The Mavericks went into free agency last summer hoping to convince Deron Williams to play for his hometown team alongside Dirk Nowitzki.
Instead, Williams chose to re-up with the Nets and become the face of the franchise as it moved to Brooklyn, leaving the Mavericks — who had dismantled their 2011 title-winning team in order to chase Williams and other top free agents — to move to Plan B.
“Those days are over,” Nowitzki said before scoring 20 points to lead the Mavericks to a 98-90 win over the Nets Friday night at Barclays Center, the teams’ first meeting of the season. “We went for [Williams] and had a good shot. We were right there with him, and he decided to stay and that’s about it. That’s how free agency works.
“We moved on, and kept a lot of cap room again for next summer and we’ll see if we can land somebody then. That’s the name of the game in free agency, and you can’t always get who you want. It didn’t go the way we wanted it to, and now we have to move on as a franchise.”
For Dallas, moving on from Williams — who scored 20 points but committed seven turnovers Friday night — meant owner Mark Cuban and general manager Donnie Nelson chose to fill their roster with one-year stop-gap solutions. That allowed them to roll their cap space and offer financial flexibility this summer, when they can again chase big-name free agents like Chris Paul, Dwight Howard and Josh Smith. That strategy hasn’t worked this season for the Mavs, who are 26-32, five games out of the last playoff spot in the Western Conference.
But for a player such as Nowitzki, in his 14th year in the league and approaching his 35th birthday, it has been tough seeing the Mavericks maneuvering to be successful in the long-term while he has been trying to keep winning in the short-term.
“I think us, as players had a tough time with letting that championship team go,” Nowitzki said. “But I understand that the NBA is also a business, and that the luxury tax is also brutal and especially coming this year and next year. So there’s really only a handful of teams that don’t care about the luxury tax — Brooklyn, New York and [the Lakers].
“Other than that, everybody seems to find a way to stay under the luxury tax and be a little over the cap, so they don’t have to pay the brutal tax, so I think that’s what teams are going to try to do, is have a good team a little under the luxury tax besides those three big-market teams.”
Cuban famously didn’t attend the meeting the Mavericks had with Williams in New York last July, instead opting to film episodes for his reality TV show, “Shark Tank.” But Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle did attend, and wished no ill will on the point guard for deciding to remain with the Nets.
“We had a good meeting with him,” Carlisle said. “He’s a Dallas guy, so we love him because of that. We would have loved to have him, but when he decided to stay here, we understood and wished him well.”
Like Nowitzki, Carlisle also took a philosophical approach to the fact that less than two years after the Mavericks won a title, nearly that entire team had moved on as the Mavericks maneuver to stay a step ahead in the NBA’s new financial climate.
“I’ve got to take the guys that we have and make them as good as they can be and win as many games as we can win,” Carlisle said. “ That’s my job. Some years are more difficult than others, but that’s OK. A year of challenges is something that you’ve got to make the best of.”