Off-Season Wrap-Up: Biggest Disappointment

The Mavericks have arrived at their fifteen man roster. Dwight Howard has been traded. Training camp is still at least a month away, but it's approaching. It's time to declare this year's off-season over.

Since it's over, let's start by taking a look back at some of the highlights and lowlights. I posed six questions to the MMB staff, and will be revealing their answers to each question every other day. Today's question has a very obvious answer, but the guys give some excellent answers in spite of that.

Also, if you missed the first question, go back and read it!

2) What was the biggest disappointment of the offseason?

Alan: Well, there's one very, very obvious answer. If it has to be something other than Deron Williams in Brooklyn, I guess I'd say that Dallas couldn't do something more with Lamar Odom's expiring contract. It seems like just about everyone benefited from that fiasco except Dallas. The Lakers even got Steve Nash thanks to the Odom trade exception.

Lisa: Do I have to answer this? I don't want to say Deron Williams. I'm so over him.

Tom: The lack of clarity about the guard position. While Collison is currently slated to be the starting point guard, his skills may not translate well into Rick Carlisle's system which Kidd dominated. With both Rodrigue Beaubois and Delonte West having extensive knowledge about how the Mavericks operate, there could be instability in the roster for the first 10-15 games to determine who really is the best fit for point guard for Dallas.

Tim: I'm going to take a bit of a personal angle on this question. For me, I was most disappointed in myself, for not trusting the Maverick front office to have a backup plan after they failed to sign Deron. Things looked pretty bleak, that's for certain, and there were people from all different directions of the interwebs damning the coming season to the lottery. But it looked no better when Steve Nash ran off to Phoenix, to which the front office responded to by acquiring Jason Terry. And in 2010, when LeBron James didn't become a Maverick, remember the "consolation prize" in Tyson Chandler they snagged? Instead of trusting that they'd figure something out, just like they have in the past, I jumped on the "suck" bandwagon like it was a van offering free candy (disclaimer to the kids reading: don't actually get in those vans, there's no free candy). I wrote this article on July 6th where I declared 2013 a lost season. Well, as we now see, I was clearly wrong. The Mavs front office don't turn water into wine, but they can turn nothing into something pretty miraculously. Sure, it wasn't the haul fans were hoping for, but it's more than anyone could have expected after Deron shunned us for Brooklyn. Until they prove me wrong, I have faith.

Andy: Oh, I stubbed my toe really bad a few weeks ago. But AFTER that, probably not getting Deron Williams. It was hugely disappointing for the fan base for the obvious reasons, that the Mavs had put a lot of eggs in that basket and given up a lot to put themselves in position to buy the basket in the first place, including the world's worst title defense--in addition to that, however, it vindicated, for the moment, what many of us had been feeling. For all the "you might as well not do anything if you're not winning a championship" fans out there, many of us could never have countenanced a strategy that involved becoming decisively worse in any case--especially as that strategy left the Mavericks so stripped down, that Joe Johnson trumped what they could offer. I think you're always better off trying to win, so I was disappointed by what happened, and in the Mavericks.