The Dallas Mavericks have been done playing basketball for two months.
Make that eight years.
All the sudden, 2011 was a lonnnnng time ago.
Since making one of the most surprising underdog runs to a championship in NBA history, the Mavs have earned the most damning of all labels: Irrelevant. In the last eight seasons they haven’t won a single playoff series and have burped up a stale postseason record of 5-16.
Dirk Nowitzki is now retired and the Mavs are recalculating a future founded on Luka Doncic and Kristaps Porzingis and who knows when – or if – they’ll ever sniff the Finals. It’s past time for Mavs fans to resort to plan B:
The Toronto Raptors.
I know, I know. There’s something beautiful about the Golden State Warriors. Their choreographed movement without the ball. The passing. The shooting. The help defense. The fact that they win, and win some more, by rarely playing in the paint, much less above the rim. The way they always find someone – anyone – to make the biggest shot as in Sunday night’s Game 2 victory to even the Finals.
But the Warriors are founded upon an embarrassment of riches in stars Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, DeMarcus Cousins, Andre Iguodala, Draymond Green and, when he returns, a guy named Kevin Durant. The Raptors, on the other hand, are a team powered by one star – Kawhi Leonard – surrounded a bunch of hungry, veteran role players.
The 2019 Raptors are the closest thing yet to our 2011 Mavericks.
Eight years ago, Nowitzki helped break the mold and pummel a philosophy. Before – and after – the Mavs’ title, the only way to win was to assemble multiple stars. Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen in Boston. Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol with the Lakers. LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami. Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobli in San Antonio. LeBron and Kyrie Irving in Cleveland. The championship formula required two, even three All-Stars.
But like Dirk did it in Texas, Kawhi is eerily, similarly trying to do it in Canada. Mostly by himself.
“They remind me of those Mavs first and foremost because they have one superstar, and he’s playing at an incredibly high level,” Mavs long-time radio voice Chuck Cooperstein said on the radio last week. “If you did the comparison of Kawhi and Dirk, it’s really quite remarkable how close they are to what’s gone on. This reminds me so much of Kawhi taking on the Dirk role and carrying other very good players on his back.”
During Dallas’ title run, Nowitzki was the leading scorer in 18 of 21 playoff games. This year for the Raptors, Leonard has led them in 16 of 20.
The similarities, though, run much deeper.
Both successes commenced with a tweak, and a trade. In July 2010 the Mavericks, fatigued by their inferior interior, dealt Erick Dampier and Eduardo Najera to the Charlotte Bobcats for veteran center Tyson Chandler. No way they win their title without his rebounding, defense and leadership that manifested in an attitude adjustment. In July 2018 the Raptors, dismayed by consecutive playoff sweeps at the hands of LeBron, fired coach Dwane Casey and traded popular star DeMar DeRozan and a first-round draft pick to the Spurs for Leonard and Danny Green. In February, they traded for center and former Defensive Player of the Year Marc Gasol.
Following Dallas’ dusty blueprint, the Raptors had their go-to guy and a defensive game-changer.
Like the Mavs in 2011, the Raptors’ regular season was impressive but not image-altering. They went 58-24, but were seeded second behind the Milwaukee Bucks as an afterthought to win the title behind the Warriors and even the Houston Rockets. Dallas was 57-25, seeded third and given zero shot to beat the top-seeded Spurs or defending champion Lakers in their own conference.
Even the postseasons of the two teams ring a bell. Led by high-profile, unfathomably high-income cheerleaders in Mark Cuban and Drake, both the Mavericks-then and the Raptors-now stumbled out of the playoff gate.
In Game 4 of its first-round series against the Portland Trailblazers, the Mavs blew a 23-point, second-half lead, getting outscored 35-15 in the fourth quarter. With its psyche in a sling in a 2-2 series, some of us “experts” predicted the “same ol’ Mav-wrecks” wouldn’t live to see the second round.
They not only won the next two games against Portland, but went 14-3 over the next month in a miraculous run to the trophy. Along the way the Mavs beat LaMarcus Aldridge and the Blazers, Kobe, Phil Jackson and the Lakers, an Oklahoma City Thunder team that featured Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden, and, of course, the Heat’s trumpeted trio in the Finals.
The Raptors lost Game 1 of their opening series to the Orlando Magic. Same against the Sixers in the second round, and ultimately needed an improbable four-bounce basket by Leonard at the buzzer of Game 7. They went down 0-2 to the Bucks and MVP favorite Giannis Antetokounmpo, but won a pulsating double-overtime thriller in Game 3 to save their season and help win the series.
Even with home-court advantage, no one outside Jurassic Park believed the Raptors would win this series against the two-time defending champion Warriors.
Well, almost no one.
“We have precedence for a Raptors’ upset, in the form of the Mavs beating the Heat,” Fox Sports’ Colin Cowherd said before the series. “The Mavs had Dirk. The Raptors have Kawhi. Both were heavy underdogs, with a star supplemented by savvy veterans all over the court. I give Toronto a real shot.”
The bold comparison, however, was de-fanged by a prediction.
“Still,” Cowherd said, “give me the Warriors.”
Kawhi is Dirk, the future Hall of Famer.
Gasol is Chandler, the veteran, defensive anchor willing to sacrifice offensive numbers for that elusive ring.
Green is Jason Terry, a perimeter shooter that can bail out possessions or alter the tenor of games during a hot streak.
Kyle Lowry is Jason Kidd, the 30-something-but-still-productive point guard.
Pascal Siakam is Shawn Marion, the lock-down defender and rebounder whose offense, at times, is not only icing but the whole dang cake.
Fred VanVleet is J.J. Barea, an undersized, change-of-pace playmaker with a relentless motor.
The more you remember those Mavericks, the more you root for these Raptors.