The Decline of the Dallas Mavericks

Less than two years ago the Dallas Mavericks were five minutes away from taking an insurmountable three-game lead against the Miami Heat.

Unfortunately, what ensued in that final five minutes dramatically changed the fortune of a franchise which seemed posed for its own reign of NBA dominance. Now, two years and 112 regular season victories later, this same franchise faces the previously unthinkable prospect of the lottery.

How did a team that had been among the youngest and most promising in the 2005-2006 season become the disaster that it is now? To answer that question, it is helpful to take the case of the four-time NBA Champion, San Antonio Spurs of this same era who will without a doubt take their rightful place in the pantheon of the NBA’s greatest and most successful franchises.

I believe that a careful comparison of these two divergent teams will demonstrate the utter commitment to excellence that such success requires.

Though in 2003 the Spurs had already won a ring, for various reasons, that 1999 title team differed greatly from the 2003 incarnation, and therefore the 2003 team can be understood as a new and unique entity.

2003 would be the first major encounter between the Spurs and Mavericks. Although Dallas would fall four games to two to the eventual NBA Champion Spurs, there are several parallels that should be drawn between these teams and their future counterparts.

In many ways this 2003 Western Conference Championship is analogous to that of 2006. Like Dallas in 2006, the Spurs would drop the first game against what was considered to be an inferior team, an inferiority compounded by injury (Dirk in 2003, Bell in 2006), but eventually, despite serious scares (double digit second-half deficits for the Spurs in Game six and the Mavericks in Game five), the superior team would prevail in six hard-fought games.

It was generally thought, following both Conference finals, that the subsequent NBA Finals series would merely be a coronation, that the Eastern conference team essentially had no chance.

Yet the Spurs-Nets Finals of 2003 was far closer than anyone had anticipated, requiring a superhuman near quadruple-double (20 points, 20 rebounds, 10 assists, eight blocks) from Finals MVP Tim Duncan in the deciding Game six.

However, it was not Duncan’s brilliance alone that won the day, as the Spurs enjoyed solid contributions from David Robinson, Stephen Jackson, and Manu Ginobili, among others.

Dirk Nowitzki was not as brilliant in his 2006 Finals series, yet it cannot be said that he did not carry his share of the burden. Nowitzki hit one of the most impressive shots of the series in Game five, putting Dallas up by 1 with seconds to spare, only to be ultimately outdone more by a questionable call than the opposing team.

Moreover, Nowitzki’s sidekick Josh Howard provided some decidedly not clutch plays, missing two potential game and series deciding free throws near the end of Game three, as well as calling the most bone-headed timeout since Webber’s Michigan days at the end of Game five.

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