Column: Huge Balls

     by Rob Stiller

**UPDATE** As of Thursday afternoon, the New York Post and Chicago Tribune are, respectively, reporting that the New York Knicks and Chicago Bulls are both interested in interviewing Avery Johnson and Mike D’Antoni in the next few days, assuming the latter becomes available.
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Upon their elimination from the NBA playoffs Tuesday night at the hands of the up-and-coming New Orleans Hornets, the down-and-going Dallas Mavericks officially embarked on their most significant offseason since 2004. But what is the appropriate course of action, and what will Mark Cuban and Donnie Nelson actually do to restore the Mavs to their elite status? At this point, there is no right answer, but big changes are clearly on the horizon, given the team’s dismissal of Avery Johnson Wednesday afternoon. There essentially exist three philosophical approaches that the organization could take, none of which are necessarily appealing to the fans, but all of which management will have to weigh in the coming weeks and months.

1. Stand pat
Probably the most distasteful approach to disgruntled Mavs fans everywhere is the possibility that Donnie and Cuban decide to give this group one last chance to make it to the top. And for a number of reasons, this scenario is a lot more likely than most sports media outlets would have you believe.

1. Cuban just signed off on one of the riskiest trades in franchise history, and Cubes isn’t the sort of guy that’s used to failure. And to clarify, trading Kidd now would be one big admission of failure. It certainly wouldn’t be difficult to sell the media on the “perhaps the team just didn’t have enough games together to find their chemistry will Kidd at the helm before the playoffs” explanation.
2. The team’s most valuable trade chip just caused a media raucous after discussing his affinity for smoking dro during the offseason, and compounded that with the worst playoff series of his career. Even if the Mavs are shopping Josh Howard, which, one can only assume they are, the logical move is to wait until next season when J-Ho has had a chance to remind the league exactly the Mavs were unwilling to part with him this season. Prematurely moving Howard would only hurt the Mavs and move them further away from the upper tier of the Western Conference.
3. The other big ticket item the Mavs have to work with, Jason Kidd’s expiring contract, will similarly increase in value the longer they hold on to it. That is, as next season’s trade deadline approaches, teams working to clear cap space for the 2010 LeBron James Sweepstakes would LOVE to take on Kidd’s 21.3 million (!) dollar expiring contract.
4. Beyond the two players already mentioned, the Mavs have a lot of undesirable (Terry, Stackhouse) or just plain bad (Dampier) contracts that are essentially immovable. That is, unless the team starts stripping parts and selling them off for pennies on the dollar in order to clear cap space down the road.

The last things the Mavs need to do is to make more trades for the sake of shaking things up. We needn’t look far into the history books to see the potential headaches such decisions can cause. Unfortunately, the prudent decision for the Mavs could indeed to wait out another mediocre season until they have a more favorable standing to begin rebuilding.

2. Surround Dirk with a whole new cast
Looking back on the Hornets series, Dirk, Terry and Bass were the only members of the team that gave playoff worthy performances. In fact if you only watched those three, you would have thought that the Mavs would win going away. So is it time to trim the deadweight and bring in a whole new supporting cast that can match up with the younger and ever improving teams in the West?

If you operate under the assumption that everyone not named Dirk is expendable, lots of options open up for the Mavs. While considering that Kidd is essentially untradeable as well this offseason for different reasons, the Mavs are left needing a third scoring option that can defend on the perimeter. Or rather, the Mavs need Shawn Marion. Or Andrei Kirilenko. If I’m GM, I’m throwing everything I have at Utah and Miami to land either of these two players. This is where we fans get to crank up ESPN’s Trade Machine, and where Donnie Nelson gets to earn his paycheck.

Another, and more likely, implementation of this rebuilding policy is the idea that the Mavs are solid at the top of their rotation, but too old off the bench to match up with the younger teams out West.

In a matter of years, Dallas has gone from being one of the youngest teams in the league to one of the oldest. And in today’s Western Conference, that extra experience doesn’t seem all that valuable when compared to the quicker first step of a younger player like Chris Paul, David West or Julian Wright. In other words, if the Mavs could manage to shed the likes of Malik Allen, Jerry Stackhouse, Eddie Jones among others and replace them with less heralded but more athletic younger players, would that provide enough support to allow Dirk and Terry to lead the team back to where they were only two short years ago?

If the front office decides this is the right approach, though, a makeover of this sort would likely take a number of offseasons, as quality role players have become harder to sign at a reasonable price in a market dominated by overzealous, free spending GM’s.

3. No one is untradeable, not even…
Here stands the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about. Can we now safely say that Dirk just isn’t the type of player that can lead a team to the championship? In other words, is Dirk more like Kobe Bryant or is he more like Pau Gasol? It’s a question that no fan wants to think about, but one that is staring Cuban square in the eye. After all, Mark adores Dirk. And so do the fans. It was by Dirk’s hand that the team was able to reemerge as not only a respectable franchise, but as a legitimate title contender. But does he have what it takes to finish the job?

If we’re honest with ourselves for a moment, most of us feel that Dirk is in fact better suited to be a complement player rather than The Guy. That’s just his disposition.

But while sports columnists everywhere will be throwing out suggestions for what would be acceptable in return for Dirk (Exhibit A), I can’t imagine Dirk going anywhere, and the reason is simple. Mark Cuban isn’t interested in waiting around during a legitimate rebuilding process. I read an interview with him about a year ago in which he even said he had considered selling the Mavs after their 2006 meltdown and it was only out of loyalty to Dirk that he hadn’t. Look at the last few teams that have traded their franchise player. Minnesota is going nowhere fast. Sure, Philadelphia is in the playoffs, but contention is the only thing that interests Cuban at this point. As I said earlier, Cuban isn’t accustomed to failure, and trading Dirk, be it this summer or anytime in the next few years, would be the ultimate admission of failure.
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As far as the coaching situation is concerned, I can’t say I’m shocked that Johnson was fired. The flaws of Johnson’s isolation based offense and tendency to overcoach were on full display over the past week. Throw in the falling out between Avery and Cuban earlier in the year and it seemed like a done deal. But when you look at what’s available, who does Cuban think is going to swoop in and lead his team back to the Finals? Rick Carlisle and Jeff Van Gundy will definitely be considered. Former Mavs assistant coach Sam Vincent is recently unemployed. Normally, that would sound like a joke, but there really aren’t very many attractive options, which is the reason I wasn’t sure we were at the point where Johnson had to go. Personally, I would love to see the team hire Mike D’Antoni. Even though he hasn’t actually been fired yet (or resigned, however they decide to do it), if Cuban is looking to revitalize the Mavs’ offense, the answer just fell right in his lap. But because D’Antoni’s situation is so similar to that of Avery in that they both failed to win a championship, it’s hard to see the team hiring another coach who reached his pinnacle in the Conference Finals. We’ll see.