NBA: Mavericks beat the establishment

When John Starks hit a three to give the Utah Jazz a 14-point bulge at the end of the third quarter... IN THE DELTA CENTER... IN A DECIDING GAME OF A PLAYOFF SERIES... IN THE FIRST PLAYOFF SERIES OF A YOUNG TEAM'S LIFE, chances are a few TV sets clicked off around the country.

It was, and would have been, so easy to salute the Dallas Mavericks for a good season, a season that lifted them to the playoffs for the first time in a decade. It would have been natural to look at a Dallas loss without feeling much pain or sadness for the Mavs. After all, they're the team of the future in the NBA, the team of tomorrow. The Jazz, on the other hand, are increasingly becoming yesterday's news.

Each year, Utah makes a dramatic first-round stand, only to see its championship hopes get squelched earlier and earlier in the playoffs. This marked the fourth straight year the Jazz faced a deciding fifth game in the first round of the playoffs. In 1998, survival of the short series enabled the Jazz to make the NBA Finals and nearly knock off Michael Jordan and the Bulls. This year, however, the Jazz figured to get crushed by the San Antonio Spurs if they had managed to win. Game five, then, was a chance for Utah to persevere and win another one of these testy, nervy first-round battles, making a noble and victorious stand before tasting death in a bigger and bloodier battle.

Someone forgot to tell the Mavericks that the march to a brighter tomorrow begins in the magic moments of the present, and that the Jazz, living on the first-round edge, could finally fall off.

In a fourth quarter with clutch three-point shooting and lock-down defense, the Mavericks took that 14-point deficit and turned it into an 84-83 win, fashioned by that star of stars... the unassuming Calvin Booth!

CALVIN BOOTH?

A testament to the growth of the Mavericks is the fact that Michael Finley could have easily succumbed to the pressure of being "the man" in the final seconds of a game. He trusted his teammate--Booth--to finish a high-percentage play that knocked Utah out of the playoffs. In every conceivable way, the Mavericks matured by leaps and bounds in this short series. Losses in the first two games served as a wakeup call, and Dallas, led by a clutch game-winner by point guard Steve Nash in game three, avoided a sweep and lived long enough to take the Jazz to a one-game, do-or-die situation. Not many teams, let alone young teams, have the presence of mind needed to regroup from defeat while also contemplating the finality of a season's end.

Forget the sideshow of Mark Cuban. Forget Dirk Nowitzki's bad-mouthing of the "city of Utah." Forget any inclinations to frame this series in a context of "Utah purity versus Dallas swagger." What matters, and what will remain, is the fact that a lot of grown young men on the Mavs did some growing up. How could a team so unfamiliar with the playoff experience rise up to dismiss the Jazz and the combination of John Stockton and Karl Malone, who have logged over 330 NBA playoff games?

The Spurs await for Dallas, but potentially ending the Jazz as we know them--and doing so in the klieg-light glare of a first-round game 5--should represent a towering occasion that will be more than enough to tell these young Mavericks, once their season ends, that they have truly arrived on the NBA scene.