Kleeman's Last Word

Dallas Mavericks: Thin Free Agent Class Tests Texas Triangle

Writer’s note: this is the third of a three part series on critical offseasons for the San Antonio Spurs, Houston Rockets and Dallas Mavericks.

The underwhelming, overpriced free agent class continues to dwindle and no teams are feeling the pain more than the trio of Texas elitists.

The San Antonio Spurs lost their top target Corey Maggette to the Golden State Warriors, in what can only be described as a boneheaded basketball decision by the coveted swing man.

He ditched mid-level offers from the last two NBA champions to join a lottery team with no point guard. He left one team that didn't make the playoffs to join another. And this guy said he was willing to take a pay cut to win?

The Warriors were already a deeply flawed, one-dimensional team with Baron Davis. Now that Davis has all but exited to head for a stripped Los Angeles Clippers team, the Warriors will be a deeply flawed, one-dimensional team without a point guard.

Maggette's decision likely had nothing to do with basketball, and if it did, the guy is an idiot. Maggette will score points in Don Nelson's system but without a starting facilitator to run the offense, they will be tougher points.

The Warriors have yet to sign free agent center Andres Biedrins and should worry about whether Monta Ellis is in a New York state of mind.

Why did Maggette ditch the chance to help a proven champion win again to play with the dysfunctional Warriors? $50 million over five years and the opportunity to live in the beautiful Bay Area with one of the country's most agreeable climates might have something to do with it.

His decision in a playing sense sits somewhere on the level of O.J. Simpson agreeing to write a book about how he would have killed his wife, "had he done it."

On a personal level, Maggette did what most people would do. He took a mound of cash to live within driving distance of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Hey, if someone paid me $50 million to live near that scenery, I would grab it in a heartbeat. And, who says you can't miss the playoffs for the second year in a row with style?

Elton Brand surprised many, including this stumped writer, by agreeing to an $80 million deal with the Philadelphia 76ers. He makes the Sixers an elite Eastern Conference team on paper, sure, but few expected him to abandon playing with Baron Davis, whom Brand called to join the Clippers.

What is Davis thinking now about that verbal agreement?

With Mickael Pietrus gone to Orlando and Carlos Delfino already mulling a return to Europe or the Detroit Pistons, that limits the options for the three Texas teams that need to win now.

The Spurs, Rockets and Mavericks did not fill any major roster holes on draft night, and these teams' stars' salaries eat up valuable cap space.

The Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming pairing has produced zero playoff series wins for the Rockets, and nagging injuries suggest an already narrow championship window is now closing at warp speed.

The Spurs, still the best of the trio, managed to win a Game Seven on the road for the first time in franchise history but stumbled badly in the conference finals against the Lakers.

Each of these squads can spend between $5 and $6 million, using their mid-level exception, and have few trade-able assets not already part of the franchise's immediate plans. That estimated number didn't change much when the league released the salary cap space available for each of the 30 teams on Tuesday night.

Donnie Nelson, Daryl Morey and R.C. Buford will swelter this summer. To win a title next season, each general manager will need to turn that sweat into an impactful free agent signing.

Trouble in Texas? It looks that way.

DALLAS MAVERICKS

If you are looking for an enduring image of the discombobulated Dallas Mavericks, perhaps the above picture is your best bet.

Just how screwed the Mavericks are depends on whether Jason Kidd can still play, and more importantly, whether a core that has participated in three of the worst playoff flame-outs in NBA history can ever recover from such futility.

The Mavs' troublesome fall from Western Conference champion to first round punching bag began with a blown 13-point lead. With less than eight minutes remaining in game three of the 2006 NBA Finals, the Mavs looked ready to seize the commanding 3-0 lead from which no team has ever recovered. Heat fans were booing at the prospect, and Dwyane Wade had not lived up to his star billing.

Maybe the Mavericks started planning that championship parade too early and jinxed the franchise's lone Finals appearance. Whatever the reason, the Mavs let Wade wake up, and what happened after the Mavs choked away that game, should haunt Dallas fans for years.

It was easy then to blame losing four straight games on Bennett Salvatore's inconsistent whistle in the pivotal contest. That was not a foul, was it? The refs didn't have to acknowledge that premature timeout by Josh Howard, did they?

Maybe the Mavs needed to lose badly twice more in the playoffs to prove to themselves and the fans that a foul call disparity had little to do with their troubles.

