Despite Lure of Tanking, Mavs Fighting the Good but Likely Impossible Fight

LOS ANGELES — When you've been a champion, it can be difficult to accept any lesser purpose.

Mark Cuban, Rick Carlisle and Dirk Nowitzki were Dallas' Big Three, winning in Miami and celebrating atop the NBA mountain in 2011.

Four-and-a-half years later, the three of them are still the Mavericks' main men, yet so much has changed.

Carlisle shared big hugs with both Cuban and Nowitzki in another joyous visiting locker room late Sunday night. The game ball was secured for safekeeping. The Mavs' leaders were sincerely, meaningfully happy.

It was hardly some league-conquering triumph. It was only the third game of the season. It was an easy victory over a bad Lakers team at Staples Center.

Carlisle passed Don Nelson to become the winningest head coach in Mavericks history. It was a footnote, not the kind of NBA development that registers in the broader sports world the way a road victory does in June or DeAndre Jordan's near-jump in July.

Jordan's uber-athletic arrival would've given Cuban, Carlisle and Nowitzki renewed purpose—the possibility of contending to be champs again. When Jordan reversed field and stayed with the Clippers, that road to gold was repaved as impossibility anew.

It left the Mavericks facing the basic question: Does any of it really matter if you have no chance at being a champion again?

It's a fair point. It's why tanking has become such a part of the sports lexicon. It's accepted now that being too cool to compete is better than hard-earned mediocrity.

And that's a real shame.

The Mavericks' nice little 2-1 start to the season, with road victories over the Suns and Lakers around a loss to Jordan's Clippers, counts. It matters.

Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press

There's a righteous spirit about it.

Maybe it's foolhardy that Nowitzki is hoping JaVale McGee can get healthy and be responsible enough to be a DeAndre facsimile difference-maker in the paint. But the underrated drive of Carlisle means he can't help but try, and there is logic in applying a Spurs style of rapid-passing, three-ball-dependent offense with this ragtag crew of vets.

Cuban, back when he thought Jordan was aboard, revealed that the game plan he came around to was that the Mavericks—if they didn't score big in free agency—should go young and try to lead the race to the bottom in a rare year when most bad teams wouldn't be that bad.

"This could be our David Robinson year," Cuban said on KTCK The Ticket, a Dallas radio station, on July 3. But then Cuban laughed, assuming Jordan would honor his commitment, and said, "Fortunately, that didn't happen."

Cuban has become a TV celebrity for his work on the Shark Tank TV show, but the connotation of those words would've taken on a whole new spin if Cuban gave up. We're talking about a franchise that has made the playoffs 14 of the past 15 years, missing only in 2013.

Like so many ace businessmen, Cuban has thrived as a contrarian, maximizing value instead of just valuing product or producing the maximum. He recognized the value in not competing—which is why the NBA's draft lottery system really needs to be changed—and was preparing to go against his nature of always doing his best.

Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

After Jordan changed his mind, Cuban ultimately couldn't follow through with it. It felt fundamentally wrong in the world of competition, and Cuban returned to his core tenet from all these recent years: Nowitzki, especially with Carlisle coaching him, was too good for the Mavericks to be that bad.

And Cuban didn't want to put Nowitzki and Carlisle through that kind of tanking pain, either, particularly with Nowitzki sacrificing salary (pay cut from about $23 million in 2013-14 to roughly $8 million last season, this season and next season) to fortify the roster around him.

So here the Mavs are, legitimately trying to do their best.   

It's the only appropriate mindset for Cuban, Carlisle and Nowitzki—though Cuban's will could get tested again if the Mavs hit the skids. To keep the first-round pick Cuban sent to Boston as part of the failed Rajon Rondo trade in December, the Mavericks have to be bad enough to pick in the top seven of the 2016 NBA draft.

If they manage to finish in the top eight of this Western Conference, it would stand as a major accomplishment in all their careers—even if no one will ever remember them for it.

That's the integrity of competing, though: It's about doing the right thing in the moment, and that serves as its own reward in personal fulfillment.

Such was the sentiment that filled that visiting locker room at Staples Center on Sunday night—and what the Mavericks will try to carry this season as long as possible.

Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Carlisle tries to game the system by holding Nowitzki, 37, to fewer than 30 minutes on the court, running him in shorter shifts than any other NBA star.

Nowitzki admits he actually pored over the roster recently to count just how many guys older than 30 Dallas has—it's seven—but laughingly hopes he's the only true defensive "liability."

Chandler Parsons and Wesley Matthews, the free-agent newcomers the past two years who are depositing all the money that is rightly Nowitzki's, make plans to meet up for a late-night dinner. Any surprising success for the team hinges on their chemistry—and health.

And Parsons, whose high-end (non-basketball) shoe line debuted at a Beverly Hills party that most of the team attended Friday night (and featured Carlisle photo-bombing him), has some fun tweaking Cuban on Twitter for his slacker wardrobe with a killer hashtag: "#youareabillionairebro."

However, even if almost everything goes more happily and successfully than expected, it's hard to believe Nowitzki could have much left in the tank for a playoff run.

He started training even earlier this season to represent Germany in international play. He keeps wearing down and can't escape truly dedicated defense anyway, as seen by his 6-of-35 shooting on three-pointers (17.1 percent) in his past three postseasons.

The truth is Cuban, Carlisle and Nowitzki haven't even won a playoff series since they won the 2011 NBA Finals for the franchise's first and only title.

That's how tough it is to scale this mountain.

And why we should honor the virtue of men who earnestly continue to climb.

Kevin Ding is an NBA senior writer for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter, @KevinDing.