Whether or not Dallas goes on to win the Western Conference, or the championship, it’s time to give Mark Cuban a hell of a lot of credit. If you’re a fan of a team that’s not very good, or a team that’s swimming along in mediocrity… your franchise couldn’t get better news than Mark Cuban buying it.

Thank about the Mavs before Cubes bought them… what comes to mind? For me… not much. I’ve got green uniforms and Roy Tarpley. Not much else. Maybe a young Jason Kidd. But now they’re one of the most dynamic, exciting, franchises in sports… even before Avery Johnson, even before they became a more well-rounded team, even when they were cruising along in softcake mode, they were still interesting. They were better. They were notable. And it was just a matter of time before they evolved to the point where they are now.

It all leads back to Cuban. You may have some issues with the guy, and that’s fine. I’m usually the last person to ever criticize someone else’s wardrobe, because I prefer to dress like a homeless man, but… the Mavericks football jerseys and the “MFFL” t-shirts have got to go. I don’t think I would’ve considered either of those past the fourth grade. I don’t care that he’s on the bench, or in the locker room, or that he bitches about officials, or anything else… the t-shirt pictured above is what bothers me. It is not 1991. Also, he uses the smiley faces when he types. That bothers me, too. :(

But, yeah… you may never think of him in the same way that you think of the Rooney family in Pittsburgh, but… as an owner, you could do, and probably are doing, a hell of a lot worse. Basketball fans in Dallas should hang portraits of the guy above their fireplaces.

The ping-pong balls bounced their way, and the Toronto Raptors will have the #1 pick in the NBA Draft this summer. It’s an odd and not strikingly impressive draft… it’s hard to figure what the Raptors will do with the pick. There are three guys who have Top-3 pick value that could play the 3-spot. And I’d have to think that’s where they’re going, since none of the smalls available really project as a #1 overall type of player (Brandon Roy is closest), and they’ve already got Chris Bosh and Charlie Villaneuva under the basket.

So there’s Adam Morrison, Andrea Bargnani, and Tyrus Thomas… Thomas and Bargnani are kinda stuck between the 3- and 4-positions, depending on the style of play of the team who drafts them. Thomas is 6’9″ and crazy athletic, but… you know, before the NCAA tournament, not many people had heard of him. Bargnani is 7’0″, and like a less athletic Dirk Nowitzki, but without the crush on David Hasselhoff or the aversion to the area that some call the “paint.”

And I have no idea why I’m spending this much time talking about the Raptors #1 draft pick in May. But if they play it right, the Raptors could develop a truly impressive young core. If I had to guess right now, given that their current GM had a big hand in building the Phoenix Suns… I like they’ll go with the big tall guy who can run the floor and stretch the court with his shooting ability. You can see a little bit of Bargnani here. I think his draft stock goes up considerably because this video is set to a song by “Da Brat.”

First Team:

G – Kobe Bryant (33)
G – Dwyane Wade (29)
F – LeBron James (27)
F – Dwight Howard (26)
C – Yao Ming (31)

Second Team:

G – Chris Paul (26)
G – Tony Parker (29)
F – Elton Brand (32)
F – Amare Stoudamire (29)
C – Chris Kaman (29)

Third Team:

G – Gilbert Arenas (29)
G – Shaun Livingston (26)
F – Dirk Nowitzki (33)
F – Pau Gasol (31)
C – Nenad Krstic (28)

Honorable Mentions:

G – Kirk Hinrich (30), T.J. Ford (28), Ben Gordon (28), Deron Williams (27), Joe Johnson (30), Jameer Nelson (29), Devin Harris (28), Manu Ginobili (34), Andre Igoudala (27), Michael Redd (32)

F – Carmelo Anthony (27), Ron Artest (32), Tayshaun Prince (31), Chris Bosh (27), Josh Howard (31), Kevin Garnett (35), Boris Diaw (29), Danny Granger (28), Anderson Varejao (29), Marvin Williams (25), Luol Deng (26), Lamar Odom (32), Shawn Marion (33), Kwame Brown (29)

C – Charlie Villanueva (27), Andrew Bogut (27), Emeka Okafor (29), Darko Milicic (26), Channing Frye (28)

Now, obivously, some players who are yet undrafted will emerge as stars, but I didn’t see any point in project them onto this list. And some of the guys at the ends of the honorable mentions lists are reaches. Kwame Brown, for example.

