How the Dallas Mavericks jump-started Tim Legler’s NBA career those many years ago

NBA analyst Tim Legler spoke with insider Marc Stein about his playing days and about the NBA pecking order a week from the 2024-25 season on the latest episode of Stein’s All-NBA podcast.

Dallas Mavericks fans adopted NBA analyst Tim Legler into the family last season as the ESPN in-game legend beat the drum for the Mavs as a legitimate NBA Finals contender following trade deadline deals to acquire P.J. Washington and Daniel Gafford. He called Luka Dončić’s clutch play the “best I’ve seen” and even picked the little Mavs over the Celtics before the two teams met in what would shake out as a 4-1 series win for Boston’s 18th NBA Championship. Oh, Legs, what could have been?

The Mavericks largely made good on Legler’s bullish attitude with the trip to the Finals last season, and the Mavs fanbase continues to swoon on Legler’s every take leading up to the 2024-25 campaign. But Legler has apparently harbored special feelings for the Mavericks for decades longer than that.

In a podcast appearance on Thursday, Legler credited the Mavericks, especially then-interim coach Garfield Heard and his assistant coach Brad Davis, for Legler’s big break into a real-life basketball career. To hear Legler tell it, he may not have had any long-term NBA career at all had it not been for the hand they extended his way in the middle of the 1992-93 season. The Mavs would go on to win just 11 games that year and just 14 more the following season, but according to his interview on Marc Stein’s All-NBA podcast, they were some of the most consequential of Legler’s young career.

This part of the conversation starts around the 47-minute mark, in response to Stein’s question comparing the historically bad season the Detroit Pistons suffered through last year to Legler’s experience with the bad-but-not-historically-bad Mavericks of the early to mid-90s. Legler was added to the Mavs as a free agent from the Continental Basketball Association’s (CBA) Omaha Racers in March 1993.

For a guy who at that point who had been on multiple 10-day contracts, played in the CBA, bouncing around, and I remember. I had a huge game in the CBA — upper 40s, close to a 50-point game — and I get a phone call after the game that I’m getting picked up by the Dallas Mavericks, and I knew. I studied the league. I knew what kind of year they were having. What was interesting about it was they had fired [former head coach] Richie Adubato that year. Garfield Heard was the interim coach. His assistant was Brad Davis. I flew to meet the team [on a road swing] and they called me up to the hotel suite to have a conversation, and I haven’t even met the team at this point — none of the players. And I remember, they said something to me that in a lot of ways unlocked something in me and transformed the rest of my career. They said, ‘Listen we’re not very good. We don’t have any shooting. We know you’ve been in and out of the league and bouncing around, but we don’t think you’ve ever been given that opportunity to just play through mistakes and play through missed shots and not worry about being on a 10-day and not worry about being pulled from a game if you make a mistake. Because we think you have the talent, and now we’re going to give you the opportunity.’

Photo by Tim DeFrisco/NBAE via Getty Images

Legler played 10 games with the Phoenix Suns in 1990 and 11 more for the Denver Nuggets in 1991 before his big break with the Mavericks in 1993. He scored 9.6 points in just over 20 minutes per game in 1993, helping the Mavericks avoid the distinction of worst single-season win-loss record by racing to 11 wins with stronger play over the last six weeks of the season. After becoming a part of the Dallas rotation over the last 30 games of the woeful 92-93 season, Legler would climb to something of a prominent position in NBA circles as both a lethal 3-point shooter and after retiring as one of those rare ESPN analysts who actually analyzes the game. He continues:

So really from the beginning, before I even played a game, it was kind of, ‘You’re here for the rest of the year, and we’re going to let you play. You’re in the rotation. We’re playing you tonight, and you’re going to be out there, and we’re going to find out if you can sink or swim at this level.’ And it changed everything, Marc, for me mentally. Just knowing I could go out there and miss two or three shots, and if that’s what happens, I’m still going to get three more. The crowd reacted to me really well, and that gave me a lot of confidence. I was playing hard. I was knocking down shots. Everybody likes shooters, and I was shooting the ball well. That led into my second year there, where I was really a kind of sixth man for that team, and then that led to really setting up the rest of my career: Golden State, Washington, I ended up leading the league in 3-point shooting, I won the 3-point shootout. That entire thing — the stage was set by Gar Heard and Brad Davis telling me, ‘We’re going to let you play no matter what.’ And I needed to hear that. I needed to feel what that was going to be like, because I knew I had the ability, but I was pressing too hard to make shots. You can’t play that way as a shooter — you’ve got to relax. They let me relax and the rest is history — I played the next eight years straight in the NBA.

There’s something poignant about how much Legler reveres Heard and Davis for their part in his development as a player during some truly atrocious basketball years for the Mavericks. Even those of us who followed the team through the doldrums of the 90s hardly remember Legs’ time here — so it was cool to hear this anecdote about the little flower that grew out of that dirty Reunion Arena sidewalk.

Legler played in 79 games for the Mavs in 1993-94, averaging 8.3 points in just under 17 minutes per game. His best game in a Mavs uniform came on Jan. 4, 1994, in a 21-point, four-assist performance in a 113-96 loss at the Atlanta Hawks. He shot 7-for-11 from the field, including 2-of-3 from 3-point range. He would sign with Golden State before the 1994-95 season, when his 3-point shooting percentage skyrocketed from around 37% to north of 50%.

Legler and Stein also went back and forth about their preseason tiered rankings in both conferences, as 2024-25 will be upon us in less than a week. There weren’t a whole lot of surprises there, but Legler is apparently slightly higher on the Mavericks going into this season than Stein is.

He also called Mavs fans “my people,” so, another win for us.

“I think it’s very hard to separate the top two [in the West] in my mind, and that’s Oklahoma City and Dallas,” Legler said. On the addition of Klay Thompson specifically, Legler continued:

“Dallas went out and they added the perfect piece for them in Klay Thompson. He is just a much more reliable shooter to space the floor over the guys they had occupying those minutes a year ago. It’s that simple. … So I think both of those teams, to me, are toe-to-toe, and I put them slightly ahead of a team like Minnesota. But I do think they do get their own shelf in the West. They’re on the top shelf.”

Stein contended in response that he believes Oklahoma City is on its own shelf atop the Western Conference, with Dallas, Denver and the Minnesota Timberwolves occupying the second tier in the West.

Legler played 10 seasons in the NBA and led the league in 3-point percentage during the 1995-96 season, when he drained 52.2% for the Washington Bullets. The Mavericks start regular season play next Thursday, October 24 at home against the San Antonio Spurs.