It has been nearly one week since the Dallas Mavericks finished off LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and the rest of the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals and won the franchise's first ever world championship. The buzz is just now starting to die down here in DFW. I'm sure the players, from franchise player Dirk Nowitzki, the MVP of the Finals to the obscure (in comparision, anyway),waterboys on the team, not to mention high-profile Mavericks owner Mark Cuban are still on cloud nine at the moment.
The phenominal rise of the 2010-11 Mavs took me back to the mid to late 1980s. I was living and working in Saginaw, Michigan at that time. All of a sudden, the local NBA franchise started making the playoffs after being terrible for many years.
The Detroit Pistons of 1984-89 remind me of the 2001-t0 present Mavericks.Not the style of play, of course. The big,white guy on Dallas' squad, Nowitzki, is a first-ballot Hall of Famer,the big, white guy in the middle of the Pistons lineup, Bill Laimbeer,might be one of the most loathed, most villified players in NBA history. But the way both squad rose from virtually ashes to the top of the mountain was fun to watch.
I moved to Dallas from Mid-Michigan in 1994. The Mavericks, just prior to this time, had to be the joke of the NBA. The trading of key players, such as Mark Aguirre (who,coincidentally, was on those Detroit championship teams in 1989-1990),Sam Perkins, Derek Harper, to name a few, and the failure to replace them with equal or superior talent. The tragic circumstances surrounding Roy Tarpley, his potential superstar talents going to waste. The bad coaches that made their one-and done head coaching career stops in Dallas, such as Quinn Buckner, Jim Cleamons,etc. , not to mention bad ownership between the Donald Carter-Mark Cuban regimes. But when I arrived in Dallas,the future was looking at least a little brighter.
Dick Motta was still the head coach, and the Mavericks had already drafted collegiate superstars Jamal Mashburn from Kentucky and Jim Jackson out of Ohio State. Now they drafted Jason Kidd, from Cal-Berkeley. The Three J's. Finally the potential to be good again, if not great. That was similar to the summer of 1981, when the Pistons,coming off two seasons in a row for 60+ losses, drafted Isiah Thomas, fresh off a NCAA championship with Indiana, and Notre Dame All-American Kelly Tripucka. Then, during the 1981-82 season, they acquired Bill Laimbeer in a trade from the Cleveland Cavaliers.
But internal strife wrecked these potential trio for both the Mavs and the Pistons. Whether it was ego-trippin' (likely) or Toni Braxton (heresay) or whatever the case, Kidd was traded to Phoenix in 1996, with Mashburn(Miami) and Jackson(New Jersey) soon to follow. This was similar to 1986, when Tripucka,who was instant offense but a defensive liability, was traded to Utah for one-time NBA scoring champ Adrian Dantley, a fellow Notre Dame alum not noted for his defense, either, but word had it that Tripucka was less than friendly with Pistons coach Chuck Daly and Thomas.
Both teams made definitive moves to lay the foundation of their championship squads via the draft and also key trades. In the case of the Mavericks, that came in a shrewd draft day(1998)deal made by Mavericks Head Coach Don Nelson. The end result of his dealings netted the club a young German forward named Dirk Nowitzki from DJK Wurzburg and reserve point guard Steve Nash from the Phoenix Suns. They had already obtained versatile swingman Michael Finley from the Suns a year earlier in the Kidd trade. The Pistons began putting the pieces to their championship puzzle together in 1985,acquiring rugged power forward Rick Mahorn from Washington. They also drafted a little known guard from McNeese State (LA) named Joe Dumars. Then , in 1986, they drafted John Salley from Georgia Tech in the 1st round.Then, in perhaps their most pivotal move, they drafted an unheard-of forward from an unheard of school:Dennis Rodman from Southeast Oklahoma State.
Thus, the championship foundations were laid for both teams. Having Don Nelson as a coach gave the Mavericks credibility, something that was sorely missing for several seasons in Big D. The players really knew Nelson, a key player in the Boston Celtics dynasty in the 1960s, meant business when he cut veteran Oliver Miller, for comments he made to the press that Nelson didn't like. Comments that didn't line up with the winning attitude he was trying to instill in his young club.
For all the negative publicity he receives, Cuban has to get major props for fielding a competitive,playoff caliber team each year. He's done it no matter who is coaching, whether a crusty old NBA veteran like Nelson,or a wet behind the ears rookie coach like Avery Johnson, or a journeyman coach like Rick Carlisle, former coach at Detroit and Indiana before getting his shot at a title in Dallas. He's also done it through some major personnel changes. He allowed Steve Nash, who emerged into an All-Star during his time with Dirk and Finley in Dallas,to return to Phoenix via free agency,a highly unpopular move in Dallas,made even more unpopular by the fact that he won not one, but TWO MVP awards after his return to a telented, athletic Suns roster. He also was willing to pay a huge sum of buyout money to let Finley walk as well. Finley was the first of the Dirk-Nash-Finley trio that carried the Mavericks for the first part of the millenium to get a championship ring,with the Spurs in 2007.
