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Originally Posted by Dallas41
I think he has some what of a valid point
It's been a decade since they've got out the 1st round when they have made the playoffs.
In sports most Front Offices make personnel changes, coaching changes or front office changes with those types of results wouldn't you agree?
So it's great that they haven't reached the Knicks level. Hell I think it's great that the Cowboys haven't reached the Jets level.
But at the end of day what standards are we setting for the Mavs or Cowboys if we are just content that they haven't falling off to the level of those franchise in recent years.
I guess the best way to really describe things right now over the last decade is that the franchise has been treading water just good enough to make the playoffs but never good enough to truly advance pass the 1st round would you call that a fair assessment?
I know it's a different time and era but I do recall they struggled for two years starting off Dirk's career but in 2000 they not only made the playoffs they won a 1st round series vs the Jazz.
They seemed to make moves in the offseason or doing the season that made sense as to the type of team Poppa Nellie was trying to construct and they would at least advance past the 1st round under Nellie year after year.
It just seemed like the direction of the franchise was clear back then trying to build around Dirk. Nellie never seemed to be content I will give him that much and yes I realize there was no salary cap.
But as mentioned in the GDT this past offseason the team was coming off an exciting playoff series vs the Clippers and naturally fan expectations were high.
Some fans craved for a 3 & D player doing the draft to fit a need ASAP and they proceeded to pass up on both Bey and Bane two NBA ready made prospects & I'm not saying Green won't ever get there but those two guys were ready to fill that need right away.
What was the Mavs scouting department thinking.
Then in free agency there seemed to be just regular ole fans on these boards that identified a talent like Christian Wood who would have made an immediate impact to the front court right away.
I mean you do have to find yourself wondering had they done their homework and scouting adding two pieces like Wood and Bey to this roster and this is a totally different team in terms of contending right now.
What happens if they blow it again this offseason?
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If you owned the Mavs, after what season would you have fired Donnie Nelson and/or Rick Carlisle?
We can complain all we want about having not won a playoff series since 2011, and I find it frustrating as anyone else.
But the dirty secret that nobody ever seems to acknowledge, it was loyalty to Dirk that kept the franchise in the doldrums for several years. From a purely basketball standpoint, the Mavs should have blown it up and tanked like 3 or 4 years before they actually did. But they felt obligated out of loyalty to Dirk- understandably- to keep the team as competitive as they could while he was still playing. I'm not even saying it was the wrong decision. I might have done the same thing. But it DID set the franchise back years. He just got older and older, and the Mavs kept trying to put patchwork teams together to get playoff seeds rather than tear it all down and start over. Eventually even that was unsustainable and they had to tank while Dirk was still playing- precisely what they were trying to avoid.
This is why it irks me when people complain about the lack of playoff success over the previous decade- because everyone just acts like it was bad management and/or coaching and completely removes the context of them being loyal to Dirk to a fault. Maybe they could have done it better and won a series or two over the decade, but there's no way sustained playoff success was possible without a total rebuild. So if people are going to argue about how bad the post 2011 Mavs were, I wish they would just follow it through to its logical conclusion and say that they should have traded Dirk when he still had value- Danny Ainge style.
And people also don't seem to give any leeway when it comes to the Luka era being a whole new era. It's just lumped in together with everything that happened in the previous decade. Yes, we haven't won a playoff series in a decade. But Luka is only in year 3. As far as I'm concerned, we are either right on schedule or ahead of schedule with him.
The fact is, building an NBA playoff team is hard. Building a title contender is really, really, really, really f*cking hard.
The MBT has been far from perfect, but I maintain that they've been far better than most, and I do not at all see this complacency or satisfaction with mediocrity that you seem to see.