The promise for this season in Dallas revolved around the verbal commitment of DeAndre Jordan. Now, five months after the Clippers center abruptly changed his mind, the Mavericks insist they are better off without him.
“The responsibility of DeAndre having to be ‘the man’ — I don’t think he was up for it,” said Michael Finley, the former Mavericks All-Star who is now their VP of Basketball Operations. “If he had decided to come here, we were putting all our eggs in his basket, of him carrying this franchise not only this year but in the future.”
Finley and owner Mark Cuban appear to believe that the last-minute decision to recant as a free agent last summer was driven, in no small part, by Jordan’s reluctance to be the Mavericks’ leader.
“It’s a big responsibility,” Finley said. “I tell guys all the time I was fortunate enough for one point to be considered one of the better players on the team. With that comes a lot of responsibility. When you win, it’s maybe because of you; but if you lose it is because of you. And you have to be able to face the media and teammates and everybody on a day-in and day-out basis, being a leader. A lot of guys really aren’t built for that responsibility.
A lot of guys on this team have that chip on their shoulder.
– Mavericks’ Chandler Parsons
“Our expectations were lowered a little bit when he decided to go elsewhere. But we turned a negative into a positive. We picked up some quality guys without him deciding to come with us. It worked out for the best.”
The top drawer of free agents had already been cleaned out when Jordan unexpectedly re-signed with the Clippers. Instead of reacting out of desperation, the Mavericks sought to renew and reinvest in the core strengths of their franchise. They traded for center Zaza Pachulia and signed point guard Deron Williams to go with free-agent shooting guard Wes Matthews, who had already agreed to come to Dallas.
Entering the second quarter of the season, Dallas (13-9) has emerged as one of the league’s surprises. The Mavericks are in the thick of playoff contention in the parity-driven West — a half-game ahead of the Clippers — because they have rallied around the leadership of Dirk Nowitzki, the efficient coaching of Rick Carlisle and a cast of experienced teammates who have much yet to prove.
“We have have a high basketball IQ, we move the ball, our defense is much better,” said Cuban. “It has turned out just fine for us.”
At the end of a mid-November across the street from the Boston Common, in the basement gym where future GMs Sam Presti (of the Thunder) and Rob Hennigan (Magic) used to play for Emerson College, Nowitzki was making the most of his remaining time. He competed all-out in a three-point shooting game with teammates, went through his daily routine of stretching, and then spent several minutes with an undergraduate center from Division 3 Emerson, who was waiting for his turn on the court. Nowitzki spoke with him as if they were two players chatting at a rec center after work.
“Look at this right here — here’s a guy that is drooling at the mouth, and Dirk is engaging with him,” said Mavericks president & GM Donn Nelson. “Dirk is a better human being than he is a basketball player.
“Dirk, to memory, has never missed an ‘optional’ anything,” Nelson went on. “We have an optional shootaround the other day, he’s the guy that needed the most rest — and he was the first guy on the bus. That’s the kind of guy that’s been at the helm of this team, and that’s the single biggest reason why we’ve had the success that we’ve had.”
Nowitzki at 37 is having a Tom Brady-like year. Though he is averaging 13.2 shots per game — the fewest since his unhappy rookie season a millennium ago — he is converting a career-best 43.8 percent on 3-pointers and 50.2 percent overall (a five-year high) while making the requisite 89.0 percent of his free throws. He is the Mavericks’ second-leading rebounder (7.1) and is tied for fourth in assists (2.0) with Pachulia.
“To me it’s still fun to compete,” Nowitzki said. “The competing, the traveling with the team, the camaraderie — it’s something that I’m going to miss in a couple of years for sure. I try not to think about the end too much, and still just have fun playing.”
Since winning the championship in 2011, Nowitzki has married and fathered two children, Malaika and Max. “This summer they were in Berlin and they saw me getting a standing ovation and walking off,” Nowitzki said. “It was great for me to have my family there, which might have been my last international game. The problem is they’re just too young to understand – the big one is 2 ½ now. So I don’t think they really knew what was going on there.”
Fatherhood appears to have deepened his perspective and affection for the game. “I still care as much as I did my 20s,” Nowitzki said. “I still hate losing. I still hate having bad games, I still have sleepless nights sometimes after the game. I played this summer and worked out a bunch and my family still lets me do that, and I appreciate it.”
Nowitzki has absorbed salary cuts in each of his last two contracts — he’s making a discounted $8.3 million this season, with one more (potentially final) year to go — but there is no sign from him that his financial sacrifices have been wasted. He appears to love this team.
“They have been through a lot in this league,” he said of his teammates. “They want to play off each other, they want to share the ball. We are a bunch of veterans that have no ego.”
Which is to say that they take after their leader.
This was looking like a rebuilding year as the Mavericks spent preseason trying to rehab Chandler Parsons (microfracture knee surgery), Matthews (Achilles surgery), Javale McGee (knee surgery) and Williams (knee injury). But Carlisle has blended together a variety of lineups from game to game, depending upon availability. He has made the hard decisions look easy.
“He’s so good at putting his players in position to succeed, not only from the standpoint of Xs and Os but also how he rotates them,” said Celtics coach Brad Stevens. “Dirk is one of the very few guys in the league that plays three rotations in a half. He plays three stints of five to six minutes each, and they are really disciplined in doing it.
“I’ve met with Rick each of the last two summers for 24 or 48 hours at our respective places, and it has been a real thrill for me. I was happy for him when he signed his contract, because he really is an elite coach.”
