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Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle is one of three NBA head coaches on the newly restructured competition committee announced by the league Wednesday.

Carlisle, the current president of the NBA Coaches Association, joins Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers and Memphis Grizzlies coach Lionel Hollins. Also on the committee are team owners Dan Gilbert (Cleveland Cavaliers) and Joe Lacob (Golden State Warriors) and general managers Bryan Colangelo (Toronto Raptors), Mitch Kupchak (Los Angeles Lakers), Kevin O’Connor (Utah Jazz) and Sam Presti (Oklahoma City Thunder).

Previously, the committee included the general manager from each of the 30 teams. That committee has been reconstituted as the new general managers committee. The league says it streamlined the competition committee because it wanted broader input on issues that could potentially improve the game.

One issue that could come up when the committee convenes for the first time during the NBA Finals is basket interference situations in the final two minutes of regulation and overtime. Mavs owner Mark Cuban requested that the league immediately make such instances eligible for replay review following a late-season loss at the Los Angeles Lakers in which Cuban and Carlisle believe Lakers forward Matt Barnes touched the ball in the cylinder but was not called for offensive goaltending.

The play counted as a 3-point basket for Pau Gasol and could have changed the course of the overtime finish.

IRVING, Texas -- Not every head coach is equipped with the patience level to co-exist long term with an owner who practically sits on the team bench during most games, chronically chastises referees and talks to his players on the periphery of the timeout huddle.

(See Don Nelson, Avery Johnson).

PODCAST
Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle joins "The Herd" to discuss his contract extension, Mark Cuban, Jason Terry, Dirk Nowitzki and the NBA playoffs. Listen

Rick Carlisle, however, seemed to come to Dallas in May 2008 not only prepared for it, but eager to embrace owner Mark Cuban's intense and unorthodox style of watching his team play. Carlisle probably figured Cuban isn't going to change so it'd behoove him to work with it instead of against it. And it's probably one big reason why Carlisle, 52, agreed to a new four-year contract Tuesday that next season will push him past Nelson as the longest-tenured coach under Cuban's watch.

There are other reasons why Carlisle wanted to remain in Dallas when other lucrative coaching opportunities would quickly have presented themselves. At the top of the list is that Carlisle trusts the track record of Cuban and president of basketball operations Donnie Nelson. He believes they will always provide the resources to compete, or at least aggressively pursue those resources -- a belief that will be put to the test during this offseason of potentially unprecedented roster turnover.

"I can’t think of another owner and GM that has been able to reinvent a franchise more times in a short period of time than Mark and Donnie (Nelson)," Carlisle said, noting how the duo acquired Jason Terry and Devin Harris after losing Steve Nash to Phoenix in free agency. "We’re at a point now where we’re going to make some things happen. I see things happening in a variety of different ways. I don’t see it being only free agency or only being trades or only being the draft. I think we’re going to be very active with all three modes of getting a team better."

As inventive as the front office has been through the years, Carlisle has proved equally adept on the bench as an in-game tactician and making himself flexible and open-minded enough to capture veteran egos. This season's disappointing 36-30 record, the first in a dozen seasons in which the Mavs did not finish with a .600 winning percentage (the equivalent of 50 wins), came under the most unusual of circumstances given the NBA lockout, the dismantling of the title team, the short training camp, injuries and the Lamar Odom saga to name a few.

As the offseason beckons with cap space to burn for the first time in Cuban's tenure, Carlisle said he and his staff will be active the next month scouring every position on every team to identify potential trade targets. But, Carlisle acknowledged, the architects of the next Mavs team will predominantly be Cuban and Nelson.

"We all kind of place our eggs in their basket knowing that they’re going to do the work, they have the resources, but this is going to be work," Carlisle said. "We’re going to have to do a lot of homework. We’re going to have to be opportunistic and resourceful and we’ve got the greatest fans in the NBA and we want to put the best team on the floor we can for them."

Third in a 15-part series ranking the Mavericks' 2011-12 roster in importance of bringing back next season.

