EBSports.net Dallas Mavericks Blog

Contributer: hamb

So, the Dallas Mavericks have managed to accomplish two miraculous feats in the month of April. The first was finishing the regular season with a 67-15 record (6th highest all time, and franchise record) and the second was losing in the first round to the 8th seed, as the first #1 seed in history to lose in a seven game series in round one. Excellent.

So, what next? many have called for Dirk Nowitzki's head. Many have asked for trading Terry, Dampier, Harris, Howard, etc. in effect, blowing up the team.

That is not a good idea.

This is a team that until weeks ago was considered the best in the league, they had all they needed to beat the Spurs, they were confident that they could beat the Suns, and nobody in the Eastern Conference really scared them outside Detroit, and they matched up very well against them.

What nobody counted on was the Mavericks running into their former coach, and a team that likes to run and gun, and had nothing to lose. Not to mention, all the heart and excitement of the world that the Mavs seemed to lack in their first round matchup.

The Mavericks major problem was lack of heart, the team just didn't show up. In an elimination game 6, the Mavericks' Dirk Nowitzki shot 2-13 with 8 points for the GAME. Dirk must show up for the mavs to have a chance. Howard disappeared in the 2nd half (as usual) and Stack had tired legs by the end of the 3rd quarter. Avery Johnson was at a loss after game 1 when he couldnt overcome the matchup issues that GS gave the mavs best players. Dampier was nowhere to be seen, mostly because Avery didn't give him a chance.

There were few bright spots though, Harris emerged as a confident contributer, but not a leader, Croshere tried every once in a while to do something positive, but every positive move he made was complimented by a move that made the fans boo him in their minds. and Diop was a beast in this series, he showed an offensive skill that many mavs didn't think he had, in fact, I'm sure that we will never see again, he scored a whole 10 points one game. That was impressive for a guy who didn't know where the basket was in the regular season.

However, Harris was still hindered by foul trouble, Diop, had no offensive repertoire, he just played hard, and Croshere, well, he was better than KVH, so that counts for something.

The mavs need to look to the future realizing that they do not need any personnel basketball adjustments in order to make it back to the Finals. What they do need is some leadership, maybe a co-first-banana with Dirk, because I think Dirk is too good to be a second banana, but doesnt have the personality to have all the load squarely on his shoulders.

A player the mavs need to go after is Billups, he is strong, a good shooter, excellent decision maker. there have been many suggestions for Sign and Trades with Detroit in order to lure Billups away from Motown. But the biggest concern remains, how do we get him? What pieces to give up to bring a proven PG to this city? It is obvious that the terry/harris experiment is flawed, but Harris is our future. Would Detroit accept a package of terry/Dampier? I think not, our best bet is to provide a young Harris to make Detroit accept the sign and trade.



This would only work, if we traded into the 1st round of the draft, to draft a pg to groom behind Billups as a 3rd string pg, and trade Terry for both a starting SG, and a backup PG, maybe to seattle for Rashard Lewis + one of their guards, and to make the salaries work, we might have to lose somebody like George, or Stackhouse. But, the resulting team should make it easier to get the ball to Dirk in the correct spot, allowing us to matchup better with teams that run and gun (like GS) while at the same time not losing any advantage we may have ever held vs teams like Detroit, San Antonio, or Phoenix.

But the Mavericks have to act fast, their window of opportunity is closing, the team must not pretend that there is nothing to worry about after the finals collapse last year, and the choke job in the 1st round this year.

Forced to deal with a long offseason, Dirk Nowitzki plans to spend much of it figuring out what went wrong for him and the Dallas Mavericks in the playoffs.

"The next couple of weeks are definitely going to be tough," he said Saturday. "A lot of thinking."

Among the things he'll ponder: How did the Dallas Mavericks' 67-win regular season come crashing down in the first round? And how did he go from being the likely league MVP to being part of a team that couldn't get past a No. 8 seed?

The one question Nowitzki won't ask himself is the one everyone else is asking about him: Does he have what it takes to lead a team to a championship?

"I think I did a decent job in the regular season of taking over when I had to," he said. "For whatever reason, this playoff series I couldn't do it. I couldn't put my stamp on it the way I wanted to. It was definitely very disappointing. I still think I have pretty good leadership skills. I just didn't show it this playoff series."

Although Nowitzki said "you go down as a team," he knows it's not that simple, not for a perennial All-Star who is the face of the franchise. Thing is, his own expectations are just as high, which is why the six-game ousting by Golden State, and how little he did to stop it, will eat at him all summer -- just like Dallas' collapse against Miami in the finals bothered him all last summer.

"That's the kind of person I am. I always take things very, very hard on myself," he said. "I don't need media people to tell me that I did bad. I know I didn't play my best in the playoffs. ...

"I understand the business by now. If you play well and you win, you're the greatest. And if you lose, you're the worst player in the league. It's obviously not the position I want to be in, but it's nothing I can change now. I believe that everything happens for a reason. Hopefully I can learn from this experience."

Nowitzki's critics are strictly outside the organization. Team owner Mark Cuban, front-office boss Donnie Nelson and coach Avery Johnson all still believe Nowitzki can lead the Mavericks to a championship.

"You can't put it on one guy's shoulders," Nelson said. "We won 67 games this year. That's no fluke. We didn't all of a sudden become stupid and poor performers overnight.

"I think the easy thing to do in this is pile it on Dirk or Avery. But you can't do that. If you actually open up the hood and look into things, you'll see there's a lot more reasons."

Cuban's support of Nowitzki is just as unwavering. Asked immediately after the Mavs were eliminated whether he questioned Nowitzki's leadership, Cuban said: "Not at all. Not a little bit. Anyone who suggests otherwise is a moron."

Nelson noted that Nowitzki is a different kind of leader, much like he's a mold-breaking 7-footer who shoots 3s.

"If you look at his entire career, he has always been a very unique combination of a total team player and an All-Star performer. There are not many of those guys walking around," Nelson said. "Dirk is going to make the right play. Does that mean he's going to shoot over a triple team? No. Dirk's always going to do the thing that's in the best interest of helping his club."

But wouldn't being more selfish be in the team's best interest?

"I think Dirk needs to be himself," Nelson said. "We've had some pretty special years with that. ... He's not King Kong. He does it more with skill. Last year, just to get us to the point of being in the finals, he did everything, he put our team on his back. This was just a very odd matchup for us and we ran into a hot team at the wrong time."

Nowitzki said he plans to take a month off, then start working out again in June. As always, his offseason goal will be to become "more of a complete player."

He also plans to join the German national team for the European Championship tournament in September, aiming for a top-three finish to clinch a spot in next year's Olympics or at least earning a spot in the Olympics qualifying event.

While the playoffs go on without the Mavericks, Nowitzki will have plenty of time to work on his MVP acceptance speech. That's what happens when you follow the best regular-season of your career with your worst postseason.