My Dallas Heart is Happy

The Dallas Mavericks are the 2011 NBA Champions.

That sentence may not get old for a while. Thus begins my tribute to the Dallas Mavericks, as dramatic of me as ever. J

It all started as a very little girl discovered the NBA for the first time. I had been playing the game of basketball for a few years, but the world of professional basketball hadn’t made its way into my mind and heart just yet. When I was nine, the Mavs were still a far cry from being contenders, even, in the NBA. They still donned green jerseys, short shorts, played in Reunion Arena, and were under the ownership of Ross Perot. Anyone who called themselves a Mavs’ fan at this time was tried and true. You could trust them at their word that they genuinely loved this team of disappointments.

Before the 1998-1999 season, the Mavs took part in perhaps the most lopsided draft day deal in NBA history. They traded Robert “Tractor” Traylor to the Bucks and Pat Garrity to the Phoenix Suns for Dirk Nowitzki and Steve Nash, respectively. The trade, at the time, appeared to be a total bust of a move. A completely naïve, uninformed young girl from North Texas thought otherwise. I was enchanted by Dirk- he was different than other stars. For starters, he was German, tall and lanky, and was a 7-foot jump shooter, for goodness sakes. As a budding young basketball player myself, I liked Dirk for three reasons- he played my position, I thought he played well, and no one seemed to know who he was nor did they care. I just thought he needed a fan.

Several years later, the Mavs started to push themselves into relevancy, and that charge was led by none other than Dirk and Steve themselves. Allie decided she would be Steve’s number one fan, and together we followed the team through years of 82-game seasons and quick playoff runs. We were diehards through and through. As I learned to love the game more, I followed them with greater earnestness, refusing to let anything come between me and those games. For a few of the seasons between 2000 and 2005, I didn’t miss a single game. Even games played on the west coast with late start times didn’t escape my attention, and even when I was repeatedly told it was time to go to bed, I would find a way to sneak the radio in my bed and listen to the game on ESPN Dallas radio. Disobedient though I was, I think my dad must have somehow thought it was cute. He’d punish me, but I think deep down he was thankful for a daughter who shared his same love and passion for Dallas sports. J

Allie and I were Mavs crazy. We wanted all the gear, we wanted to go to as many games as we could, we even stood in line at a Pier One of all places during the middle of a school day to get the autographs of our beloved athletes. Not even a temperature soaring above the 100’s kept me from being there on that day. (So Dirk-like, playing through the fever, right?) I read the sports page every morning, memorized the stats, created passionate viewpoints on the commentary, and cried tears of both joy and disappointment as the Mavs battled their way to become contenders. I wasn’t just an ordinary tomboy- I was still very much a girl, but a girl with an unadulterated heart for her team, for her super star. While commentators would call him irrelevant, soft, unable to carry super star status, I put determined hope into my favorite player from day one.

Through watching the Mavs, I developed all of the necessary attributes required of Mavs’ fans- I couldn’t stand the Lakers and their domination of the game, run-and-gun basketball became my most preferred style, a preternatural bitterness already existed from day one for the San Antonio Spurs, and Mark Cuban, crazy as he was, became my hero for his passion for his team. I even played NBA Live 2000 on our N64 when I wasn’t racing Mario Karts, which greatly contributed to the eerie knowledge I now possess of early 21^st century NBA, a knowledge that still weirds Clayton out every now and then. *In case you were wondering- I was always the Indiana Pacers. Why? Because of Reggie Miller. That fool was 98% from the 3-point line in Nintendo world. (No one was allowed to be the Mavericks because, one, that’s not fair, and two, well the 2000 Mavericks weren’t anything to get excited over anyway. You’d always lose with them, and it’s all about winning, right?)

By 2006, I thought my wait for an NBA championship had come to an end. Don’t get me wrong, I had that same ambition for every season, but seeing us make it all the way to the Finals really had me believing. The stars seemed to be aligned, and after two wins right off the bat versus the Miami Heat, I thought a championship was now an inevitability. Although the Big Three of “Dirty Dirk, Filthy Finley, and Nasty Nash” was officially down to one lone German, the Mavs had made it. However, 4 straight wins later from Miami courtesy of Dwayne Wade, disappointment had a whole new meaning for me. If not now, when?