But looking at this thing, whoever’s drafted in the next few years is going to have to have a major pair of balls if they want to crack an All-NBA team in their first five years in the league. How nicely is the NBA set-up for the future? Only five guys in the Top 15 there will be over 30, 5 years from now. That’s incredible. Even the lists of honorable mentions are damn impressive.

That really was the point of putting this together… to illustrate the amazing era that the NBA is about to usher in. But in doing so, a couple of other things stood out:

The future is not quite as guard-centric as I thought it would be. The forward list is still pretty nice, and the center cabinet isn’t as bare as I thought it was. Granted, a lot of them are swingmen-type forwards, but the league won’t be completely devoid of post players, either. Granted, there may not be a single Patrick Ewing in the group, but it could still be alright.

A few teams with multiple players on this last have some nice futures: The Magic stand out, with Jameer Nelson, Dwight Howard, and Darko “Perhaps I’m Reaching” Milicic. The Clippers, if they hang on to Brand, Kaman, and Shaun Livingston, could be the NBA’s next great team. The Raptors could have the best big-man tandem in the league with Villanueva and Bosh. The Bulls could have a dominant backcourt with Hinrich and Gordon.

The guy who gets the worst news is Dwyane Wade. The Heat have nothing else on the list, and really, had no one even close. LeBron’s not faring much better with just Anderson Varejao, who’s probably also a little bit of a reach.

It was youth and depth… that’s what did it for the little Mavericks that could. They were able to just keep throwing waves of young, athletic scorers at the Spurs, and they didn’t have answers. They had the answers for the big scoring threats. Dirk Nowitzki, Josh Howard, Jason Terry… they could handle normal depth. But when you start throwing guys like Devin Harris, Jerry Stackhouse, and even Keith Van Horn, who, much to my surprise, is still in the NBA… the Spurs just couldn’t match up with everybody.

A bench of Brent Barry, Robert Horry, and Nick Van Exel… to say that those guys weren’t athletic enough is a little like saying that Liberace wasn’t heterosexual enough. It wasn’t even close. And Avery Johnson exploited the hell out of that… He attacked it like John Daly going after a slot machine that spits out Marlboro Reds. He had the personnel to be relentless, and he took full advantage.

So it’s pretty clear where San Antonio needs to improve in the off-season. And before turning back to the Mavs, credit the Spurs for a pretty ballsy performance, even though it came up short. They played great, they just didn’t have the tools to win. Going down by 20, and then battling back like that… that took some championship-level heart. The deficit was just too much. Tim Duncan had a phenomenal series… I’m a little bit sad that we’re I’m not going to be seeing any more of him this year. I know he didn’t have the best regular season, but when he can play like he played in this series… he’s still the best player in the game, bar none.

But the team that deserved to win the series won the series. They had something that the Spurs couldn’t account for. Devin Harris played better than anyone had a right to expect of him. Dirk was incredible. And, you know, Gana Diop was a huge factor in overtime last night. Man, that’s not a sentence I ever expected to type. But it’s true, he came in and was quite useful against Tim Duncan in overtime. It may have made the difference in the game.

Looking ahead… I like Dallas’s chances in the Conference Finals. I actually didn’t see that game, because I was DVR’ing it, and some rotten son of a bitch told me who won. But yeah, the Mavs are going to be in the NBA Finals. We’ll see what Detroit shows in this next series, but the Mavs look pretty complete right now. It’s going to be a tall effort for anyone put them out.