From the day Yi Jianlian stepped foot in the Dallas Mavericks' locker room, the 7-footer had his own Chinese media contingent following him at every home game and some road games, too. That's right, a small crew consisting of a couple of reporters and a videographer, all quite polite, courteous and friendly, were there to get Yi's perspective, and that was mostly from his spot on the bench.

It can't be an easy job to do day after day. After all, after Yi signed with the Mavs on Jan. 6, he played in just 30 games and averaged 6.8 minutes in those games. You try coming up with questions after every game when a guy doesn't take off his sweat suit.

The problem with Yi is that he doesn't play the game to his size. He's a perimeter shooter who doesn't shoot all that great (37.8 percent this season, 40.4 percent for his career) and he doesn't get dirty much defensively or on the boards. There's just not going to be many minutes for a guy like that behind Dirk Nowitzki, or really with most teams. It's obviously one of the reasons why Yi has played for four teams in five seasons.

And why he's probably headed for a fifth in six.

And so we roll on with the Countdown at No. 13 ...

YI JIANLIAN
Pos: PF
Ht/Wt: 7-0, 250
Experience: 5 years
Age: 24 (Oct. 27, 1987)
2011-12 stats: 2.6 ppg (37.8 FG%), 1.6 rpg
Contract status: Free agent
2011-12 salary: $771,706
2012-13 salary: TBD

His story: The benchmark for Yi is the 2009-10 season when he averaged 12.0 points and 7.2 rebounds in 31.8 minutes a game for the New Jersey Nets. That was his last of two seasons with the Nets. He spent the next season with the Washington Wizards, averaging 5.6 points and 3.9 rebounds in 17.7 minutes over 63 games. The Wizards then said no thanks. A knee injury while playing in China over the summer kept Yi on the market into January when the Mavs signed him to a one-year deal. He might have helped himself if he could have played center on this team, but at this point in his career he is purely a perimeter player.

His outlook: The Mavs seem to like Yi's potential so there's always a chance he could be back. He'll come cheap, which is important in this summer of roster upheaval and superstar pursuit, and Yi also has another thing going for him -- he doesn't turn 25 until October. Dallas could view him as a developmental player because 7-footers just don't fall off trees. It's just difficult to get excited about the prospect of Yi having much impact on a re-tooled roster next season.

The Countdown
No. 15 Lamar Odom
No. 14 Brian Cardinal
No. 13 Yi Jianlian
No. 12 Coming Thursday

IRVING, Texas -- During his Game 4 news conference following the first-round sweep to the Oklahoma City Thunder, Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle raised some already curious eyebrows when he started talking about his time with the club in the past tense.

For a man without a contract, was he using calculated language? Was Carlisle planting the seeds for his departure?

PODCAST
Mavs coach Rick Carlisle dishes on his new four-year deal, how the team plans to attack free agency, his input on the decision-making process and much more. Listen

Well, the coach with the new four-year contract as of Tuesday said he wasn't trying to send hints through his verb tense.

"I was reflecting just simply based on my first contract. There was nothing meant by it," Carlisle said after spending an hour on the airwaves with ESPN Dallas 103.3 FM's Galloway & Company. "One thing I’ve learned through all this is owners are special people and they’re all different, they all have a different way of operating their business. The way it all happened was fine."

And now comes the hard work in what promises to be an intriguing offseason. The Mavs are entering an unprecedented summer under Cuban. For the first time in his ownership, Dallas will have cap space and plans to be aggressive. Obviously, Brooklyn Nets point guard Deron Williams tops the list when free agency starts on July 1.

Carlisle said next on his agenda is gathering his coaching staff and painstakingly combing through the 29 other rosters and studying every possible potential free agent and desirable players through trades, plus draft prospects with the Mavs set to pick 17th.

"I see us being very active in all three areas -- the draft, free agency and trades," Carlisle said. "And it’s going to be a long summer because we’re going to be involved in everything. And so it’s one of the reasons I’m excited because I think there are going to be some terrific opportunities out there. We’ve got to get the team younger, we’ve got to get the team better."

In other words, stay tuned.

With the no-brainer contract becoming a done deal today, assuring that Rick Carlisle is signed up to coach the Dallas Mavericks through at least the 2015-16 season, the real work begins.

