Mavericks, Spurs or Rockets: Who Will Win the NBA's Battle for Texas in 2014-15?
They call it the Texas Triangle, that stretch of the NBA season where road-weary teams—typically from the Eastern Conference—tackle the three-game gauntlet of the Houston Rockets, Dallas Mavericks and San Antonio Spurs.
Needless to say, this road-trip-within-a-road-trip hasn’t been kind to outsiders in recent years, what with all three franchises having made the playoffs in six of the past 11 seasons.
James Harden and Kawhi Leonard. Dirk Nowitzki and Dwight Howard. Tim Duncan and Monta Ellis. Tony Parker and Tyson Chandler. Between them, the NBA’s Texas titans could field their own All-Star squad.
So which of the three stands the best chance of reigning supreme this season?
The answer might be harder to untangle than a bull in a hogtie (I’m assuming that’s a Texan expression).
Until Proven Otherwise
As is a custom made up just now, we begin with the champs—a team whose intoxicating brand of basketball so befuddled and frustrated the Miami Heat over five surprisingly lopsided games in the 2014 NBA Finals.
That the Spurs have been a model of professionalism and consistency goes without saying. Seeing exactly how consistent, though, is another kind of jarring:
Let’s process that for a moment, shall we?
Of course, this kind of absurd continuity comes at a price, namely another year on the ever-spinning, ever-thinning treads of San Antonio’s principal trio.
With the contracts of both Duncan (38) and Manu Ginobili (37) set to expire at the end of this season, it’s worth wondering whether the 2014-15 campaign will mark the last for the Spurs’ seasoned core.
Then again, such cynical speculation has been a media mainstay for years now, and the results always wind up the same: more wins, more hardwood wizardry and more championship designs.
In a post-Finals roundtable discussion at NBA.com, Lang Whitaker was especially optimistic about San Antonio’s repeat prospects:
"The New Adventures of the Old Spurs was something of a revelation in the Finals. The way they shared the ball and played team defense was brilliant, so much so that you feel like they discovered another gear they didn’t know they had. And once Pandora’s Box is open, I don’t know how they put that back inside.
"
With the ascendant Kawhi Leonard and their Swiss Army knife rookie Kyle Anderson, the Spurs are already laying the groundwork for the inevitable handing over of the reins to the reign. Whether the realm’s current kings will be ready to give them up, though, is a different question altogether.
Houston, We May Have Problems
James Harden’s whirling-dervish drives on offense, Dwight Howard’s unparalleled paint protection on defense, a high-flying offense predicated on maximizing the three-point line and a management perpetually at the cutting edge of basketball analytics: What's not to love?
With the Houston Rockets, as with so many other things, the devil is in the details.
Starting with the obvious, they lost versatile swingman Chandler Parsons in restricted free agency, despite the league’s collective bargaining agreement allowing for teams who exceed the salary cap—something the Rockers have long made a habit of—to sign their own players.
Sure, Trevor Ariza is a nice enough replacement. But in terms of how the Rockets have constructed their team, it’s hard to believe they’d let a player of Parsons' caliber up and walk into the Texas sunset (to the hated Mavericks, no less).
That being said, the Rockets aren’t without their high-upside sleepers. From Donatas Motiejunas to Isaiah Canaan and Terrence Jones to Kostas Papanikolaou, GM Daryl Morey’s strategy of asset management has yielded some potentially lucrative dividends—ones that could make the Parsons debacle seem like petty potatoes sooner than later.
Whether or not the Rockets will be demonstrably better than last year’s version, however, remains a precarious prospect. The West is simply too loaded for there to be any ironclad guarantees (beyond the Spurs somehow finding fifth gear at just the right time, of course).
Indeed, even Houston’s hated rivals to the north—top-to-bottom improvements though they’ve made—could find making the postseason just as serious a slog as it was last season.
Lighting Strikes Twice?
Nowhere were the intra-Texas spirits more incendiary than in Mark Cuban’s ingenious gambit to lure Parsons away from the Rockets. And while the three-year, $45 million price tag was indeed steep, the risk-reward ratio was well worth the dice roll, particularly given the inevitable, equally sharp rise of the league’s salary cap in the wake of the NBA’s new, multi-billion-dollar TV deal.
After missing out on the playoffs in 2012-13, the Mavs—aided by a resurgent Dirk Nowitzki and a renaissance season from free-agent pickup Monta Ellis—managed to snag the No. 8 seed. Pitted against the mighty Spurs, the Mavs very nearly pulled off the impossible, pushing the champs the distance before finally bowing out in Game 7.
Buoyed by his team’s surprisingly stout postseason showing, Cuban wasted little time in rounding out the ranks. The first domino: dealing Jose Calderon, Samuel Dalembert, Wayne Ellington and Shane Larkin to the New York Knicks in exchange for Raymond Felton and Tyson Chandler, the latter having been a key cog in the Mavs’ 2011 title run.
Chandler’s struggles during New York’s tumultuous 2013-14 season were well-documented. But in an interview with ESPN Dallas’ Tim MacMahon, the former Defensive Player of the Year said he’s determined to return to the form that proved such a vexing X-factor for the Miami Heat in the 2011 Finals:
"I think I can be better. I finished the season healthy, so this summer I was able to start earlier. I took a couple of weeks off and then I already started getting back in the gym and improving things. I want to get back to thinking and moving the way I moved. I started correcting things mentally and physically. I was already looking forward to this summer because I felt like there was so many things I could improve on.
"
By adding free-agent point guard Jameer Nelson to the mix, the Mavericks not only hedged against another down year from Felton but added a veteran presence more than familiar with the postseason limelight.
All that, coupled with head coach Rick Carlisle's top-tier basketball mind, makes Dallas a sneakily sexy pick to wreak havoc on the top-heavy West.
Will it be enough to weather a landscape rife with powerhouses and upstarts? Only time will tell.
A resurgent force desperate to recapture their Texas hegemony? You’d better believe it.
If you Ain't Spurs, You're Last
Calling it the “Battle For Texas” is a bit of a misnomer; this isn’t college football, after all.
Still, seldom have all three of the NBA’s Lone Star Staters been this consistently good for this long at the same time. That alone is bound to foment a rivalry sooner or later, however nascent or on the fringes.
All three teams have shunned spotty histories to assume perennial powerhouse status. All three are guided by coherent, cohesive front-office strategies. All three boast All-NBA talent and plenty in the way of ancillary armaments.
So which point of the triangle stands to come out on top?
As someone who’s eaten a dump truck’s worth of crow in recent years for daring to doubt their chops and clout, the answer has to be the Old Reliables themselves: the San Antonio Spurs.
For all their explosive potential, the Mavs and Rockets remain dogged by question marks. Can the Rockets replicate their bombs-away ballistics? Will Chandler truly return to Finals form? How close to closed are the two's windows, really?
Obsessed as we've been with San Antonio's shelf life, the record—rest when they want it, leadership when they need it and chemistry always coursing through its organizational veins—speaks for itself.
Any one of these teams could, given the right breaks and playoff paths, make a run at the NBA Finals. Just don’t blame us for erring on the side of those who've forged the most well-worn of roads.
