What's Next?

Both the Phoenix Suns and the Dallas Mavericks have once again fallen short. Both teams were met with high expectations and summarily shown out of the playoffs after the first round. Phoenix by the defending champion, the San Antonio Spurs, for the third time in four years, and Dallas by the New Orleans Hornets, led by playoff rookie, Chris Paul. Needless to say the swift five game exit of two of the largest players in this year's trade market definitely brings murmurs of speculation out into the open. Already, Avery Johnson has been fired from the head coaching position in Dallas, and there are questions as to Mike D'Antoni's staying power in Phoenix as well. Well, that's a lot to deal with, but let's look at this piece by piece:

Dallas Mavericks
Now, the despite the fact that Avery Johnson took the Mavs to the Finals in 2006 then a 67 win record in 2007 are very impressive feats in and of themselves, two consecutive first round exits from the playoffs merits some blame to go somewhere, and the onus of the scapegoat happens to land on Avery Johnson. You could arguably say that Mark Cuban created this dilemma for himself, but the fact remains that someone has to go, and it's easier to get rid of a coach than the players. So the question remains, what went wrong?

We can always try to trace things back to the Jason Kidd trade, how the Mavericks sacrificed their future for immediate results. They offered up a young point guard (Devin Harris), a stop plug in the middle (DeSagana Diop) and two draft picks for a 35 year-old guard clinging to his youth. There's always the argument that Jason Kidd just never melded together with Avery Johnson's system and Avery Johnson never figured out how to incorporate Jason Kidd. There's the point that coming in halfway through the season with a completely new point guard to run the offense is very difficult for both the team and the point guard, that Jason Kidd was expected to do too much in too little time.

I want to go a different rout though, it's not the coaching, it's not even the trade for Jason Kidd, the fact that the Dallas Mavericks failed once again, is simply because that the team was constructed improperly. The fact is that I never considered Dallas a championship contender before Jason Kidd, and I certainly didn't consider them one afterwards, so to call the Jason Kidd a failure is a little premature because it didn't really bring them any closer to the championship, I would generally call it a wash.

So what's wrong with this team? Didn't they make it to the Finals? Didn't they win 67 in a season? The answer is yes and yes, but what amounts to their embarrassing forfeiture of a 2-0 lead in the NBA Finals in 2006 and their embarrassing upset by the 8th seed Golden State Warriors in 2007, is simple, the Dallas Mavericks aren't built to win championships. The fact is, is that their roster inherently is faulty, and the owners aren't willing to admit that. If we look at the roster, even just the starting lineup, there's already a obvious glaring problem with it, let's take a looksee;

PG - Jason Kidd
SG - Jerry Stackhouse
SF - Josh Howard
PF - Dirk Nowitzki
C - Erick Dampier

Now the glaring issue is that you have a dynamic point, a second rate center, a role player, and your two all-stars are perimeter players. So what happens is that you have team that would sooner settle for a jump shot rather than drive to the hoop. They have no finisher outside of Jason Kidd, their bench is stripped thin with little left other than Eddie Jones, Devean George, and Brandon Bass. The fact is that their lack of an interior game both on the offensive and defensive end has been and will continue to be their downfall time and time again. They're softness inside was the reason for their early exit last year, as an undersized Golden State abused them in the paint. The fact of the matter is that any team built around Dirk Nowitzki is bound to fail. Nowitzki cannot and does not thrive as a go to guy on a team. His game is fairly one-dimensional, he's an oversized shooter, a monstrous SG that can rebound. As much as his post game has improved, that's still what Nowitzki's known for, his shot. He'd make a great second option, and I think, that being able to share that burden and of having someone else (a post player) as the go to guy will help him to thrive even more. Shooters make big shots, but it's the post that wins games.

The "Formula" to Winning Championships

I don't claim to be an expert on basketball, I just do a lot of research and love following the sport, so when I tout a "formula" of some sort, don't get me wrong, there's nothing "official" about it. There are a lot of things that I'm actually ignoring such as salary caps and the whole front office side you have to deal with when dealing with the NBA, and of course, I'm completely ignoring David Stern. So take my advice with a grain of salt here when I say that there is a key to building a solid NBA team, and remember, the NBA is and ultimately will run like a business, it's here to make money.

So in looking back at the history of the NBA there seems to be a general trend of things that stand true for all of the NBA champions. These things are what ultimately won each of these teams championships.

