Four-and-a-half years ago, the Mavericks were in a bit of a bind. They were the defending NBA champs, but they were also a decidedly old group, with three starters (Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Kidd and Shawn Marion) who were 32 or older, a sixth man (Jason Terry) who was 33 and a center (Tyson Chandler) who was 28 but injury-prone. Worse, the league had just put into place a new collective bargaining agreement, one that would severely punish those teams that exceeded the luxury tax.
The Mavs chose to let all three of their major free agents (Chandler, J.