PODCAST
Coop and Nate weight in on Rick Carlisle's new contract with the Mavericks. Listen

When Carlisle arrived on the scene in 2008 as the successor to Avery Johnson, the roster included soon-to-be 30-year-olds in Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Terry and Shawn Marion, and a 35-year-old Jason Kidd. Wow, seems like spring chickens.

When Carlisle and the Mavs open training camp in October, the roster will include a 34-year-old Nowitzki and ...?

Who else is the $81 million question, or the $108 million question -- the amounts the Mavs or Brooklyn Nets will pay Deron Williams, respectively, whenever he chooses one over the other (interesting, of course, that Johnson coaches the Nets). Terry and Kidd are free agents and Marion isn't guaranteed to return.

Beyond Dirk, Carlisle doesn't know who will be on the 2012-13 roster in what promises to be a significant transition season coming of the 2011 championship followed by the first-round sweep out of the playoffs by the young hot-shots due north in Oklahoma City. It's not soft-pedaling things to say that the Mavs will battle mediocrity (36-30 this season) and even relevance, at least to the standard set during Mark Cuban's 12 years of ownership, if Williams opts to stay with the Nets.

Not that the perennial All-Star point guard promises a quick return to the Finals, but it would be a promising start. The free-agency list won't be laden with superstars or superstar potential to drape around Nowitzki.

Still, with or without Williams, Carlisle will indoctrinate a slew of new players into the system, a task he will no doubt attack with vigor, yet one that could be considered more daunting than the one he inherited even with the club having bottomed out emotionally in the first -round loss to the Chris Paul-led New Orleans Hornets in five games.

At least the Mavs took a game from those Hornets, the No. 2 seed then just like the Oklahoma City Thunder who swept Carlisle's Mavs to an early summer vacation less than two weeks ago. If the title team looked different this season, just wait until next season.

It will take a strong communicator to bring an unfamiliar group of players together and launch new era of winning basketball in Dallas. Carlisle proved he could bring a cast together during the championship season, coming off what had the makings of a devastating first-round playoff exit to the San Antonio Spurs the season before.

Carlisle believes the area he's grown the most over these last four years in Dallas is in communicating with his troops, a trait that cannot be undervalued in the NBA.

Or undersold, say, if Kidd relates his experiences with a flexible, open-minded Carlisle to a potential point-guard newcomer who happens to be friends with Kidd and shares the same agent.

"One of my strengths is that I’m an open-minded coach, I’m open to communication and I listen to the players," Carlisle said during the team's exit interviews on May 6. "I’m always working on being a better communicator as a coach and I work on that every single day and I’ve gotten better with it and I’ll continue to get better with it."

It could be the single most important aspect to the job as Carlisle is now officially on board to tackle the changing environment at the American Airlines Center.

From now until the start of NBA free agency on July 1, there will be enough tea leaves to read regarding Deron Williams' future to build a tea-leaf bridge stretching from Dallas to Brooklyn to Moscow.

Moscow?

PODCAST
Mavs C Brendan Haywood discusses flopping and the foul called at the end of the Sixers-Celtics game, updates us on the latest with Deron Williams and more. Listen

That's where the perennial All-Star point guard and his wife Amy are this week (and they tweeted their Ritz-Carlton room view of the Kremlin to prove it) after a brief stop in Turkey, where Williams played for Besiktas prior to the lockout. The couple was accompanied in Turkey by Nets owner/Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov and Nets general manager Billy King, the New York Post reported.

While in Istanbul, Williams watched former Jazz teammate and Russian native Andrei Kirilenko -- who has a relationship with Prokhorov -- suffer a devastating last-second defeat playing for CSKA Moscow in the Euroleague title game. Now it appears that Kirilenko and his wife, Masha, are playing host to the Williamses in their home country.

According to Nets Daily, Masha Kirilenko said last week that the two couples would be going to Russia together.

Tea leaves anyone?

