Offseason questions: Can the Mavs follow the 2010-11 championship blueprint?
Earl K. Sneed continues his offseason questions series, breaking down whether the Dallas Mavericks can follow the same blueprint as the 2010-11 championship team.
Offseason questions: Can the Mavs follow the 2010-11 championship blueprint?
Have the Dallas Mavericks figured out a successful formula for winning a championship?
In an era of mergers between superstars, the 2010-11 Mavericks proved that with talented components around one go-to player you can still win a championship. Now, this season’s version of the Mavs will try to follow that same blueprint.
Adding a bevy of talented newcomers around 11-time All-Star Dirk Nowitzki after missing out in their free-agency pursuit of All-Star point guard Deron Williams, the Mavericks will again try to conquer the rest of the league while playing team basketball. Enter new additions Chris Kaman, Elton Brand, O.J. Mayo, Darren Collison and Dahntay Jones to help Nowitzki and the Mavericks again ascend to the mountaintop after last season’s first-round playoff exit at the hands of Oklahoma City.
But can lightening strike twice for the Mavericks in a three-year span? Mavericks owner Mark Cuban definitely believes that it can.
“You’ve gotta look at kind of our approach to building a team,” Cuban explained last week on ESPN 103.3 FM’s the Ben and Skin Show.
“We kind of slot everybody, if you will,” he added. “When I look at building a team, you have to look and say, ‘OK, who’s your main guy?’ And that’s Dirk. You know, Dirk will play at Dirk levels for a long time, because he’s got about a six-inch vertical and that’s never gonna leave him. You know, he’ll be 63 (years old) and still have a six-inch vertical. So, we know we can depend on Dirk, particularly on the offensive side, for a while. So, he’s kind of our one go-to guy; the guy that can score at the end of the game, the guy that other teams are gonna have to double team and pay attention to. So, you need that as your one hole, if you will, and then you start adding onto that. So, that’s what we did before.”
However, with veterans Jason Kidd and Jason Terry departing to New York and Boston in free agency, respectively, the Mavs will now have two holes to fill while also looking to duplicate the success of two seasons prior.
And while that might not be easier said than done, according to Cuban, the Mavericks will be able to rely on that title-winning experience and remaining infrastructure to again build a championship-contending squad.
But even Cuban admits that, like the team that ended the franchise’s 31-year title-less drought, each player will have to play at his full potential. The Mavs may also have to catch lightening in a bottle for a second time.
“You could say that about every championship team. You know, it’s not easy to win a championship,” Cuban empathically stated.
“In most cases, that’s what it takes, lightening in a bottle just even to get to the Finals. You know, we always talk about needing somebody to step up and our whole team stepped up (in the 2011 playoffs). Can you expect that? That’s why it’s so difficult to go back. … That’s how championships are won.”
