Throughout sports, teams are measured by banners and rings, but greatness is measured by the contextuality of the situation.
That is why the 2011 Dallas Mavericks not only have the greatest ring in National Basketball Association (NBA) history, but the greatest ring in professional sports.
In order to understand why, I’m going to break this down in three phases: Who they went up against in the playoffs, the starting lineup and the personal difficulties the team went through.
The Mavericks finished the 2010-11 regular season with 57 wins and 25 losses, and were third in the Western Conference. This team was a decent team, but not a championship caliber squad like the rest of the top teams in the NBA. They were led by point guard Jason Kidd, shooting guard DeShawn Stevenson, small forward Caron Butler, center Tyson Chandler and 2007 NBA MVP Dirk Nowitzki. It had good leadership on the court, but this team’s odds were low compared to many other playoff teams.
In the first round of the 2011 playoffs, the Mavericks defeated the Portland Trail Blazers, led by LaMarcus Aldridge in a six game series.
After that series, they went on to defeat the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers that were led by Pau Gasol and the late-great Kobe Bryant, and that Lakers team was swept by the Mavericks defeating the Lakers in four games. It wasn’t luck, it wasn’t a fluke, it was pure domination.
After that series, was the Western Conference Finals and they were up against an up and coming Oklahoma City Thunder team led by three young stars: Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden. The Mavericks took care of the Thunder in five games and some would call a “gentlemen’s sweep.”
The real test was their NBA Finals opponent, this was the newly formed superteam of the Miami Heat being led by their “Big Three” LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. This superteam was formed in the summer of 2010, when LeBron James made “The Decision” of going to join Wade and Bosh in South Beach. This was a team that celebrated the win before they stepped onto the court. They were younger, faster and overwhelmingly favored in every game, many thought the Mavericks Cinderella playoff run was going to come to an unfortunate halt at the hands of the Heat. But, the Heat faced resilience against this Mavericks team.
Nowitzki played through a torn tendon in his finger and had a 101-degree fever during the Finals. He delivered clutch basket, after clutch basket. Since the Mavericks were built around veterans like Jason Kidd, Tyson Chandler and Jason Terry, those three helped Nowitzki out by displaying their poise and discipline on the court. That is how they outlasted and out-thought the Heat by defeating them in six games. That series gave the Mavericks franchise their first NBA championship.
What separates this ring from other rings throughout other sports such as football or hockey, is the difficulty and the pressure that was on this team. The Mavericks defeated defending champions, up and coming superstars and arguably the most hyped superteam in NBA history, all in one playoff run. There wasn’t any form of shortcuts allowed, no players on the opposing teams that were injured helping them clear the way. No form of a stacked roster with multiple All-NBA players in their prime.
In sports, we often fall in love with the underdogs, but hardly does the underdog come out on top and dominate the way the Mavericks did in 2011.
That championship wasn’t about winning four games and advancing, (yes, that is the end goal) it was about rewriting the career of Dirk Nowitzki who wasn’t known before this championship to show up when his team needed him. It was about getting redemption for Jason Kidd who went to the NBA Finals twice in his career and lost both times before winning a championship with the Dallas Mavericks. This championship proved that team basketball is superior over star accumulation.
Teams have won titles, very few have conquered conditions the way the 2011 Mavericks did.
That is why their ring stands alone, not just in NBA history, but in the landscape of sports.