Playing the Percentages: This is (or isn’t) the end for Dirk Nowitzki and the Mavs
By Grant Hughes
It’s hard to say exactly how long the Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks have been living on borrowed time.
They probably should have imploded after a brutal stretch that started with a 2006 Finals defeat and ended with a second straight first-round out in 2008. Front-office heads have rolled (and roster cores have been demolished) for far less than that. But the Mavs held together, added vets from the ranks of the forgotten and discarded, and hoisted hardware in 2011. Surely, that should have been the end.
Five years and four cobbled-together playoff trips after reaching that improbable summit, Dallas is still fighting—still desperately striving to compete with little more than plan-B free agents and a fervent desire to make the most of Dirk Nowitzki’s final seasons.
Only this time, it feels like the end might really be here.
Nowitzki can’t shake his Achilles soreness, the Mavs won just twice in their first seven tries and the buoyant offense that always kept them afloat seems sunk. Nearly a decade after it should have been over, Dallas’ run of respectability is finally, reluctantly petering out.
Read More: What do you do when your championship window closes?
Based on our proprietary calculations, there’s a 73 percent chance Dallas won’t make the playoffs. That leaves little room for hope, but survival and a postseason trip are still possible. Here’s how that math breaks down.
A Diggler reborn — 12%
In a last-ditch effort to relieve the pain in his Achilles, Nowitzki travels to his native Germany, the birthplace of Regenokine therapy, in early December. There, in a secret bunker, he is attended to by doctors Julio Reinecke and Peter Wehling, the inventors of the controversial recuperative procedure. His longtime trainer Holger Geschwindner is, as always, at his side, fashioning a makeshift balance beam out of a mop handle and piles of magazines. He forces Nowitzki to stand on it and shoot blindfolded while he hits him with trashcan lids in the waiting room.
Regenokine helped prolong Kobe Bryant’s career, but due to a simple misunderstanding, Nowitzki undergoes a total physical transformation.
Just before the procedure, Nowitzki’s doctors inform him Bryant always preferred to have two fluid ounces of his blood removed, run through a centrifuge and replaced. Standard stuff, really. Upon asking Dirk, clearly in dire straits, whether he’d like to try a more aggressive, borderline dangerous three ounces, the future Hall of Famer replied “nein.”
Despite the doctors’ fluency in German, they misinterpret his response as “nine” and perform the treatment on nine ounces of Nowitzki’s blood—nearly five times the typical amount.
Dirk returns to the Mavs in early January having grown to eight feet in height and possessing powers roughly comparable to those of Mr. Fantastic. His jumper is still wet, and now he can also read minds. Behind a mutated Nowitzki who averages 47 points per game on 83 percent shooting, Dallas’ moribund offense becomes unstoppable over the second half of the season.
Even in light of Nowitzki’s apparent invincibility, Dallas’ training staff insists he play only 23 minutes per game and forces him to rest on the second night of back-to-backs. Because you can never be too careful with a 38-year-old.
The Mavericks surge to 59 wins and secure the second seed in the West. Unfortunately, they fall in the first round when Nowitzki is called away to prevent Dr. Doom from hijacking an international space station’s missile targeting system.
Senator Barnes — 7%
Realizing it is his team’s only hope, Harrison Barnes leaves the Mavericks for three weeks to initiate “Operation: Falcon Rising” years ahead of schedule.
Leveraging his almost incomprehensible polish and maximizing the return on his inability to ever say anything controversial, Barnes and his team of advisors (the Falconers), mastermind a recall vote for every position in the Texas legislature. Barnes announces his write-in candidacy for each opening, wins them all, and champions sweeping legislative reform.
His first move: passing a bill barring all players over 6-feet who were also born in the continental United States from participating in the NBA.
The league is reduced to J.J. Barea playing Patty Mills one-on-one, as they’re the only two who qualify under the Barnes Act. The Spurs (Mills) and Mavs (Barea) reach the Finals, but Barea fouls Mills out in the first quarter of Game 7.
By flopping, obviously.
The Mavs win their second title in franchise history. Nowitzki has nothing to do with it, but he gets a ring.
Rick Carlisle bends space and time — 7%
Through increasingly feverish play diagramming in a second-quarter huddle, Rick Carlisle inadvertently opens an inter-dimensional portal, gets sucked into the vortex, meets Dr. Strange and learns the secrets of the multiverse. He returns from his travels in what feels like a blink (though he’s actually been gone for thousands of years) and bends space and time with his mind for the rest of the season.
Dallas wins every game by a final score of 200-0, but Carlisle doesn’t win Coach of the Year because everyone’s so used to his wizardry.
Mark Cuban utilizes Carlisle’s newfound omnipotence to make all of the best investments on Shark Tank, earns hundreds of billions of dollars and buys the moon. His t-shirts still don’t fit, though.
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Warriors’ second thoughts — 1%
The Golden State Warriors, sitting at 15-10 through 25 games, realize they’ve made a mistake. Knowing now that they overthought this whole thing by tinkering with a 73-win roster, they trade Kevin Durant and Zaza Pachulia to Dallas for Harrison Barnes and Andrew Bogut.
Dallas reaches the Conference Finals, but falls to the Warriors, who never lose again.