Mavericks fade fantastically

C‘est la vie, say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell.

For those of you who noticed, I have to keep ripping off Chuck Berry, Bill Murray, Charles Dickens, et al, because some truths are eternal.

Jack Nicholson says the great thing about games, as opposed to movies, is you don’t know how they’ll end. We live for surprises, which show anything really can happen -- and made the Warriors’ upset a special moment in NBA history.

Of course, you can’t have a David without a Goliath, so consider this a requiem for the big guy.

There was never any team quite like the Mavericks. Not that they actually won anything.

This season was all about wiping out last spring’s collapse in the NBA Finals. Haunted by their humiliation, they may have run too hot for too long.

In a conference with another 60-game winner and three teams in the 50s, they went on an awesome, four-month 51-5 run, pulling so far ahead they made everyone else crazy.

The Suns went 47-9 and lost 4 1/2 games in the standings. Out of the running, they went into cruise control as Amare Stoudemire and Shawn Marion got the blues.

The aging Spurs were more stressed with two teams pulling away from them. Coach Gregg Popovich spent weeks pondering trades, finally announcing they would go with what they had, as if telling himself to knock it off.

It wasn’t easy breathing fumes from a team owned by always ebullient, often insufferable Mark Cuban.

I’ve gone around and around with Cuban. He’s given me fun interviews and yelled “That was the stupidest question I’ve ever heard!” in my face.

He has zinged me in his blog and I have zinged him back in my column. In other words, it’s a typical range of experience with Cuban.

Whatever he is, he’s larger than life and a huge plus for the NBA, a George Steinbrenner figure who gives everyone a rooting interest when the Mavericks play.

Their importance can’t be overstated. Baseball has the most hated team -- Steinbrenner’s Yankees -- but has had ratings drop-offs when they were ousted in recent postseasons.

The NBA has been in mourning for the Shaquille O’Neal-Kobe Bryant Lakers, the league’s last team that everyone loved to hate, since they went away.

The Mavericks’ ascent was great except for one little thing: They aren’t in that class.

In their prime, the O’Neal-Bryant Lakers were a traveling asylum -- those were the days -- but on April 1 when they got serious, no one could touch them.

The Mavericks were a good, deep team that played really hard.

Dirk Nowitzki’s fall was heartbreaking because he’s a stand-up guy, a hard worker and has no Hamlet issues like, say, Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady.

Unfortunately, he just isn’t as good.

Nowitzki is still essentially a jump shooter with no post game. He’s a lot better if teams let him go left, which the Warriors didn’t. He gives up the ball when double-teamed, which the Warriors did, but won’t pick you apart.

Despite local yearning (when Steve Nash won last season’s MVP, the Dallas Morning News headline was “Dirk Snubbed”) and the likelihood that he’ll win MVP this season, Nowitzki isn’t one of those guys.

The top tier -- Bryant, Nash, Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett and, popping up at this exalted level in the last series, Baron Davis -- are programs unto themselves.

Let’s say O’Neal gets a second tier by himself, even at 34.

Nowitzki is in the next group with McGrady, Carter, Jason Kidd, Allen Iverson, Yao Ming, Stoudemire, et al.

Of course, in the best pundit tradition, everyone streamed down from the hills to finish off the survivors.

The Morning News, which ran a strip of numerals across the top of two pages -- counting down from 16, the number of wins needed to win the title to one -- only got to cross off Nos. 16 and 15.

After the team was eliminated, the paper’s Mavericks blog ran a picture of Nowitzki, doubled over in grief, with the headline: “Have some fun at Dirk’s expense.”

The blog went on to note, “It seems like some of you folks just want to mope about the mighty Mavs falling a measly 14 wins shy of their sole goal.

“Well, by golly, I won’t allow grumpy on this blog!

“Pour all those emotions into coming up with a witty caption for this photo. Perhaps something like, ‘Nope, my game isn’t down there, either.’ ”

Cuban insisted that it didn’t hurt as much as last spring, even saluting his former coach, Don Nelson. (“I may not get along well with Nellie, the person. I may not have as much as respect for him there, but Nellie, the coach, I have tremendous respect for. He’s a phenomenal coach.”)

The truth is, it hurt much worse.

“It’s so disappointing you can’t even describe it,” Nowitzki said. “You play your heart out for six or seven months and we win 67 games and it really means nothing at this point. I feel sorry for our whole organization, the players, the coaches and all the hard work you put in for so long a time. Really if you look at it now, it really means nothing.”

While telling David Stern how to run his league from the moment he showed up, Cuban claimed a lot of credit that belonged to Nelson, but he’s on his own now.

It has taken awhile, but if Cuban ever gets over the top, no one can say he didn’t pay his dues.

It was great having him around too, as long as he lasted.

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