This rematch of the NBA Finals now needs air quotes
Fancy meeting you here, fellow follower of the Dallas Mavericks. Let’s be honest with each other — neither of us wants to be here right now. For some reason though, I am here writing this game preview and you are here reading it. Baffling. Let’s make the most of our time together and vent while previewing, shall we?
A Finals Rematch, with a Dagger Dangling in the Back
As hours have turned into days since Patrick Dumont signed off on Nico Harrison’s shortsighted foolishness, the incandescent anger and pain have gone from red hot to white hot to cosmic anomaly threatening the space-time continuum.
The NBA world was robbed of a proper Finals rematch. The Mavericks – reigning Western Conference champions – were short-circuited in mid-motion. Many things about this season have not gone according to plan. Injuries, illnesses, and suspensions were bound to suppress the truest expression of what this roster could have been in the standings. The hope for a reprieve gave Maverick fans the notion that in the final stanza of this regular season, the full promise of the 2024-2025 Dallas Mavericks could result in a push out of the play-in and fully into a mode of being the team no one wants to face. Finals experience and being dismissed out of hand was a recipe for something special.
We will never know how that iteration of the season’s story ended after it was preempted by the worst breaking news alert the Dallas Mavericks have ever been a part of. Now, rather than seeing the franchise player return to the lineup against the Celtics — or at least knowing that return was imminent — we get to watch the ever-evolving roster of new arrivals as Nico Harrison plays real-time 2k with the trading logic restrictions switched off.
The Celtics and Mavericks were not close in the Finals. That does not mean the Mavericks facing Boston yet again would have yielded the same result. Win or lose, the team — including Doncic — deserved a chance to find out.
Luka and KP era now feels like centuries ago
Kristaps Porzingis has found his best NBA home as the extra sauce atop the Boston Celtics dinner plate. They can win without him but when he is available and goes off, they become transcendent. The Mavericks saw that firsthand in Game 1 of the Finals and with Porzingis not listed on the injury report, he has a chance to stick it to Dallas once again.
It is nostalgic to think about the optimism surrounding the arrival of Porzingis in 2019 as Maverick brain trust pushed their chips in for the best on-paper pairing you could ever hope for. While it failed spectacularly due to injuries and personality incongruencies – it is fun to think of a version of the Doncic-Porzingis pairing without those roadblocks. With as fluid as the league is these days, perhaps their paths cross again in the years ahead. Before you scoff at that notion, think about the unlikely way Dorian Finney-Smith and Luka Doncic find themselves teammates once more.
Championships Are Overrated
Great players who go their entire careers without winning a championship carry the psychological burden of not having their careers validated. Role players who were at the right place at the right time riding the right bench can finish their careers with multiple rings. That inherent cruelty of being perceived as less great than you are spans all sports. I know Dan Marino was a better quarterback than Trent Dilfer but judging them by Super Bowl rings alone tells a different story.
This was — one would surmise — why Dirk Nowitzki had to make his way to the Maverick locker room and release a torrent of emotion away from cameras and prying eyes. He likely knew that 2011 was his last chance at a title, and in one moment, he shifted from topping the list of greatest players to never winning a ring to an all-time great. It is a cold, unforgiving calculus with the supply of one per season, ensuring that all other franchises fail by this singular metric.
Through the prism of championship-as-validation, franchises with titles galore can puff out their chests and claim greatness as a birthright. The Boston Celtics have an all-time high of 18 rings. Those banners will hang above the game tonight as the Mavericks take to the parquet floor.
My mind will wander during this game to the premise Maverick GM Nico Harrison espoused during his trainwreck of a press conference. The pain will stop when the winning begins, he postulates. Offering postseason contention, even dangling the notion of a title as a peace offering. Sorry, the Dallas fanbase is not Boston or Los Angeles. Many of us would rather have lost with Luka Doncic than win without him – a sentiment eloquently stated in the video commentary from WFAA’s Jonah Javad.
Nico Harrison’s obtuse sentiments will not be disabused by the acrimony he has engendered as he carries himself self-assuredly in the face of universal backlash. Harrison would purport to copy and paste his dream team together at the cost of fans in Dallas enduring a decade or more in the basketball wilderness long after he is gone.
Even if Harrison is successful and patchwork quilts his way to a parade on Victory Avenue and Dirk Nowitzki Way, many of us will quietly be saying back the immortal words of Switch in The Matrix, ”Not like this”.