Dallas Mavericks Should Make Most of Dirk Nowitzki's Last Seasons, Rebuild Later

Dirk Nowitzki moved in the low blocks in one of those moves he had perfected through thousands of practice-court repetitions. He positioned his body to keep another of the NBA’s young, more athletic power forwards from foiling his plans. He then turned for one of those face-up jumpers that could become the pose for the statue the Dallas Mavericks will surely one day erect outside American Airlines Center in his honor.

As Nowitzki's fadeaway jumper sailed over Terrence Jones' reach on Sunday and caught only the final threads of the net on its way in, few likely paused to take a mental snapshot of the sort of moment Nowitzki had made too ordinary over the years to stand out.

More like it will come. With the Mavericks' Game 4 blowout of the Houston Rockets on Sunday, Nowitzki will launch more jumpers this season. Still, it is worth stopping to cherish the reminders of one of the league's all-time greats, as he has sought to value these times in the ways younger men cannot.

"You realize that you never know if you’re going to be in this position again,” Nowitzki said. “The playoffs are fun. Sometimes the 82 games (of the regular season) can be a grind as you get older. The playoffs are what you look forward to.

"You just never know from year to year. After we won the championship, we thought we were going to go deep every year. We broke up the team and missed the playoffs two years later. I’ve seen everything in this league. You have to cherish these moments and make the best out of it."

How many of those moments remain, however, will be determined by forces largely beyond his control.

That's how it always is in the end, even for the greats, as their age strips just enough of their powers that they can no longer control their teams' fates as they once did. 

David J. Phillip/Associated Press

Nowitzki's jumper can still be pure, but he has ceded many late-game touches the last two seasons to Monta Ellis. His defense, though never a strength, has become a liability.

The Mavericks, while still alive after an inspired Game 4 effort to prolong their season, remain in a precarious first-round position, down 3-1 as the series shifts to Houston. They have shown signs of returning to their place as one of the league's most dynamic offensive teams, as they were before the Rajon Rondo experiment bogged them down and ultimately blew up. But they are no longer contenders.

When the Mavericks' season likely ends before the playoffs move to their second round, as it has for the Mavericks every season since the 2011 championship run, decisions will have to be made about how to retool.

Those difficult choices would normally have to begin with a look at the face of the franchise, with Nowitzki to turn 37 years old at roughly the time the next champion is crowned.

Player	2014-15	2015-16	2016-17	2017-18
Chandler Parsons	$14,700,000	$15,361,500	$16,023,000*
Tyson Chandler	$14,598,888
Rajon Rondo	$12,909,091
Monta Ellis	$8,360,000	$8,720,000*
Dirk Nowitzki	$7,974,482	$8,333,334	$8,692,184*
Devin Harris	$3,878,000	$4,053,000	$4,228,000	$4,403,000
Raymond Felton	$3,793,693	$3,950,313*
Jose Barea	$1,310,286
Al-Farouq Aminu	$981,084	$1,100,602*
Greg Smith	$948,163
Charlie Villanueva	$1,316,809
Richard Jefferson	$1,448,490
Dwight Powell	$507,336	$845,059
Amar'e Stoudemire	$485,670
Bernard James	$236,866

The Mavericks have already decided that Nowitzki will never wear another uniform. This is the right decision, if anything else was ever considered at all.

The more difficult choice will be whether to step back and rebuild, or go all-out in Nowitzki's closing window of opportunity.

The Rockets faced this choice in Hakeem Olajuwon's final seasons. Like Nowitzki, Olajuwon maintained much of his greatness, but was fading. The Rockets brought in Charles Barkley and, for one season, Scottie Pippen to prop that window open a bit longer, much as the Mavericks did with Rondo.

Though Barkley does not remember it this way, his tenure in Houston could have succeeded. The Rockets returned to the 1997 Western Conference Finals, going out on John Stockton’s Game 6 buzzer-beater. The next season, Barkley injured a triceps against the Jazz and the Rockets’ time as a contender was over. In Pippen’s only season in Houston, the Rockets won regularly when he, Olajuwon and Barkley were healthy, but went out in the first round against the Lakers.

The Mavericks made a similar choice with the addition of Rondo. It was always a gamble. With almost no catch-and-shoot game, he needs the ball to be effective, but so does Ellis. It was a bad fit from the start.

Rondo is not the defender he was, but the Mavericks needed to see if he could recapture that, knowing that they were not anywhere near strong enough defensively to win a championship with Jameer Nelson at the point.

With time running out on Nowitzki's excellence, the Mavericks tried to make a game-changing move and failed. But the logic was sound.

It still is because Nowitzki still has enough game left to try a last, improbable buzzer-beater.

The Mavericks have remade the roster repeatedly since the championship season, never quite finding the right mix. They still need defense-first help in the backcourt, as they knew when they made the move for Rondo. They need another defend-and-rebound big man because one (Tyson Chandler) is not enough at center and power forward.

If they need to hide Nowitzki on occasion, as they have in the first round by having him match up with Rockets small forward Trevor Ariza, they might need a three off the bench that can defend fours for Nowitzki.

Jim Cowsert/Associated Press

As much as the Mavericks have turned over the roster again and again since that 2011 run, they need to make the most of Nowitzki's final seasons. He is not like Kobe Bryant, who has been unable to stay healthy the past two seasons and earns roughly three times more than Nowitzki's cap-friendly $8 million per year deal. Nowitzki is still healthy and a bargain.

The high-dollar move for Chandler Parsons, the Mavericks’ highest paid player with a three-year deal that pays $14.7 million this year and over $16 million two years from now, was made in part with the years after Nowitzki in mind, but mostly for the final seasons of Nowitzki’s career. The Mavericks will have to hold on to Tyson Chandler as a free agent and probably to Ellis, if he opts out and cannot be replaced by a more defensive-minded guard.

With as few as four players and no more than seven (depending on player options) under contract, the Mavericks will likely face more offseason upheaval. But having gone this long with Nowitzki as they close in on the league’s 2016 free agent free-for-all, they might as well make the most of the final window in his career.

They will have to move on soon enough. As with every one of his one-legged, fadeaway jumpers, the Mavs can take those mental snapshots and try to make those final seasons memorable, rather than rush to whatever comes next.

Jonathan Feigen covers the Houston Rockets for the Houston Chronicle and Bleacher Report. All quotes were obtained first-hand.