What the team has:

+A first ballot half of fame point guard who can still play, given the right system
+A should be hall of fame power forward, the best shooting big man since Larry Bird
+A roster that can compete for, but not win a championship
+A starting center that can notch 15 and 15 or 5 and 1, depending on whether he has his head in the game
+A continuation of the most competitive era in franchise history, certainly better than those losing seasons in the 90s, when the best prospect was losing to Minnesota in the last place race
+A low draft pick in Shan Foster that team management believes can make the roster and immediately contribute

Team needs:

+A reliable scorer with an attack the basket first mentality
+Less streaky jump shooters
+A better center tandem than DeSagana Diop and Erick Dampier
and
+Less streaky jump shooters

Chief concerns:

+The core of Dirk Nowitzki, Josh Howard, Jason Terry, Jerry Stackhouse and Dampier will forever be associated with three playoff flops
+When things turn sour for the Mavs in a game, those core players quit going to the basket and start heaving moronic jump shots - how else do you explain them losing to the Warriors?
+No identity, whatsoever
+The team has reportedly spent its entire mid level exception, more than $5 million, bringing back Diop
+The Mavs had eight players under contract at season's end, with gaping roster holes, and the signings of Diop and Gerald Green do little to change the team's current fortunes
+The team owes $20 million to its hall of fame point guard next season and gave up potentially valuable draft picks and excessive cash to land him
+The team's most reliable scorer, despite incorporating some low post moves into his game, will always be more comfortable as a streak shooting seven footer.

The Mavs must answer the toughest question of any NBA team. Do you blow up the only core that has taken you to the NBA Finals or do you risk trading one of those players for an All-Star that might not fit?

The former Supersonics will stink next year. Of that, most people are certain. Knowing that, Oklahoma City fans should carry low expectations.

Mavs fans have no idea what to expect from this squad. The team won 67 regular season games and knocked off a defending champion in the last four years. In that span, it also lost perhaps the two best coaches the franchise will ever have, let a franchise player walk and then paid him to win a championship with a state rival, and watched as a former point guard cashed a bigger check in Arizona and grabbed two MVP trophies.

Mark Cuban possesses the spunk and personality to be a great owner, but his track record says otherwise. The last three years, the highest paid player on Cuban's roster, Michael Finley, was playing for another team, the San Antonio Spurs. No argument can justify letting Steve Nash depart and a five game flame-out against the Hornets makes the Jason Kidd trade look increasingly stupid.

The Mavs traded away Devin Harris, a young, promising point guard, who already led them to the NBA Finals, to score a 35-year-old point guard who had fallen out of favor with a former Finalist.

They were not going to win a championship with Harris in the next two seasons nor were they going to win one with Kidd. A desperate PR move to put fans in the seats at the American Airlines Center? You decide.

The Mavs tried last season to replicate the Spurs approach to the regular season. They accepted losing to lottery-bound and underachieving Eastern and Western Conference teams in November in hopes of saving their best basketball for April and May.

The Mavs failed miserably, as they had no championship trophy on which to fall back, while the Spurs recovered from a rocky January enough to earn another conference finals berth.

At the heart of the team's struggles may be its lacking identity. I remember watching a halftime interview between Jason Terry and Michelle Tafoya in Los Angeles. The Mavs led the Lakers by 10 points and Terry attributed the team's success to playing "Maverick basketball."

What the hell is Maverick basketball? Does anybody know?

I didn't buy the Mavs as a championship team when they were plowing through a 67-win season because I thought they were too flexible.

They won so many games in so many ways that it seemed the team's over-adaptability would bite them in the playoffs. When the confused, talented and top-seeded Mavs faced the specialist, run-and-gun Warriors, Avery Johnson's squad had no idea how to handle itself.

The team tried outshooting the streaky Warriors and lost in six games as a result. Hate Johnson and celebrate his firing all you want Mavs fans, but he gave them a one-year identity good enough to send them past the pesky Spurs.

For one season, the Mavs committed to being a better defensive squad and used stops to create quicker offense. A year later, in the fight of their lives, against a team that made the playoffs on the last day, they looked like lost, abandoned puppies.

That's when the players began tuning out Johnson and everything crumbled.

Rick Carlisle has promised that this core can win a championship and he wouldn't be coaching if he didn't believe Kidd can get them to the Finals. It was clear Cuban wanted a coach who believed that, to replace the disgruntled Johnson who didn't.

Does the signing of Green, a high-flying dunker who has yet to get it on the NBA level, and Diop, whose five minutes of defense against Duncan in a game seven overtime may be his greatest contribution, get you excited?

The Mavs backed themselves into this corner when rumors of the Kidd trade surfaced. The Mavs could not have risked bringing Harris back after making it public that they didn't think he could lead them to further success.

The Mavs are competitive with any team in the NBA but not championship material. One sweltering offseason will decide if that's enough.

posted by Robert Kleeman @ 3:56 PM