After the failure of last season’s trade for Rajon Rondo and the subsequent reversal by Jordan, Cuban doubled-down on his investment in Carlisle by signing him to a five-year, $35 million extension last month. Cuban has long said that hiring the right coach is one of the hardest assignments for an owner, and in Carlisle he has someone with a longstanding record of making the most of his roster. One innovation has been the three-guard lineup that has rejuvenated 31 year old Raymond Felton as a part-time starter after he had switched franchises six times over the last seven years.
“There were a lot of people maligning our team because of this, that or the other,” said Carlisle. “The job of coaches is to see what you can do better and to help make it better, and develop a vision for what can work. We are still in the early stages and our health is getting better, which is exciting.”
The revelation has been Pachulia, who is averaging the first double-double (10.7 points and 10.0 rebounds) of his 13-year NBA career. “After we didn’t get DeAndre we moved on pretty quick, and getting Zaza was a really good move,” Nowitzki said. “He is one of the smartest centers I ever played with. He can pass, he can shoot a little bit, he can put it on the floor. He may be undersized some nights, but he’s got a big heart, he fights and he is very, very smart. He will compete for us and I love him to death.”
The arrival of 31 year old Williams, who grew up in Dallas, is also playing out well. Despite years of dealing with injuries, Williams is still capable of bullying smaller defenders and dominating down the stretch. “He was considered one of the top three point guards in the league, and then he went through a bit of a lull, I think, from a confidence standpoint,” said Finley. “Now he has been given a chance to revive his All-Star career.”
Many of the Mavericks are in their prime years. “We are a lot younger than we’ve been in a long time,” said Cuban. “Other than Dirk, our oldest player is 32 (Devin Harris). Today’s 32 is what 28 was 15 years ago, right? Because we are so much more in tune to helping guys stay fit, and they are so much more disciplined than they used to be.”
“Is that a perfect knee?” asked Parsons as he waited to be iced after a morning shootaround.
“Yes,” deadpanned Casey Smith, the Mavericks’ overworked athletic trainer. “It’s a perfect knee.”
For the first month after he underwent “minor hybrid” microfracture surgery on his right knee in May, Parsons would sleep on his back with his leg in a constant movement machine. “That was brutal,” he said. “But it was not too much pain. They took stem cells and bone marrow from my hip and they put it in my knee. So when I woke up, my hip was the sorest part.”
Three days after the surgery he was entering the weight room on crutches to improve his upper body, his core and the mobility of his hips. “This is the strongest I have ever been,” Parsons said. “The surgery slowed me down to where I could actually spend all this time on my body. In the past I would always go into the gym to get shots up or work on my individual game, but I never worked on my core and my lumbar my shoulders and my flexibility. After the surgery I did yoga twice week. I did Pilates twice a week, and I think it’s going to pay off a lot the season as I keep getting my legs back under me and more into a rhythm.”
Our expectations were lowered a little bit when he decided to go elsewhere. But we turned a negative into a positive.
– Mavs’ VP of operations Michael Finley on DeAndre Jordan
Can an experienced team like the Mavs have upside? It can if Parsons, Matthews, McGee and Williams continue to work themselves into rhythm throughout the season. The Mavericks have worked themselves into playoff contention in spite of a disappointing run of shooting around Nowitzki: Overall they are converting just 32.6 percent on 3-pointers, ranking them No. 23 in the NBA.
“I’m tired of hurting the team,” said a disconsolate Matthews after going 1-for-8 from the arc in a 100-96 loss to the Rockets on Friday. His teammates did not appear to agree: They recognized that Matthews, 29, had returned earlier than expected after his left Achilles had been ruptured last March. He had been sinking threes at a career-low 30.8 percent when — in the next game — he was raining 10-for-17 for 36 points overall in a win at Washington.
Parsons, who is being restricted to 26 minutes per game, must be more patient. He recently asked Carlisle to bring him off the bench in order to save his minutes for the fourth quarter. “He is a great on-court and off-court chemistry glue guy,” Cuban said. “He keeps guys light and on their toes. He is very self-aware, he makes fun of himself and that adds a lot.”
Then Cuban began chuckling. “We have this thing when he doesn’t play: ‘Chandler off, Mavs roll,”’ he explained. “So when we win and he hasn’t played, Devin Harris will walk in and we just give him a hard time. Chandler out, Mavs roll.”
Chandler’s self-deprecating sense of humor has contributed to his rapport with Nowitzki, who is arguably the most humble star in the league. They are not alone when it comes to putting the team first, which is why Parsons was optimistic about this season that could have been written off as a lost cause last July. Just about every member of the Mavericks, starting with Nowitzki, has been driven by a need to prove himself.
“Part of the reason I get along with Wes so well is we were both overlooked,” said Parsons. “Everyone always doubted us. He wasn’t drafted; I was a second-round pick. I will never forget on draft night they told me I was a draft-and-stash pick and I will make a lot of money overseas.”
J.J. Barea, so crucial to the 2011 title run, was undrafted. Dwight Powell, a survivor from the Rondo trade who has earned his way into the rotation, was the No. 45 pick in the 2014 draft. Charlie Villanueva has found a role in Dallas after playing 180 minutes for the Pistons throughout 2013-14.
“A lot of guys on this team have that chip on their shoulder,” said Parsons. “And I would rather have that — a bunch of hungry guys that are humble and ready to work hard — than a whole bunch of egos.”
Will they be healthy? And if so, can Carlisle turn these Mavericks into a poor-man’s version of the 2010-11 championship team? “I never make predictions,” said Cuban. But he is looking forward to the answers.
Ian Thomsen has covered the NBA since 2000. You can e-mail him here or follow him on Twitter.
The views on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA, its clubs or Turner Broadcasting.
