Wonderful life for Mavs, NBA

[kriD]

Wonderful life for Mavs, NBA

By Randy Galloway
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

There has been an overwhelming national media trend this week to praise, praise, praise what we are about to see, starting tonight.

The NBA, as we've known it and loathed it for a while, has reinvented and rejuvenated itself over the last couple of playoff months.

And now, according to the current theory, this Mavericks-Heat matchup in the Finals represents the last process in a successful rebirth of professional basketball.

It will be the cherry atop the whipped cream atop the hot piece of apple pie with a scoop of Blue Bell on the side.

Maybe. Probably. At least the possibility is strong that this championship finale can live up to sweet-tooth expectations.

Then again, I never particularly thought the NBA needed "saving," but the league definitely had to be juiced in certain areas.

Like a more entertaining product on the floor. I'm not going to overkill the boredom of last June's Spurs-Pistons title series that went slo-mo, sumo on us.

That wasn't the Spurs' fault. That's just what the Pistons are/were, and, hopefully, that team is the very last of dinosaur basketball.

But the NBA also couldn't be reborn without new stars emerging, and the playoffs are where that happens, and it has happened in these playoffs, with Dirk now among the chosen few.

For obvious reasons, Kobe won't cut it anymore when it comes to the league promoting its stars. He's probably the best of the best, but then there's the other "issues" that will taint him forever.

That's why this has been an April, May and now June, that has sent David Stern into a rejoicing binge. The NBA has moved beyond the Pistons and Kobe.

The league is again cracking that same public perception frontier it once had to overcome, and did, back in the early '80s.

With what is expected to be a huge national TV audience for these Finals, it is hoped by Stern and Co. that Mavs-Heat will successfully complete the transformation process.

Maybe. Probably. But again, it may also be difficult for these teams to live up to what are now vast expectations in providing entertainment and excitement.

Me, I'm taking the locals in six simply because the matchup questions for the Heat outnumber the matchup questions for the Mavericks. And all those are obvious, and have been covered repeatedly in this week of waiting for Game 1.

But picking the Mavs to win the NBA title (that still seems strange to even talk about; I guess maybe it's the hangover from watching a decade of baaaaaad basketball in the '90s) also creates a personal conflict.

I'm the guy who wrote it in early November as the regular season began, and wrote it again in late April, as the playoffs began:

These Mavericks are good, but not as good as they are going to be in the future, maybe not even close.

So now, here they are, in the NBA Finals, favored by the boys in Vegas to win it all, and I'm still standing by the previous opinion.

This decade is only about half over, but the Mavericks have already closed the window on one successful era (the Big Three of Dirk-Finley-Stevie Boy) and have now just begun to open another era.

And, by what has been seen in these playoffs, this era is already more prosperous than the other.

But Dirk, at age 27, is moving, and will continue to move, into that special arena of superstardom. He will become even better.

Not far behind him, at least in this opinion, is Josh Howard.

On Sunday, April 23, as the Memphis first-round series was about to open, it was written here:

"[Howard] is now a frontline star waiting to be recognized as such in the NBA."

Yes, I'm brilliant. Well, me and everyone else around here who watched Howard on a nightly basis. But it takes awhile for a guy picked 29th in the same draft with LeBron, Carmelo, Bosh, etc., to finally be recognized leaguewide.

That Josh wait should be about over, and will be once these Finals are over.

But where the Mavericks still have so much acreage for improvement is in the backcourt. Start with finding an effective point guard, which is where Devin Harris has so much potential, but has yet to show the consistency.

And Jason Terry, often described by Avery Johnson as a "basketball player," is the cold-blooded shooter without a real backcourt position.

BTW, to beat the Heat, Terry needs to be a bit more hot-handed than cold-blooded. Save for the second half of Game 6, Jason was a tad frosty in the Phoenix series.

Beyond the talent level at certain areas, the Mavs have made it this far because of philosophy and attitude. OK, good depth, too.

But philosophy and attitude translates, of course, to the work of one Avery Johnson.

Overall, Avery is just now building a strong foundation. He hasn't even got a roof on his basketball house yet.

That bodes well for the future, and, in the Western Conference of the NBA, which is loaded, a team will have to be on the upswing for year-to-year survival.

Then again, it just so happens that the future also arrives tonight for the Mavericks.

They can win it all, and still be building on becoming better for the tomorrows. In the big picture, the same can now be said for the NBA, overall.