"Last I heard he was partying overseas with Nets management, with Prokhorov and them," Mavs center Brendan Haywood said of Williams on Tuesday morning during an appearance on ESPN Dallas 103.3 FM's Ben & Skin Show. "If he's leaning towards Dallas, he's got a funny way of showing it. So we don't know what D-Will's doing. I think that's the million-dollar question everybody wants to know. I don't even know if he knows right now. He has a very interesting summer ahead of him."

So is Kirilenko on the Nets' radar as part of a plan to keep Williams? King recently denied reports that the team is close to agreeing on a deal for Kirilenko. King's main purpose for being in Turkey was to watch Nets 2011 second-round draft pick Bojan Bogdanovic, who plays in the Turkish League.

The Nets will surely spin the Williams couple's European vacation as a positive sign as Brooklyn desperately attempts to keep the North Texas native. The Mavs will be desperate to woo Williams back home -- he grew up in the Dallas suburb The Colony -- to pair with Dirk Nowitzki after owner Mark Cuban dismantled the title team to create cap space to make a run at a prized free agent such as Williams.

We'll see where the tea leaves -- and Williams and his wife -- land next.

Mavericks forward Shawn Marion, who finished eighth in Defensive Player of the Year voting, went under the knife Friday and, for all you pre-Med MFFLs, shared the experience online via Mobli and then posted to his Twitter account (@matrix31).

He underwent a minor procedure to have a lipoma, a common benign fatty tissue, removed from the back of his shoulder. Marion didn't actually record the outpatient surgery, although he says he wishes he could have. He did provide a photo of the removed fatty tissue in a jar and a groggy, post-op Mobli.com video from the car on his way home explaining what just went down.

(Be warned, the mostly harmless video needs two bleeps for inappropriate language).

Marion arrived back in Dallas on Monday night, he tweeted, but don't expect Marion, who turned 34 on May 7, to sit still for long this offseason. His plans include his usual globetrotting as a man always on the move.

"I'm going to do it all, I enjoy my life, so I'm going do to what the hell I want to do," Marion said in his humorous showboat style during the team's exit interviews. "Its just that simple."

There's no telling yet if Marion will be a man on the move this summer from a professional standpoint, too. Marion has two years remaining on his contract. He could ultimately be included in a potential sign-and-trade deal as Dallas seeks to get younger, and he is one of two candidates along with Brendan Haywood that the Mavs can amnesty.

Or the Mavs can bring back their top perimeter defender and a core veteran leader.

"I can't sit here and tell you what they're going to do, what they decide not to do," Marion said. "It's up to those guys upstairs (Mark Cuban and Donnie Nelson) to make it happen."

Second in a 15-part series ranking the Mavericks' 2011-12 roster in importance of bringing back next season.

Look, these rankings might seem easy to put together, but it takes hours of hair-splitting internal debate. So believe me when I say there's a certain starting center that flirted with this early position in the Countdown until reality set in that big-bodied centers are just too hard to find (not that Dallas won't decide to amnesty this certain starting center anyway) to toss one, as disappointing as he might have been, into the trash bin at No. 14.

Such is the case even when talking about a hustle guy like The Custodian, the quintessential locker-room guy, a guy the coach knows is always ready, the guy who will always make the smart play and come through in a pinch and always, always works his tail off.

That described Brian Cardinal a year ago during the Mavs' championship run. This year? Eh, not so much, minus the work-his-tail-off part.

At 35, if Cardinal can't be counted on to get in the game and knock down a corner 3-pointer to go along with a jarring drawn charge, then he becomes expendable. Therefore, and it is with a touch of sadness, Cardinal's two-year stop in Dallas, as entertaining and as joyous (mostly) as it was, has come to a close.

At No. 14 in the Countdown is ...

BRIAN CARDINAL
Pos: PF
Ht/Wt: 6-8, 240
Experience: 12 years
Age: 35 (May 2, 1977)
2011-12 stats: 1.0 ppg (20.4 3FG%), 0.8 rpg
Contract status: Free agent
2011-12 salary: $854,389
2012-13 salary: TBD

His story: Consider this about Cardinal: During last season's playoff run, he knocked down 3-of-4 shots from beyond the arc. He made 10 overall this season, which is especially tough to swallow considering the 3-ball accounted for 89.1 percent of his total shot attempts. Cardinal dropped 42-of-87 (48.3 percent) from beyond the arc in 56 games during the 2010-11 season. The addition of Lamar Odom obviously pushed Cardinal deeper on the bench, but even after Odom's dismissal in early April, Cardinal didn't see much time. Cardinal will draw a charge or make a steal, but he's got to be able to spread the floor while he's on it.

