongside Perkins and Travis Blakeley, who served as the Legends’ director of player personnel in their inaugural season.

The Legends will be coached this season by Del Harris, who, at 74, replaces Nancy Lieberman on the bench to allow Lieberman to move to the front office as assistant general manager under president of basketball operations Spud Webb. Harris’ assistant coaches will be former NBA veteran guard David Wesley and Scott Flemming, who like Wesley served as an assistant to Lieberman last season.

The Legends start filling out their roster in earnest later this week with Thursday’s D-League draft and are scheduled to open the season at home Nov. 26 against Austin at the Dr. Pepper Arena in Frisco.

Power forward Matt Rogers and guard Justin Dentmon, who played for the Legends under Lieberman last season, were recently signed as the club’s first two confirmed players for this season.

History will be made tonight when the Frisco-based Texas Legends, the NBA Development League team co-owned by Dallas Mavericks president Donnie Nelson, open their inaugural season with head coach and Hall of Famer Nancy Lieberman on the bench.

Lieberman, 52, is set to become the first woman to coach a professional men's basketball team when the Legends play the Rio Grande Valley Vipers. The game tips at 7 p.m. and will be broadcast on Versus.

The Legends play their first three games on the road. They play at Idaho Friday and Saturday before making their home debut at Dr Pepper Arena in Frisco at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

For the Texas Legends 2010-11 schedule, click here.

The NBA Development League debuts its newest addition this season with the Texas Legends, the Frisco-based club co-owned by Donnie Nelson and coached by Nancy Lieberman.

The Dallas Mavericks' affiliate will open the season on Nov. 21 with an in-state matchup at Rio Grande Valley. After two road games at Idaho, the Legends' home opener is on Nov. 30 against another in-state, soon-to-be rival, Austin, the affiliate of the San Antonio Spurs. The NBDL released its full schedule Monday afternoon.

For the Legends' complete schedule, click here.

Minor-league basketball can be a tough sell, just ask the defunct Fort Worth Flyers, one of the NBA's D-League franchises that didn't, well, fly.

But, out in Frisco, it's a totally different story for the new Texas Legends, a franchise that is selling tickets remarkably fast thanks in large part to the star power attached to this D-League operation. Five months before their first game in team history, the Texas Legends have already sold 13,000 tickets.

Owned by Dallas Mavericks president of basketball operations and Evan Wyly, and with Spud Webb in place as president of basketball operations and Hall of Famer Nancy Lieberman installed as the head coach, interest is high and the Legends are focused on selling 15,000 tickets.

The Legends will give whoever buys the 15,000th ticket a prize consisting of autograph items from Nelson and Wyly, Lieberman and Webb, as well as Legends apparel, and gift cards to local businesses.

"We have had an absolute blast and the response from our fans has been legendary," Nelson said in a release. "Sales are rocking and so will the house."

The Legends inaugural season will tip-off this November.

Some sections are already sold out for every game of the 2010-2011 season.

The Legends only revealed their Lone Star State-inspired logo on May 22 and their team name on April 12.

The Texas Legends, the NBA Development League team that will begin play this fall in Frisco, unveiled its star-and-longhorn logo and a color scheme similar to its big brother in Dallas.

The Legends will serve as the feeder team for the Mavericks and will be coached by Hall of Famer Nancy Lieberman.

Mavs vice president of basketball operations Donnie Nelson and Evan Wyly are co-owners of the team.

The Legends will play at Frisco's Dr. Pepper Arena.

BOISE, Idaho -- Mavericks director of scouting Amadou Fall, who normally would be part of Dallas’ annual contingent here at the D-League Showcase, has officially accepted the league’s offer to help launch new NBA offices in the South African capital of Johannesburg.

The Mavs, though, have not yet decided if they will seek an immediate replacement for Fall, who had a key role in the drafting of prized Mavs rookie Rodrigue Beaubois and spent more than a decade with the franchise.

Their traveling party in Boise is sizable even without the popular Fall, headed by Mavs president of basketball operations Donnie Nelson. Also here: Mavs assistant general manager Keith Grant, veteran scout Dick Baker and two representatives from the D-League franchise coming to the Dallas suburb of Frisco next season which Nelson co-owns: Spud Webb from the front office and coach Nancy Lieberman.

League officials pursued the Senegal native for the South African post for some time and were determined to hire Fall, who has already served as a lead ambassador for the league on numerous "Basketball Without Borders" community outreach trips to the region.

The D-League Showcase brings all 16 teams in the league to one venue to play two games each in a four-day span, watched by representatives from virtually ever NBA team.

Del Harris has left the front office of the fledgling D-League franchise in Frisco to serve as a lead assistant and mentor to new Nets coach Kiki Vandeweghe in New Jersey.

But that won’t necessarily create an opening with the yet-to-be named D-League squad co-owned by Mavs president of basketball operations Donnie Nelson.

Nelson told ESPNDallas.com on Tuesday that he will hold off on searching for a new general manager – Harris’ new (and now old) gig as of Nov. 5 – until the summertime, just in case Harris decides he wants to return.

Nelson has the time to wait because the Frisco franchise doesn’t begin D-League play until the 2010-11 season. Harris will undoubtedly be hoping to still be working in New Jersey next season, but the whole Nets franchise is in flux with Vandeweghe, president Rod Thorn and the rest of the basketball staff all working on the final year of their contracts before the expected transfer in ownership control from Bruce Ratner to Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov.

“Del’s chair will remain open until it absolutely has to be filled,” Nelson said. “We would love to have him back any time.”

Even if Harris ends up staying with the Nets beyond this season, Nelson said the 72-year-old will continue to be a sounding board for Nancy Lieberman, who was hired earlier this month as the first female head coach in D-League history. Nelson and president of basketball operations Spud Webb will split front-office duties until it becomes clear after the NBA season whether they’ll definitely need a replacement for Harris.

“If I have any questions, he’s only a phone call away,” Lieberman said of Harris. “And I will be calling.”

As for naming the team, Nelson said that the franchise continues to take suggestions (more info can be found by clicking here) and faces no strict timetable for choosing a name. He did add, though, that the D-League entry will almost certainly be identified as a Texas team as opposed to a Frisco team like the Rangers’ Double A affiliate Frisco RoughRiders.

“It’s 80 percent that we’ll go with Texas,” Nelson said.