 The Dallas Mavericks short history began in 1980 and already has piques and valleys that have seen great teams a few games from an NBA Championship and seasons barely able to stay ahead of record loss seasons. The Mavericks quickly developed young roster ready to run and score with the best of the teams in the 1980s. Rolando Blackman, Mark Aguirre, and Jay Vincent were forces to be dealt with and by 1983 the Mavericks were making threatening runs into the Western Conference playoffs. The addition of Derek Harper, Sam Perkins, and Detlef Schrempf aided the effort. In 1986, the Dallas Mavericks played the Lakers in the conference semifinals and in 1988 the Mavericks were within one game of upsetting the Lakers in the Western Conference Finals and reaching the NBA Finals. The bottom would fall out and the Dallas Mavericks. Aguirre, James Donaldson, and Schrempf were soon gone and the team struggled to contend for anything but last place. More tragedy struck when the talented Roy Tarpley's drug and alcohol problems began to spiral out of control. The new additions were players in the end of their career. Blackman was traded to the Knicks in 1993 and soon after Derek Harper would join him. The new hope for the Dallas Mavericks came in the form of Jim Jackson, Jamal Mashburn, and Jason Kidd. The three players would all go onto have very good, if not excellent careers, but in Dallas they struggled to act as a cohesive unit. The Mavericks traded the talented players away and started over. The Mavericks eventually picked up Michael Finley, Dirk Nowitzki, and Steve Nash through trades. Dallas began to grow under the new ownership of Mark Cuban. Cuban became famous for his annual blockbuster trades in the early turn of the century. Though his attempts were to improve the Dallas Mavericks, it is though that his impatience hurt the team as they tried to learn to play with each other. After 2004, Cuban decided that Nash was too old to resign to a long term contract and let him go to the Suns. This started a change that eventually left Nowitzki, Jason Terry, and Jerry Stackhouse as the cornerstones of the Dallas Mavericks. This combo made it to the Finals in 2006, but the team choked after winning the first two games, dropping four straight to the Miami Heat.
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