His outlook: During the Mavs' exit interviews, Cardinal made it clear that he wants to play at least one more season. It's highly doubtful that it will be in Dallas, but surely there's a team out there that can use a steady veteran presence for spot minutes. Who knows, maybe the Mavs will have a last roster vacancy as free agency toils into August and beyond and they'll bring him back on another veteran's minimum deal. Remember, when Cardinal first arrived at training camp in 2010, he was on a make-good contract with Steve Novak. Cardinal made good, Novak did not.

The Countdown
No. 15 Lamar Odom
No. 14 Brian Cardinal
No. 13 Coming Wednesday

Contract disputes are about money. The person seeking the contract always wants more than the person handing out the contract wants to give.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and coach Rick Carlisle might not yet describe this lingering contract situation as a dispute, but the bottom line is that Carlisle has yet to ink a new deal. Neither side is talking about it, so it can only be assumed that money is a central issue.

Carlisle earned $4.5 million in the fourth and final year of his contract this past season. That ranked him seventh at the start of the season, according to Forbes, among the league's highest-paid coaches. Three of the top six on the list didn't make it out of the season. Mike D'Antonio ($6 million, tied with San Antonio's Gregg Popovich for second) resigned from the New York Knicks, Nate McMillan ($5.5 million, fourth) was fired by the Portland Trail Blazers and Flip Saunders ($4.8 million, sixth) was fired by the Washington Wizards.

According to Forbes, Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers is the highest-paid coach in the NBA, earning $7 million this season. He's in his 13th season as a head coach and eighth with the Celtics, who hold a 1-0 lead on the Philadelphia 76ers in the East semifinals. Rivers and the Celtics won the 2008 championship and returned to the Finals in 2010, losing to the Los Angeles Lakers in seven games.

Is Carlisle looking for Rivers-type money? Or perhaps the $6 million that Popovich, a four-time championship coach, is pocketing this season? The NBA's Coach of the Year has the Spurs in the West semifinals on the heels of a first-round sweep.

In Carlisle's third season in Dallas, he molded a group of title-less veterans into unexpected champions, providing Cuban and the franchise with its first title. While the Miami Heat, the team the Mavs dispatched in the NBA Finals in six games, rewarded coach Erik Spoelstra with an extension in December prior to the start of the season, Carlisle's reward never came.

Cuban dismantled the title team and the season was a struggle from start to finish. Dallas ended it 36-30 in the regular season and then was swept out of the first round by the Oklahoma City Thunder under coach Scott Brooks, who is also coming to the end of his contract and will command a bigger payday.

Cuban claims it's simply not his business style to grant extensions (the 2006 extension he gave Avery Johnson backfired). But now that the season is over and still no deal exists, it figures that either the two sides are negotiating a workable salary or that Carlisle, who would be a hot commodity as a free agent, is keeping his options open.

After all, the Mavs' future, in terms of its roster as Dirk Nowitzki turns 34 in June, is as unsettled as ever in Cuban's dozen years as owner.

First in a 15-part series ranking the Mavericks' 2011-12 roster in importance of bringing back next season.

The offseason certainly arrived much sooner than anyone could have predicted, just like Lamar Odom's premature exit from the Dallas Mavericks.

The 6-foot-10 forward kicks off our offseason blog series that ranks the 2011-12 Mavericks roster in order of importance for the front office to bring back. Four of last season's six free agents found new homes with the exception of Peja Stojakovic, who called it a career after winning his first championship, and Brian Cardinal, who re-signed but made virtually no impact on the season.

Eleven months ago, the title team proved difficult to rank in importance and I started the Countdown with DeShawn Stevenson as the least important. It drew quite a few raised eyebrows from those wondering how I could possibly consider the defensive bulldog and surprisingly valuable 3-point shooter the least important member of the title team to bring back.

