Quote:
Originally Posted by Tokey41
It is attributable to the trade, that or the collective aging of the Mavericks... but I wouldn't put too much weight into that one. That's the only major move we made between our 67 win team and what we have now. I don't care what the argument is, blowing up a 67 win team has to be one of the worst moves of the decade. No other team improved so drastically we had to blow up anything (except the Lakers, but that's still a knee jerk we didn't even see how we matched up against them before the trade).
The roster was fine, it got us to the finals and depending on how you feel about the issue, it could have easily won us the finals... not to mention the simple bad luck of running into one of the few teams we actually had a losing record against in the first round of the playoffs the following year. The only thing that needed to change was the coaching, and that's why I wouldn't blame a single Mavs fan for eternally hating Avery.
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The league IMO is much more difficult now than it was in 06-07. Great players are no longer dispersed amongst mediocre rosters as much as was the case back then. Dwight Howard Lebron James Chris Paul and Brandon Roy have emerged, Garnett/Pierce/Allen are no longer on bad teams but are the makeup of an elite team, Kobe Bryant finally has a roster, the Spurs are the same, the Suns/Pistons have regressed.... but overall, I think the talent level of the NBA has picked up in the past few years, our roster hasn't experienced DRASTIC change, the NBA seems to have caught up with us. One more thing, as great as Dirk is this year, he is no longer in his "absolute prime". 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 were Dirk's best years IMO.
I think the 05-06 and 06-07 Mavs team would not be as good as today's Cavs, today's Celtics, and today's Lakers.