Understanding the Dallas Mavericks

The Dallas Mavericks may be the most unassuming franchise in the NBA.

Sharing a city with the NFL’s Cowboys, they are always competing locally for second fiddle, and despite only two seasons without playoffs since the turn of the century, they also garner little national media exposure. In any other state, they would be revered royalty, but General Manager Donnie Nelson’s airtight operation is still only second-best when it comes to Texas basketball. Combine this with 20 years of leadership by a foreign superstar and few-to-no egocentric American headline-grabbing hotdogs, and you have a franchise going about its winning ways without much attention from the public.

Even now, as Dallas’ German and Cuban-led win factory is beginning to wind down, there is little chatter about a potential rebuild ahead. Recent memory serves us almost no recollections of the Mavericks in this position, when even the San Antonio Spurs bottomed out in 1996-97 to capture Tim Duncan.

Losers of 12 of 14 games thus far, the Mavs are quite convincingly the worst team in the Western Conference, let alone the entire league. In any similar situation, a head coach would be battling game-by-game for his job, but with an NBA championship and a .564 win percentage over ten seasons, Rick Carlisle seems to have his for life.

When the team he knows departs for good, will ownership choose to hand a younger mentor the keys to the new car, or will they be content to trust Carlisle’s ions of League experience?

Dirk Nowitzki, the “star” of Big D, is likely to be afforded a similar luxury. Any other 39-year-old suffering through the worst season in their career would be on the precipice of being flipped to a contender for a draft pick, but Nowitzki has earned the right to play out his career with his beloved Mavericks.

Even Dirk’s teammates do not take on the form of a squad struggling not to be blown out each night. Fellow starters Harrison Barnes and rookie Dennis Smith are two of the most enticing young talents in the NBA, while Wesley Matthews’ veteran presence helps with shooting and defense on the wing.

The team's struggles for depth is a surprise with Nelson alongside owner Mark Cuban and his giddiness to spend. It is even more surprising given they boast Nerlens Noel coming off the bench, who was one of the hottest young defensive centers in the league as late as last season. This year, he is struggling for playing time behind 31-year-old sophomore Salah Mejri.

With all this in mind, we know as little about the future of the Mavs as we do almost any other team in the NBA. With Nowitzki’s impending retirement, this franchise faces a crossroads for the first time since they traded for the German's draft rights in 1998.

If they continue their losing ways (they are projected for barely 18 wins this season), they will be in the mix for the number one overall pick, whom they can combine with Barnes and Smith for a strong core all under the age of 26. From there, free agency strategy will define Dallas’ identity for the post-Nowitzki era, their previous policy being to surround their MVP with enough selfless role-playing veterans to win a championship. This will no longer be available to them.

They may attempt to force through a contender, the same way the Golden State Warriors did by adding veterans Andrew Bogut and Andre Iguodala, and backing Carlisle and the players to get the job done over a number of years. They could attempt to bottom out next year as well, unlikely as it may be, especially with Cuban’s vocal criticisms of the Philadelphia 76ers’ "Process."

Nevertheless, the Mavericks’ philosophy over the past 20 years now sees them approaching a pivotal time in the direction of their organization, before this same phase even starts for most other teams.

After the retirement of a translucent superstar such as Nowitzki, most teams would have to be content with bottoming out and rebuilding; the team no longer a destination or a contender. This is not the situation the Mavs face. With two young stars in Barnes and Smith itching to be unequivocally handed the reins, and another seemingly on the way via the Draft, this team may already have the stepping stones in place to slingshot back to the top of the West.

Fortunately for the Mavs, the choice is theirs, whether they choose to first get worse before they get better, or force the rebuild into overdrive and build another unlikely contender on the fly, as they so often have done.