In retrospect, the choice probably violated the spirit of this series. I chose Stevenson not because I didn't think he was an asset and worthy of returning for a chance to repeat, but because the Mavs traded for shooting guard Rudy Fernandez, a move that, to me, signaled that Stevenson wouldn't be back. Who would have figured that neither Stevenson nor Fernandez would start the season with the Mavs?

This time around the lead-off man in these rankings is a no-brainer. Odom's career-worst season has to go down as the most disappointing season in the league and one of the more frustrating ones for a franchise in recent memory.

With that, on with the series:

LAMAR ODOM
Pos: SF/PF
Ht/Wt: 6-10, 230
Experience: 13 years
Age: 32 (Nov. 6, 1979)
2011-12 stats: 6.6 ppg (35.2 FG%), 4.2 rpg
Contract status: Signed through 2012-2013
2011-12 salary: $8.9 million
2012-13 salary: $8.2 million ($2.4 million guaranteed)

His story: There's a certain reality TV show on a certain entertainment channel starring a certain Kardashian sister and her basketball-playing husband that can provide the background of what went wrong in Odom's four short months with the Mavs. What didn't go wrong? Dallas thought it was getting a versatile forward who would help ease the pain of losing Tyson Chandler by supplying his unique skills that had helped the Lakers win back-to-back titles. Owner Mark Cuban says he'd make the trade all over again that brought the emotionally bogged-down Odom to Dallas for a draft pick and a trade exception. And hey, when the stunning trade went down Dec. 11, most thought the Mavs had just pulled off a coup and wondered why in the world the Lakers would seemingly just hand over last season's Sixth Man of the Year to the team that swept them out of the playoffs. Now we know.

His outlook: Odom is actually under consideration for a spot on Team USA for the London Games because of the rash of injuries that have taken out star players like Derrick Rose and Dwight Howard. Cuban actually said he'd love to see it, but only because he has such disdain for Olympic basketball, so he figures the two were meant to be together. Where Odom lands next season will be a far more intriguing story to follow. For starters, Dallas will try everything it can to dump him off on a team with loads of salary cap space such as Toronto or Sacramento and throw in $3 million to offset the $2.4 million guaranteed on Odom's deal next season. If the Mavs can't dump him in a trade, they'll waive him and be responsible for the $2.4 million, which will eat into their cap space this summer. Such a result will not please Cuban. No matter what, Odom will be long gone from this organization. A return to the Lakers is not likely since they can't add him to the roster for a full year after the date he was traded, Dec. 11. Could he land with the Miami Heat, one of his former teams that obviously will be a contender for years to come? Well, if he wants to sign for a fraction of his actual 2012-13 salary, then it's possible. Of course, no team might risk much more than a couple million anyway. How about the team with which he started his career, the Los Angeles Clippers? Possible. Caron Butler is signed for two more years at small forward, but Kenyon Martin and Reggie Evans are free agents.

The Countdown
No. 15 Lamar Odom
No. 14 Coming Tuesday

ESPN Dallas 103.3 FM's Ben and Skin use their unique delivery to explain why the Mavs need to bring Deron Williams back to Big D.

Jeremy Schaap examines the growing trend of NBA owners speaking out about on-court actions.

Despite a down year by his Hall of Fame standards, Dirk Nowitzki got a little love in the MVP voting.

Nowitzki got one fourth-place and one fifth-place vote to finish tied with Russell Westbrook for 12th in the voting, far behind LeBron James, who was named MVP for the third time in four seasons. Kevin Durant, Chris Paul, Kobe Bryant, Tony Parker, Kevin Love, Dwight Howard, Rajon Rondo, Steve Nash, Derrick Rose and Dwyane Wade also finished above Nowitzki.

It’s the lowest Nowitzki has finished in the voting in a decade. He won the MVP in 2007, finished third in 2005 and 2006, sixth in 2011, seventh in 2003 and 2010, eighth in 2002, 10th in 2004 and 2009 and 11th in 2008.

Nowitzki, the reigning Finals MVP, averaged his fewest points (21.6) and rebounds (6.8) since 1999-00.

