Just so I don't come across as a jump-on-the-bandwagon cheerleader, I must tell you that I picked against the Mavs in their Western semifinal against Sacramento and probably would've taken the Spurs in the conference finals had I made a prediction before Dallas' Game 1 win on Monday night. Of any team in the NBA, the Kings had the best chance of overcoming a loss to their best player, but, ultimately, not having Chris Webber as the "roll" guy on their vaunted pick-and-roll proved to be fatal.

So, to a certain extent, the Mavs' seven-game series win over Sacramento bears an injury asterisk. But injury asterisks are not uncommon in NBA history and, ultimately, they must be overlooked. The salient fact is that Dallas' style has not only been effective but also crowd-pleasing, and, should the Mavs get by San Antonio and the Eastern Conference representative (as of Wednesday that team certainly seemed likely to be the New Jersey Nets) to win its first championship, my guess is you'll see a lot of teams looking to change their style of play.

The NBA, see, is a copycat league. Whatever works for a winner tends to get mimicked. After the Detroit Pistons' back-to-back championships in 1989 and '90, for example, other teams attempted to replicate their model -- milk the shot clock and play an extremely physical game -- which is, more or less, the style that has defined the NBA for the last decade. Dallas doesn't milk and Dallas doesn't bang and Dallas doesn't apologize for not doing either.

What the young fan might not understand is that the Mavericks are actually reprising a style that was effective decades ago. I have to laugh loudly when I hear that teams don't play defense today the way they did in the past. That is total crap. Today's teams play too much defense and not enough transition offense.

Here were the playoff point totals put up by a certain club that went on to win an NBA championship: 131, 118, 133, 107, 129, 121, 130, 118, 128, 123, 118. These were the total points scored in each postseason game by the 1958-59 Boston Celtics, one of the greatest teams ever, the Bill Russell-Bob Cousy-Bill Sharman-Tim Heinsohn-Sam Jones group that dominated the NBA in the '50s and early '60s.

Granted, those Celtics clubs were much better defensively than the Mavs, primarily because they had Russell, maybe the best defender of all time. But, offensively, they were constructed a lot like the current Dallas Mavericks team, with consistent scoring options available from a number of players. Boston's top scorer that season was Sharman, whose 20.4 average ranked him only eighth in the league. But the Celts also had the ninth leading scorer (Cousy), the 13th (Heinsohn), the 15th (Russell) and the 18th (Frank Ramsey). Jones, who averaged only 10 points per game, was in his second season and had not yet become the player whose soft banking jumper became a Boston staple in the '60s.

Teams like the Celtics weren't embarrassed to push the ball whenever possible nor take a shot early in a halfcourt possession without the endless dribbling and play-calling that goes on now. A glance at the record book reveals that almost every postseason offensive record was set decades ago. Team records for most points in a six- and seven-game playoff series are held by, respectively, the '67 Philadelphia 76ers (747 total, 124.5 average per game) and those '59 Celtics (869 total, 124.1 per game), both of whom won the championship. For all their gunning so far in this postseason, the Mavs are averaging "only" 107.8 points in their 15 games through Tuesday night, below the mark of the great teams of the '50s and '60s.

The Mavs' defensive strategy is even more groundbreaking -- partly, of course, because straight zones could not be played in the NBA before last season. On several occasions in Monday night's Game 1 of the Western finals, Dallas came out of a key timeout and set up in a straight zone, albeit one that was ready to collapse on Tim Duncan inside. It was a look that we had never seen in NBA playoff basketball.

It's still quite possible that the Spurs will come back and win the series. But, whether or not the Mavs move on or go home, they have provided a blueprint that a lot of teams are going to think about adopting ... provided they can find accurate shooters and players who know how to get it done in transition.

No guarantees

Pardon me if I'm not all ga-ga about Thursday night's NBA lottery -- aka the LeBron James Quest for Tomorrow -- which will determine draft position for the 13 non-playoff teams. The last time I remember this much interest surrounding who gets the lucky ball was in 1985, when the New York Knicks won the first draft lottery and subsequently chose Patrick Ewing with the No. 1 pick.

Other factors fed the hype that year besides the lusting after Ewing, who, like James, would've been the top choice of any team. At that time the prevailing theory was that the NBA desperately needed a winning team in New York City to promote its product and the Knicks had sunk to an all-time low. Cynics wondered whether the NBA had rigged the thing so New York would win.

Anyway, the NBA dregs are waiting to see if they will be touched by an angel and land LeBron, who has reportedly already been offered $75 million for a shoe deal with Reebok. (For the record, Cleveland and Denver have the best chances of winning the lottery -- 225 out of 1,000.) I leave those hopeful souls with this thought:

The Knicks were 24-58 the year before they chose Ewing. They went 23-59, 24-58 and 38-44 with him in the lineup over the next three seasons, respectively. That is not a knock on Ewing; it's an observation that, while one man can make a major difference to an NBA team, he's not an automatic savior.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Jack McCallum covers the NBA for the magazine and is a regular contributor to SI.com.

 

Related information

Stories

Head2Head: Is LeBron James the no-brainer No. 1 pick? Marty Burns: Spurs are hungry after Game 1 loss to Mavs SI.com's Complete Playoff Coverage Previous Jack McCallum Columns

Multimedia

Visit Video Plus for the latest audio and video