That was a disheartening loss for me, because everyone seemed to pin the Mavs’ failures on Dirk. As the designated super star, the success and failure all falls on your shoulders by definition of the role. The accusations that he would never be among the great without a ring rang out louder than ever. But Dirk came back with a vengeance with the 2007 Mavs, earning the number one spot in the West and earning himself his first league MVP award. Things seemed to be looking up. However, their first round opponent, the 8^th-seeded Golden State Warriors, was up first. While I was always a believer in the Mavs, I had a sneaking suspicion that this wasn’t to be our year, either. In all of the years I’d watched the Mavs, the Warriors were always a nemesis, and now coached by former Mavs’ head coach Don Nelson himself, I knew our weaknesses would be exploited more than ever before. And I was unfortunately right- we were one and done after an incredibly successful regular season.

A few more years, and a few short runs in the playoffs later, the Mavs were aging and their reign as 3^rd-Best-in-the-West seemed to be permanently established, and on its last leg. Living in College Station for the past four years, it wasn’t a lack of care in this team that caused my drop-off in watching them as much, it was an unavailability of time and TV access to their games. For whatever reason, College Station cable prefers Houston sports over Dallas based on what I can only presume is location instead of excellence, leaving BCS-dwellers in a constant state of “blehhhh” over the unimpressive, boring nature of Houston sports (no hate on my Houston friends, just cold, hard truth) I kept up with them, but my long-ago love affair with them had simply cooled off, but never burned out.

Flash forward to 2011, and the Mavs are in the playoffs. My hope in them is shaky due to the age of this team. It was never that I didn’t believe, rather I bended towards reality- time was not on our side. This was definitely the grittiest, toughest, most defensive-minded team I’d ever seen come out of Dallas, but it still seemed that super star-ness was lacking. However, there was still Dirk, the 10-time All Star with more will to win, more toughness from his journey through this league, and most important to me, more devotion to my city than was warranted. Sure, he wanted a championship like everyone else, but he wanted it for the city that loved him from day one, from the city that had given him his time to shine. He wanted one for Dallas, and he had resolved to not let anything or anyone get in his way. He willed the Mavs to this championship, and I’ve never been more proud of my super star.

Yes, I do call him mine, in the sense that I’ve never loved a player more, never stood by one’s side with hopeless devotion as him, never fallen for an athlete long before his time ever came. He is Dallas’ super star through and through, and I’m proud of the way he represents us. In professional sports in general, there are definitely more pompous, arrogant egomaniacs (similar to people that shall go unnamed in Miami), and Dirk has always had class, from day one. He always has given respect where respect was due, didn’t try to leave Dallas when all signs pointed to the fact that he should, and he has never once gotten hung up on the idea of his own legacy. If anything, he has played that down since day one, never wanting to draw comparisons to Larry Bird and the like that everyone so tries to get him to do. He just loves and plays the game of basketball, and everyone wants to try to make him like all of the other stars- but he’s different, and he always has been. It’s refreshing, and he’s part of a dying breed of athletes that I just want to hold onto and hope for the best in.

The Dallas Mavericks are Dirk’s team, and now that he’s won an NBA Title, he is immortalized here in this city and has secured a place on the short list of greats. It’s been a journey with this team, and because there is no promise of any near-future repeats of this moment, I’m reveling in it, soaking it up for my 9-year-old little heart. So many more words could be said about this team and what they’ve done for Dirk, for Cuban, for Dallas- I’ll save those words for writers much more skilled than I am. All I want to say is what they have done for me- they reminded me just how fun the game of basketball can be, what teamwork means, what humility looks like on a grand scale, what hard work and dedication can accomplish. But more than anything, they gave me a moment to be so proud of a team that had come so far, that I had invested so much time and emotion into, and in that was an insignificant yet totally satisfying sense of completion, that it all meant something in the end. Even though it is only a sport and in my own life has no real weight, there is something special about experiencing success as a city, a communal celebration, a rare unifying experience for the city of Dallas.

Silly as it may seem, it’s been an emotional ride for me over these past 13 years, and I’m unashamed to say I shed a tear when I saw Dirk hoist that trophy that I’ve long believed he deserved. And for a moment, Dallas could not be more proud.

And I could not be more sports-saga dramatic in my writing, but hey, it's who I am, I love sports. :)