First: Dominance down low

This goes beyond rebounding, this is a legitimate inside post presence that the team can consistently go to. Inside presence defensively is important, but it's the inside post game that made the offense flow, it's the goto when nothing else works, because you create the highest percentage shots that way. Why else do you think that the highest FG% players are mostly post players? Let's look at it historically:

Starting 10 years ago we have the NBA Champions and their inside game:

1997-1998 Chicago Bulls : Michael Jordan, Dennis Rodman
1998-1999 San Antonio Spurs: Tim Duncan, David Robinson
1999-2002 LA Lakers: Shaquille O'Neal
2002-2003 San Antonio Spurs: Tim Duncan
2003-2004 Detroit Pistons: Rasheed Wallace, Ben Wallace
2005-2006 Miami Heat: Shaquille O'Neal
2006-2007 San Antonio Spurs: Tim Duncan

Now some people are going to start looking at me and say, "Bulls? Rodman wasn't an inside threat." The thing is, all they needed Rodman for was rebounding, Jordan was the post threat. Despite being a 2 guard, Jordan was as physical as any inside post player. His feared game was not his shooting game, but in fact his post presence down low. With the Pistons you have Ben Wallace dominating at one end and Rasheed Wallace creating at the other, with a significant post presence your team opens up the floor and gives your shooters an easier time. This is why the Lakers have not been so hot until their recent acquisition of Pau Gasol and development of Andrew Bynum, they're both legitimate post threats. As much as Lamar Odom and Kobe Bryant can finish around the rim, they're not post players. Kobe would sooner shoot the pull-up jumper and Odom has trouble creating his own offense. Likewise Dallas has no inside presence short of Erick Dampier, which is to say, none. Dirk Nowitzki is just a 7 ft SG. The overall talent on the team isn't bad, it's just that shooters won't win you championships, it's too hard to open up the floor when you don't have something that pulls defenders into the paint.

Second: Solid backup

Needless to say you need to have your role players and players off the bench that can keep you in the game. You can't honestly expect your star players to go 48 minutes a game through 4 seven game series in peak form. You always have your shooters like Glen Rice, Steve Kerr, Toni Kukoc, James Posey, Antoine Walker, Ron Harper, etc... both starting and off the bench that are just there to catch and release. Each player has his role and does his best to fill it. The Horace Grants, Samaki Walkers, and Malik Roses there to fill up space in the middle and get the leftover rebounds. You have your Robert Horrys there for the big shots, and you have your James Poseys, Antoine Walkers, and Rick Foxs there doing all the extra dirty work. Needless to say, all these teams have solid reserve and role players to sustain them through the playoffs and through the Finals series.

Third: Chemistry

The team has to play well together. If we look at the old Trailblazers, they were a team with boundless talent, Damon Stoudamire in his prime, Scottie Pippen, Rasheed Wallace, but they just didn't get along, so they played horribly together. Everyone had a "me" first mentality. The best example we can see today of good chemistry is the San Antonio Spurs. You have to all share the same vision of winning and then everyone has to understand his own part in reaching that vision. Spurs are all on the same page, and it shows. All the teams that have won, played together for a good chunk of time (Lakers started the Shaq-Kobe era 1 season after the Shaq trade) being able to meld together and work as a unit on the court.

The Setting Suns in Phoenix: Too Little, Too Late

Boris Diaw came out with a 20 pt, 10 rbd, 8 asst game while Raja Bell shot the lights out with his own 27 pt contribution to rout the Spurs at home to stay in the series and keep from being embarassingly swept from the first round of the playoffs. Despite their best efforts though, the Suns are simply delaying the inevitable, because it's too little too late for them to really expect to get out of their 3-1 deficit in the series. I'm not just talking about how it's nearly impossible to come back from a 3-0 deficit in a 7 game series in the NBA, or how no team in the NBA has never done it before. The fact remains is that the Spurs were and still are a better team than the Suns, but even then, that's beside the point.

While I think the Spurs still would've won out on the series, what has really made this series so open and close has really been the Suns themselves. This series was supposed to be the ultimate test of the Shaq for Marion trade, it was supposed to be a revival of last year's round 2 rivalry, and instead, it's turned into the annual trouncing of a 3 seed over a 6 seed. The disparity of play just seems to be that way. How come? Why is it turning out this way? I could answer how Grant Hill's health has not held up and thus has not been able to defend as Shawn Marion did and not contribute, I can argue how Bowen hounding Nash has kept him from his usual production (he was limited to, 15 pts and 4 assts last game and 7 pts, 9 assts the game before). The fact however, of the loss, lies in the attitude that the Suns carried to each game. The Suns always have this attitude of being as good, if not better than the Spurs coming into the series, and in all honesty, they're the underdogs. Game 1 D'Antoni and the rest of the Suns brushed off as a fluke, Nash said they simply had to work on their offense, and Shaq claimed that, "the floppers prevailed." The Spurs got lucky, then they held home court by showing some more of their "luck" trouncing the Suns 102-96 in Game 2. Then of course when the Suns get home, the Spurs pull another fluke of a "near perfect game" embarassing Suns further in Game 3 with a 115-99 victory. Game 4 is just too little too late. The attitude of overconfidence has been the downfall of the Suns. They think that their offense can run through a system like San Antonio, they think that last year was a fluke, resting solely on the fact that Amare was suspended.

Given how Boris Diaw played last season and most of this season, I don't think the Suns can bank him having a repeat performance of Game 4. Unfortunately for Phoenix, I don't know that they have much choice. They're too far out to keep the series interesting, and the only thing that kept them from doing that was themselves.