This is how Shawn Marion said he would implore free-agent-to-be point guard Deron Williams to sign this summer with his hometown Dallas Mavericks:

PODCAST
(May 2010) -- Dallas product, Jazz guard C.J. Miles joins GAC to chat about what the players think of Dirk and if he'd ever consider coming to play for his hometown Mavs. Listen

"Get your a-- home. Home is where the heart is."

In less than two months we'll find out which way Williams' heart tugs.

There's also another local lad, a free-agent-to-be who has all along thought the idea of playing pro ball in his backyard would be pretty cool. In less than two months we'll find out how interested the Mavs are in bringing home C.J. Miles.

Drafted in 2005 by the Utah Jazz, the Skyline High School product has remained with the Jazz for his entire seven-year career, averaging 8.4 points in 19.3 minutes a game. At just 25 years old, Miles becomes an unrestricted free agent July 1 for the first time in his career. Of course, Miles and Williams were former teammates in Utah.

During a May 2010 guest appearance on ESPN Dallas 103.3 FM's "Galloway & Company," the 6-foot-6 shooting guard made it clear he'd like to play at home. Here's a snippet of how that conversation went:

"I definitely would want to do that at one point in my career. Just to have that feeling. That hometown feeling of having my friends and family behind me to see me play and see how I've grown. I definitely have that feeling sometimes."

As for what it would take to make it happen?

"I don't know. I guess I'd have to be free and, if they were interested, I'd definitely take it into high consideration."

With Jason Terry hitting free agency, will the Mavs be in the market for a young, athletic shooting guard? Miles, who earned $3.7 million this season, isn't exactly a sharpshooter, hitting for 38.1 percent overall this season and 30.7 percent from beyond the arc. His career numbers are just a few notches better at 41.9 percent and 32.9 percent, respectively.

Miles recently told the Deseret News that he is looking forward to exploring his options and that being reunited with Williams is an intriguing possibility.

"If that was an issue that came up I definitely would look at it. Who wouldn't, especially with the way that team is built now," Miles said. "They're aging a little bit and I'm pretty sure they're going to be looking for some guys that do some of the things I do."

Would the Mavs be interested? So much depends on if Williams signs, which players remain on the roster after any trades to create additional cap space and how much money the Mavs then have to fill out the roster. Rodrigue Beaubois and Dominique Jones both have a year left on their deals and Vince Carter will probably be returning. Delonte West joins Terry in free agency.

The Mavs shipped off athletic small forward Corey Brewer before last season, but there's no doubt they want an infusion of youth and athleticism in their backcourt.

Now it's all about how the dominoes fall.

The Mavs’ front office doesn’t believe that Tyson Chandler would have made that much of a difference in Dallas this season.

So it’s safe to assume that Mark Cuban and Donnie Nelson aren’t kicking themselves for letting Corey Brewer go for essentially nothing.

Still … it was impossible to watch the skinny swingman light up the Lakers last night and not think that the Mavs could use that kind of youth, athleticism and energy on their roster.

Brewer’s shining moment during his brief time with the Mavericks was sparking a comeback from a 16-point deficit at the Staples Center in Game 1 of the West semifinals sweep of the Lakers. He was even better in Thursday’s Game 6, scoring 18 points on 8-of-12 shooting while playing his typical tenacious defense during 19 minutes in the Nuggets’ series-tying win.

Dallas shipped Brewer to Denver along with Rudy Fernandez, who never reported to the Mavericks, in December, getting a 2016 second-round pick in return. It was a classic salary dump after the Mavs deemed the young wings expendable after signing Vince Carter and trading for Lamar Odom.

The Mavs rid themselves of a malcontent in Fernandez. They got rid of a good guy in Brewer.

But dumping Brewer was all about the money. He had a $3,059,000 salary this season, which would have been doubled for Cuban due to the luxury tax. Brewer is due $3,243,000 next season -- not a bad price at all for a rotation player, but a ton to pay a benchwarmer.

The Mavs believed Brewer would have been a benchwarmer in Dallas. The Nuggets found a niche for him, and he’s earning his money in the playoffs again.