The last three seasons were a nightmare for Mark Cuban, who saw his team failing when they weren't supposed to. In 2005/2006, they finished the regular season with a 60-22 record and went to the NBA finals, where they lost to Miami by 4-2, when they were up by 2-0. In 2006/2007 they had an even more amazing regular season record of 67-15, but they suffered the biggest upset ever on the first round of the Playoffs, when they lost to the Warriors by 4-2. They had the same fate last season, when they lost in the first round of the Playoffs against the Hornets.

The Kidd trade doesn't seem to have been beneficial for the team, who ended last season with a 16-13 record with Kidd on the roster. This trade was criticized for the fact it was a gamble on the present without thinking on the future, however how competitive can Dallas be right now?

Avery Johnson was fired by Mark Cuban, who later said that the players couldn't handle Avery as their coach anymore, confirming that there were problems on the locker room. To replace Avery, Mark Cuban hired Rick Carlisle, who comes from a sabbatical season. Carlisle isn't exactly a coach known for communicating with his players, but the truth is that he has been having tremendous success on his short career as a coach. On his first coaching experience, he led the Pistons to a 100-64 record in his two seasons in Detroit and won the coach of the year award in 2002. After that, he came to Indiana to lead the Pacers and on his first season in Indiana, the team had a 61-21 record, which was a franchise maximum. Carlisle was the first coach since Pat Riley to win at least 50 wins and division championships on his first three seasons as a coach. The main challenge for him this season will be to introduce Jason Kidd better on the team. On the 29 games Kidd played for the Mavs last season, he finished with less than 10 ppg for the first time since the 1996-97 season! Carlisle has already referred that Kidd will need to shoot more and that the team may use a faster pace this season:

"This team needs to be more of an up-tempo-type team," Carlisle said. "We have a great leader in Jason Kidd that I have to give the ball to and let him run the team, which I've done with some of the point guards I've had in the past."

Dirk Nowitzki will be the team's leader once again and the player who will get the ball on the last seconds of a close game. During his career, Dirk has been a player with numbers between 22-25 ppg, 8-9 rpg and 3-4 apg and I expect this to be maintained this season, even though the presence of Kidd on the team may raise his chances of having a better season offensively. He made an amazing effort on the final part of last season by playing through pain and that's even a bigger concern for this season, as Dirk didn't have holidays this Summer, as he was in Beijing playing for his national team in the Olympic Games. Fortunately for the Mavs, Germany was eliminated from the tournament on the first round.

Even though this may sound weird, the big key of Dallas for this season will be Josh Howard. He was the X factor of the Mavs in the past and he was one of the main reasons why Dallas was a true contender for the title, which even led him to an All-Star game appearance. However, in the past few months, Howard has been more involved in extra-basketball affairs than in what he plays on the field, which has been really poor lately. It will decisive for the team this season that Howard comes back with his mind cleared and be capable to fight for numbers close to 20 ppg and 8 rpg for Dallas have a shot to win the conference. Coach Rick Carlisle has already figured that:

"We need him to play big," Carlisle said simply. "He needs to get back to Western Conference All-Star-caliber level of play for 82 games, which he did a couple of years ago."

All the remaining roster is back for this season and this aspect will be positive, as they all know each other very well. Jason Terry isn't as quick as he was on the beginning of his career, but he can still have a good role on the team. Last season, Avery Johnson decided to use Terry as a 6th man to later change his opinion and put him back on the starting team. I don't know if Terry was affected by the constant changes, but playing on a faster pace this season and with Jason Kidd on his side on the backcourt may make his numbers increase.

The frontcourt will once again count with Diop, after being traded to the Nets in the middle of last season. Diop and Dampier will fight for the starting center position, which never had a dominating player on this position and with these two players, it won't be this season that Dallas will have a very strong player on the center position. Diop and Dampier are two players who will fight for some rebounds, but they lack talent to be good offensive players.

For the first time in several seasons, the Mavs aren't being considered as contenders to win the Western conference and that may even be favorable to them, having in account they have crawled under pressure in the last few seasons. Rick Carlisle has always had amazing starts on the teams he has coached and who knows if Dallas can't be the outsiders of this season? If Kidd starts fitting better on the team and in the system Carlisle will implement, then everything will be easier for them.

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