“YOU CANNOT JUST SIT UP HERE AND BUILD A TEAM…ON A WISH!!!!”
It wasn’t the first time he got this riled up talking hoops, but hearing my Dad’s booming voice rattle the walls of our family room made me smile with gratification on the inside (I love these arguments with him), while I outwardly shook my head at him with discontent. I felt the Cavaliers had no choice but to put all their eggs in the LeBron James basket sans safety net in 2010— clearly the old man felt differently.
Still, his point was well taken. Crafting your entire offseason approach around the hopes that a player will choose your organization as a landing spot is at the very least a specious strategy. So many things have to go right, so many things can go wrong; the fickle world of NBA free agency (and all sports, really) is not a place for the weak, the emotional or the impractical.
Once again, the Dallas Mavericks found this out the hard way.
Widely regarded as one of the elite organizations in the NBA, the Mavs seemingly have everything a player perusing the market for a new team would want: an energetic “win-now” owner who almost always has his player’s backs, an unbelievably unselfish superstar, big city ambiance, great weather, nice facilities, no state tax, a terrific coach, loyal fans and a winning tradition. Year after year though, Dallas has struck out with big names in free agency. In an era where every superstar is eager to pair up with another superstar, the Mavs have been unable to find a dance partner for future Hall of Famer Dirk Nowtizki, despite the fact that Dirk has proven he could carry a team to a title.
The plan was simple. Build a competitive team through trades and the draft, then when the summer of 2011 hits, cash in big during free agency and be ready to make a run at the title for the next several years. Only a funny thing happened on the road to “good, not great”…the team became great. Dallas got ahead of schedule, slipped up and accidentally won the 2011 NBA Championship, sonning Kobe & Gasol, Durant & Westbrook and LeBron & Wade in the process.
Rather than keep this core of talented, veteran professionals together — Tyson Chandler, Caron Butler, J.J. Barea, Peja Stojakovic, Cory Brewer and DeShawn Stevenson — owner Mark Cuban and general manager Donnie Nelson decided to blow the team up and chase marquee free agents following the 2011 NBA lockout. Among their most notable targets were Dwight Howard and Dallas native Deron Williams.
With the Miami Heat just having assembled Voltron The Big 3 the year before, exchanging commodities for cap space had become all the rage. Cuban willfully sacrificed a surefire contender with a repeat championship-level ceiling to chase the uncertain.
Four years later, it’s clear that plan has backfired. Spectacularly.
D-Will inked a five-year, $98.7 million deal to re-up with the Brooklyn Nets. Despite a never-ending cycle of rumors about his departure later renamed “The Dwightmare” (that include him forcing a trade to Dallas), Howard opted in for an extra year in Orlando in March 2012, but was subsequently dealt to the Lakers five months later. Then he crushed the Mavs hopes yet again by singing a four-year, $88 million max deal with the rival Houston Rockets.
Sidebar: And yes, they are rivals. Just ask Shawn Bradley and Mavs twitter account.
It gets deeper. Dallas has also whiffed following overtures made to LeBron James (though few took those seriously anyway) and other All-NBA caliber players over the past several years such as Chris Paul, Carmelo Anthony and another Dallas native, Chris Bosh. This summer, Big D missed out on yet another Dallas native, power forward LaMarcus Aldridge, who wound up in San Antonio.
Few people do this better than DeAndre Jordan.
This is the story of the Dallas Mavericks. They swing and miss, step back in the batter’s box, and swing and miss again. The elusive big fish has evaded them for years. Let Cuban tell it, they nearly had Kobe! But they didn’t.
And then there is DeAndre Jordan— the man the Mavs just knew they had, but they didn’t. The process of Jordan curving the Mavericks was a whole lot of childish ridiculousness, wrapped up in poor front office execution by the Clippers. In the end though, DJ finds himself back with the team that is a far better basketball fit. For what feels like the 1,000th time, Dallas was left holding the bag.
We’ve dissected all that’s wrong with what the young Philadelphia 76ers are doing; the Mavs have practiced the veteran team version of the same thing: at the expense of growing a quality basketball team though more tried and true methods, Nelson and crew are sitting by the phone waiting on a superstar to bail them out.
True, every team that manages to land a top 10 player in the league is extremely lucky. And yes, no stone should be left unturned in an effort to acquire one, including free agency. But there needs to be more than just this.
Having some cap flexibility is one thing, but free agency cannot be your primary means for improving your team. As we’ve seen, even the best run organizations in the nicest cities with the warmest weather with the coldest women cannot guarantee A1 free agents. Market size might’ve been a factor 15 or 20 years ago, but if the 2015 NBA offseason has taught us anything, it’s having a winning team, or at least one on the cusp of winning, is usually the most important factor, often times even more than money.
Failing to land big name FAs has forced Dallas into spending big money on B-listers over the years such as Wes Matthews this year, Chandlers Parsons last year and Monta Ellis the year before that. But with Dirk’s mobility now reduced to that of a parking meter, landing an A-lister was never more vital to the Mavs immediate future. At best, Nowitzki can serve as a nightly C-lister, with nights of frequent B-list production and occasional A-list work. With Aldridge declining and now Jordan painfully backing out at the 11th hour (like, literally), Dallas is reduced to pick over what’s left of the available center market, which at this point resembles the $5 DVD bin at Wal-Mart.
Sidebar: It’s failed summers like this that also increase the need for riskier moves down the road, such as trading for Rajon Rondo midseason and giving up your first round pick that it turns out you really might’ve needed for tanking purposes. Or trading for Zaza.
DeAndre Jordan and his agent(s) played the Dallas Mavericks. Yet DJ always reserved the right to change his mind, at least as long as he hasn’t physically signed anything with a Mavericks watermark on it. For a team that recently built an NBA champion through the sneaky-smart trades (Chandler, Butler, Stevenson, Haywood, Jason Terry, Shawn Marion, Roddy Beaubois), the draft (Nowitzki) or both (Jason Kidd); it’s unfortunate they haven’t figured out that walking up to the roulette wheel and putting everything on green isn’t the most sound strategy.
Can’t help but feel for this dude. They don’t make em like Dirk anymore.
The lesson here is when you put too much stock into free agency as a means for improving your team, you’re bound to get burned. Just ask the Miami Heat. Cuban and Nelson attempted to replenish their once championship roster with loose cannons like Lamar Odom and Delonte West in late 2011— the defending champs were swept in the first round. Meanwhile in the same state are the San Antonio Spurs, who rarely concern themselves with matters in July that don’t pertain to retaining one of their own. After years of flying through free agency on autopilot, when situation was perfect to land the biggest fish on the market, the Spurs reeled in LaMarcus Aldridge. It almost seemed preordained, like the Spurs were Denzel and the Mavs were Ethan Hawke in the movie Training Day.
“You’ve been planning this all day?”
“I’ve been planning it all week, son!”
The Spurs never sacrificed their core for the perceived greener pastures free agency brings. The Mavs had a chance to do what every team wants to do— emulate the Spurs. Instead they did what ever team tries to do— emulate the Heat. LeBron left Miami and took the Heat’s playoff birth with him. Knowing what we know now, the trio of Dwight, Deron and Dirk could’ve easily been a damn disaster. And here the Spurs are, one of the favorites to win the 2016 NBA Championship.
Being a free agent is all about just that— being free. But freedom costs, and it seems to cost the Mavericks about this time every year.