Detroit's path to a title was a little quicker than the Mavericks. After the Pistons acquired
Dantley and drafted Salley and Rodman, they went up the ladder pretty quickly. They went to five straight Eastern Conference Finals. After losing to longtime nemesis Boston in the 1987 finals, they went to the NBA Finals three straight times,losing to the Lakers in an epic seven game series in 1988, sweeping the Lakers in the rematch in 1989,then defeated the Portland Trail Blazers
in 1990 by winning three straight games on a Portland home court they had not won a game on in 16 years.
The Mavericks took a little longer but was no less breathtaking. After taking their lumps primarily against the Spurs and the Sacramento Kings in the playoffs, the Mavs retooled. To offset the loss of Nash and Finley, the Mavericks drafted talented college stars Josh Howard from Wake Forest and Devin Harris from Wisconsin. They traded for scoring machine Jerry Stackhouse from Washington and sharpshooter Jason Terry from Atlanta. After installing Johnson as head coach, the Mavericks toughened up defensively, and after losing to MVP Nash and the Suns in the 2005 semifinals, they finally knocked off the big, bad defending NBA champion Spurs in the 2006 semifinals. Then they got revenge on the Suns in the Conference finals. The Mavericks, at last, were in the NBA Finals.
But after taking a 2-0 series lead against the Eastern Conference champions, the Miami Heat, it all fell apart. The Heat swept games 3,4,and 5 in Miami,then, took the championship back home with a win in Dallas in game six. Miami was champions. Dallas was not.
But the future still looked bright for the Mavericks. They won a league-high and franchise record 67 games in the 2006-07 season and looked ripe for anothe long playoff run. But the Golden State Warriors,at 42-40 twenty-five games behind Dallas in the playoff race, stunned the Mavericks four games to two, becoming the first number 8 seed to knock off a number 1 seed in the NBA playoffs.
This started a tailspin that lasted, to be honest, right up until the start of Game 5 of this year's opening round series against Portland.During that time, they endured two more early round exits in the playoffs, a coaching switch, from Avery Johnson to Rick Carlisle, the departure of key players in the 2006 Finals run: Stackhouse, Howard, Harris, Erick Dampier, in fact entering the 2010-11 season only Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Terry remained from that squad. But they did reacquire Jason Kidd in 2009 from New Jersey. Then in a key move, they traded Howard and two other reserves to Washington for Caron Butler, Brendan Haywood and DeShawn Stephenson,all of whom contributed to the 2010-11 championship effort.
Unlike the 1988-89 Pistons, who were poised to take the next step to the title(in fact we who were in Michigan at that time expected nothing less), no one,if they are really honest,would have predicted the 2010-11 Mavericks to go all the way. In fact, players and coaches from other Western conference teams, most notably Denver Nuggets coach George Karl, made it known that they wouldn't mind being the ones to face Dallas in a playoff match. They contended that the Mavericks would be easy to get past,they as a team were "soft", Dirk, in particular, was "soft". Carlisle wasn't the most respected coach in the world, either.After Dallas blew a 20+ point lead and lost at Portland to even the best of seven series at 2-2,you almost expected the Mavericks to fold em'up, like the Maverick teams of the past.
But not this time.
They wrapped up the series against the Trail Blazers, winning the next two, including Game 6 in Portland.Then the unthinkable happened.
Against the two-time defending World Champion Los Angeles Lakers, a generations-long nemesis of the Mavericks, from Magic and Kareem to Shaq and Kobe,from the Forum to Staples Center the Mavs took the first two games at the Lakers' home court. Then the Mavericks delivered at home, finishing off the Lakers two more times, including a classic Texas beatdown in Game Four, to advance to the conference finals for the first time since the 2005-06 season.
They rolled through the conference finals,beating the up and coming Oklahoma City Thunder in five games. Nowitzki was in championship form in this series, and his leadership was instrumental in leading the Mavericks back to the Finals.....and redemption.
The Mavericks were underdogs in their rematch against a Miami Heat squad fortified with the addition of two-time league MVP LeBron James and perennial All-Star forward Chris Bosh(from Dallas Lincoln High School). They had not so fond memories of Dwyane Wade, the 2006 Finals MVP with a superb performance against the Mavericks. After a Game 1 Miami victory, the South Florida natives were already proclaiming victory.
But the Mavericks overcame a 15 point deficit to win Game 2 in the final seconds. After Miami hung on for a 2 point win in Game 3,the experts were once again predicting the demise of the Mavericks. But the Mavericks won a close Game 4. Then they closed out the Dallas portion of the Finals with a 9 point victory in Game 5.Then.....they dominated the Heat from start to finish to win Game 6.
As I wrote on Facebook: The Dallas Mavericks-NBA World Champions......
Let that marinate for a moment,will you.....
