Tim Duncan on the Mavs "We were happy to see them go in the first round."

Great article from Marc Stein of ESPN.com

DALLAS -- They've been dissed all over the NBA Nation. Dissed and dismissed as a team that has blown its best shot to win a championship.

The Dallas Mavericks?

The dissing has reached the point where the only reverence they seemingly generate any more, strangely, comes from a small group of prominent Texans who reside some 250 miles to the south.

The San Antonio Spurs would certainly prefer not to be the ones defending Dallas, but they couldn't help it Thursday night. They couldn't really deny that a 105-92 defeat to their longstanding rivals only reinforced the Mavs' status as the biggest matchup problem San Antonio has.

After watching Devin Harris shadow Tony Parker like no one else does and seeing Josh Howard (and others) punish the Spurs with his quickness -- before we even get to the trouble Dirk Nowitzki typically gave the visitors -- you dropped your suspicions that this is just PC talk. You tend to believe it when Tim Duncan says that San Antonio's high regard for Dallas hasn't been diminished one iota in the wake of the Mavs' historic first-round ouster by Golden State in the 2007 playoffs.

"No," Duncan said as the crowd around his locker began to disperse, asked if he's noticed the growing consensus that the Mavs have dipped in stature.

"We were happy to see them go in the first round."

Happy because Dallas, in San Antonio's estimation, is a team built to beat the Spurs. It's true that the platitudes tend to overflow when these teams get together because of the close bond between Gregg Popovich and his old point guard Avery Johnson, but don't mistake all of their back-and-forth praise for clichéd respect. The Spurs really do regard Johnson's Mavs as their toughest out in the West.

I know, I know: There's something very confusing about touting the Mavs so strongly when they can be so fresh and quick against the team that has won three titles in the past five seasons and so creaky and unathletic against Golden State. Yet we saw it again in the space of a week. Dallas were shaky victors at best last Thursday in winning their first rematch with the Warriors -- even with Golden State missing suspended Mavs killer Stephen Jackson -- and then looked about as sharp as you can in November with the Spurs in town for another TNT game.

How sharp? Try eight steals in the first half alone with their faster hands, triggering runs of 17-1 and 11-0 that ultimately enabled Dallas to take a 19-point lead into halftime. Then in the fourth quarter, after Nowitzki was finally starting to look more like his MVP self for one of the first times this season, San Antonio overplayed him, refusing to let Nowitzki (16 points, eight rebounds, five assists and four blocks) beat them but thereby opening up the fourth quarter for a clinching 14-point flurry from Harris.

You'll never see a ton of urgency from the savvy Spurs before Thanksgiving, true, but Dallas' edge in this one wasn't mere intensity or desire. Nor was it Pop's famed reluctance to show his best defensive schemes to a team he expects to see in the playoffs, as illustrated on this night by Duncan guarding Nowitzki far more than he normally does.

The Spurs' problems start with Nowitzki's ability to shoot over smaller defenders or out-quick San Antonio's bigger ones. The Mavs likewise have DeSagana Diop and a healed-from-surgery Erick Dampier to throw at Duncan and whoever is playing alongside Duncan up front, since San Antonio still prefers to keep two traditionally sized big men on the floor together. They also have a new high-octane bench tandem (Jason Terry and Jerry Stackhouse) to counter Manu Ginobili and, perhaps most crucially, the rare ability to put someone on Parker from the same speed class.

Of course, even with all those attributes, it's worth remembering that the Mavs needed OT in their Game 7 breakthrough to finally win a series against the Spurs, who are so consistently good that they win as often as Dallas does in the head-to-head matchup that poses the biggest threat. But there's one more element of comfort for the Mavs here: "We definitely respect San Antonio," Stackhouse says, "but [not] as much as y'all do."

Right. Although their mental state will be routinely questioned until they win a championship of their own, confidence against the Spurs is the least of the Mavs' problems after Dallas famously won that Game 7 in San Antonio just 16 months ago.

The Mavs' problem, as described by Charles Barkley in Wednesday's Dallas Morning News, is that "they match up well with the Spurs but not with other teams." Golden State and, of greater concern, Phoenix come to mind.

"At both ends of the court, they're the most complete team in the league right now," Popovich insisted. "I just think it's hard to win a championship. [The Mavs have] learned that lesson as fully as anybody's ever learned it.

"They could have done it for the last two years. It just didn't work out. But just because it didn't happen doesn't mean that they're not the team that people thought they were."

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