This month, we’re seeing a Dallas sports team adopt the “good guy” role again and America support Big D once more, as the Mavericks are currently knotted at a game apiece in the NBA Finals with LeBron James and the Miami Heat. While the support for the Mavs is more so a rebuff of the hated Heat than of an affection for the Mavs, Mark Cuban’s team has been an easy one to support. Twelfth-year player Shawn Marion was part of multiple teams in Phoenix that reached the Conference Finals but never got as far as Marion is right now. Jason Kidd is in year 17 of his NBA career and after leading the Nets to back-to-back Finals appearances in 2002 and 2003, is likely facing his last chance at that elusive first ring. Tyson Chandler and Brendan Haywood have each been in the league ten years; DeShawn Stevenson eleven, all three ringless. Jason Terry, in his twelfth year in the league, was a part of Dallas’ 2006 team that came oh so close yet oh so far to hoisting the Larry O’Brien Trophy, but he too is a man of no rings.

Of course if we’re going to mention veterans on the Mavericks who have had great careers but have not sported the only jewelry the public cares about, we have to mention thirteen-year, ten-time All-Star, former league MVP Dirk Nowitzki. As painful as that 2006 Finals loss was for Terry and the rest of Dallas for the most part, it clearly still gnaws at Nowitzki as something that will long define his career if he isn’t able to hold up a brass knuckle when it’s all said and done. If you don’t believe me, watch the “celebration” by the Mavericks players after defeating the Thunder in the Conference Finals. Seriously, I’ve seen funerals that showed more jubilation. If the background stories of the players aren’t enough to win you over, you had to have developed some sort of admiration for this washed-up group of fossils after overcoming a 15-point deficit by the insufferable Heat in Game 2 to send the series tied back to Dallas. Perhaps Miami will win these three games in the Lone Star State and make Thursday night’s comeback a moot point. But the 2010-11 Mavericks have already provided hope and excitement throughout a nation and so for at least the rest of this series, they are America’s Team.