The people of Dallas can be very proud the day after their Mavericks were eliminated from the NBA playoffs.
The Oklahoma City Thunder put an end to the Mavs’ season in Game 5 of the first round on Monday night. It was the result everyone expected, the inevitable conclusion of a series in which one team had two of the 10 best players in the world, the other a ragtag assortment of athletes with less skill, less quickness, and less health.
Yet, in the strange ways of sports and human emotion, it was hard to feel moved by anything Oklahoma City achieved. This was but a preliminary process for the Thunder, before a moment of supreme reckoning against the San Antonio Spurs in the Western Conference semifinals, which begin this Saturday in the Alamo City. No, this series was not a negative reflection on the Thunder in any meaningful way. Nothing should be said against the Thunder here.
This is a matter of praising the Mavericks.
Dallas — though wiped off the map in five games, two of them blowouts and two others decided before the final 90 seconds of regulation — left a more indelible impression upon the viewing public.
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Dallas residents old enough to remember the Cowboys in the 1970s probably watched NFL Films’ (masterful) account of Super Bowl XIII in 1979. The Cowboys fell behind the Pittsburgh Steelers, 35-17, due to some impossibly bad breaks. However, their late rally — making the final score 35-31 — helped fans and historians rightly remember that game as one of the better Super Bowls of all time.
At the 19:56 mark in the video above, NFL Films narrator John Facenda — reading words written by Steve Sabol — said this about the Cowboys’ fight to the death against the champion Steelers:
“It was an appropriate occasion to summon up the old cliches which salute gallant losers who play on for pride and self-respect when all hope for victory has vanished… but no, this was a team which truly believed it still could win.”
Dirk Nowitzki and Rick Carlisle — forever known as the superstar and coach who brought the Mavericks a world championship — know what it’s like to perform at the highest level, to vanquish their competitors with the best use of a full complement of resources.
In this series, Nowitzki was still the best player on his team, a remarkable feat at the age of 37. To that extent, one could say he still performed at the highest level. Carlisle, by getting his team this far, did the same. Yet, this was much more an example of competing at the highest level, as opposed to performing.
The best performers do something better than anyone else in their field of expertise. That’s what Dallas used to be, but the Mavs can’t claim that distinction in the here and now. What this team did as well as humanly possible was to turn what should have been an absolute massacre into a real competition.
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Yes, this series was not particularly close. A five-gamer in which Dallas’s one win came by one point — on a night when Kevin Durant missed 26 field goal attempts — rates as a decisive result. Dallas needed to move heaven and earth to scratch out its lone triumph. As long as Durant wasn’t posting 7-of-33 shooting lines, the Thunder were okay. On the surface of things, this was a nolo contendere series.
Yet, the Latin for “no contest” tells a lie, as might the outward numbers.
What numbers can’t measure — but eyes can see, and hearts can feel — is the soulfulness and unrelenting determination put forth by Dallas in a losing cause.
The Mavericks were quickly and easily obliterated in Game 1, so casually crushed like a bug on the windshield that it seemed a four-game sweep was not only likely, but inevitable. The question after Game 1 wasn’t if this series was going to be a sweep, but rather, if Dallas could lose by fewer than 15 points in any one game.
All told, Dallas got under that number in three of the five games in the series, winning once. Monday night, this remained a game heading into the final four minutes. If most fans expected the Mavericks to drop from exhaustion in Game 5, to run on empty due to the strain of trying to fight a losing battle, they received a resilient performance from the injury-ravaged 6 seed. The Dallas team which seemed down and out in late March, headed for the draft lottery while Utah appeared to be in the driver’s seat, had extended its season — and the Thunder — beyond every expectation.
The journey lasted long enough for Dirk to climb up the postseason scoring leaderboard:
DIRK!!
Dirk Nowitzki has passed Scottie Pippen for 14th on the all-time postseason scoring list. pic.twitter.com/gaVIeCUj6V
— NBA on ESPN (@ESPNNBA) April 26, 2016
The offseason and its bevy of questions await Dirk and the Mavericks. The team which sure could have used DeAndre Jordan on the glass Monday night — and throughout this series against the length of the Thunder — doesn’t possess unlimited flexibility and options. Rick Carlisle can maximize resources as well as any coach in the league, with the possible (sole) exception of Gregg Popovich. Yet, Dirk can see the future and know that time isn’t on his side.
All of us are wondering how — and precisely when — Dirk’s career will end. That uncertainty pertains to the specific details of the journey:
In the playoffs? In a Game 7? At the end of a miserable 35-47 season?
After being eliminated from playoff contention in Game 82 at home? After reaching the second round of the postseason?
We can never know those details.
What we can know: Dirk will compete the way he did over the past 10 days against the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Rarely has a team lost a 4-1 series and won so much admiration. The Dallas Mavericks, however, deserve every last bit of it. Of all the NBA teams which won’t reach the second round of the playoffs, none can be prouder than the one in Dallas.
The scoreboard has the final say in sports… but there are always exceptions to even the most time-honored rules and truths.
