Mavericks celebrate 'win for team ball'

Celebrating in their champagne-soaked championship T-shirts, it was easy to look around the Dallas Mavericks' locker room and laugh off the reputations each of them once carried.

The point guard who was too old. His backup who was too small.

The brash owner with the big mouth. The agile center with the brittle body.

The coach and the star who weren't strong enough leaders.

Now, they share a new label: NBA champions.

For one year at least, the Mavs showed that superteams can't be built by a few stars hooking up. With a roster featuring Dirk Nowitzki and no other prime-of-his-career headliner, the Mavericks won the old-fashioned way, with an emphasis on things like camaraderie and unselfishness.

"I just think this is a win of team basketball," Nowitzki said. "This is a win for playing as a team on both ends of the floor, of sharing the ball, of passing the ball, and we've been doing that all season long . . . We're world champions. It sounds unbelievable."

Team owner Mark Cuban joked that when Nowitzki re-signed for less money last summer, it meant part of it could be spent on the posse he was recruiting: Ian Mahinmi and Brian Cardinal.

Truth is, Nowitzki returned because Cuban said he was committed to winning with this core group of guys and that he would surround them with the best supporting cast he could find.

"You have to have players that believe in each other and trust each other and trust your coach," Cuban said. "And that's a process. It doesn't happen overnight. There's no quick solutions. There's not a single template for winning the championship. If there was, everybody would do it."

Said coach Rick Carlisle, who 25 years earlier was part of a very special team, the '86 champion Boston Celtics: "This is the most special team that I've ever been around."

Now that Dallas has its title, it's easy for guys to say they saw this coming "the moment they traded for me," as center Tyson Chandler said, or "from Day 1," as DeShawn Stevenson said.

But when Jason Terry says he "knew it in training camp," he also can back it up. He felt so confident that in October he got a tattoo of the championship trophy on his right biceps and vowed to have it removed if this team didn't win it all.

"[Miami] had three pieces, but we have 14 or 15," Terry said. "With that kind of confidence in each other -- the system, the coaching staff -- we just believed . . . This team has the heart the size of Texas."