Rick Carlisle's title befits winning style

"I know how Rick coaches. I coached with him. I played with him," Larry Bird told 103.3 FM ESPN's Galloway and Company. "I know his demeanor. I know what he's thinking.

"He's in a perfect situation. He's got a group of guys, most of them are veteran guys that have a goal in mind, and they play the game the way he wants to play. They play together. They play smart. They don't get caught up in all the other stuff and they're coachable. If you have a team like that and you're able to coach them, you're going to have success."

USC coach Kevin O'Neill, one of Carlisle's oldest friends, watched every second of the NBA Finals. The two grew up playing high school basketball against one another in upstate New York. They've been in each other's weddings, and O'Neill served on Carlisle's staffs with Detroit and Indiana.

The championship only cements what O'Neill has always felt about Carlisle.

"Rick has been one of the top coaches in the league for a long time," O'Neill said. "This validates it. This isn't Rick's last championship. He's going to win more. He'll end up being a Hall of Fame coach."

Right fit with Dallas, Cuban

Carlisle was out of coaching for a year after leaving the Pacers before Dallas cropped up. The once-promising Avery Johnson era had come to a crashing halt after another first-round dismissal, creating the kind of opening that doesn't come around often.

Perennial 50-win playoff teams aren't usually in the market for coaches. But this wasn't just any job. Sure, the Mavericks had lots to sell, namely former MVP Dirk Nowitzki and Mark Cuban's wallet. On the flip side, there's also Cuban's demands and unpredictable behavior.

Johnson and his predecessor Don Nelson both reached their Cuban limits. It would take the right kind of coach to deal with distractions that weren't going to cease with pleas for the Internet billionaire to watch from a suite. Carlisle embraced the Cuban dynamic but was also able to convince his boss to tone it down for the recent playoff run.

Where others have clashed with the emotional Cuban, the rational Carlisle has forged a partnership based on trust and a common understanding of what's best for the team. One only had to witness their heartfelt embrace at Thursday's championship rally inside American Airlines Center.

"Mark is right there with the best people that you could possibly work for," Carlisle said. "The difference is Mark is more out front. When he travels on the road, he's in the locker room before games, he's in the locker room at halftime, he's in the locker room afterwards. And I like that because I just feel his presence constantly reminding our guys of how committed he is of what we're trying to do. And he puts his money where his mouth is."

General manager Donnie Nelson seriously considered taking the head coaching job himself after Johnson was let go. Nelson, though, went outside the organization for the first time in the Cuban era and zeroed in on Carlisle. The decision paid off three years later with a Finals triumph over the favored Heat and Larry O'Brien gold.

"There were so many reasons [to hire Carlisle] it's hard to point your finger at a couple," Nelson said. "He had skins, he had experience, certainly the right age, one of the smartest guys I've ever been around. He's a tactician. His ability to use the entire roster -- there are very few that really do that and understand the kind of opponent you're going up against.

"A guy like [Brian] Cardinal that doesn't see the light of day and all of the sudden he's playing a significant role, so he definitely knows how to use all his pieces. Blending of the zone to the right calls in the fourth quarter, the after-timeout situations, the crunch-time calls. He's got the whole package."

Ironing out the wrinkles

Not that there weren't speed bumps along the way. Much of Carlisle's first season in Dallas was a feeling-out process with the players that at times felt awkward. Communication issues popped up during the 2008-09 campaign. Personality conflicts arose with several who have long since left the Mavs. The rotation was a constant source of frustration for bench players who never knew from one night to the next when and if they were going to play.

Carlisle even kept the reins on Jason Kidd early in the coach-point guard partnership, calling out the offensive sets until the team's flow on offense took shape. For mostly everyone in uniform, it took a while to get Carlisle.

"His philosophy and understanding what he was trying to get across to us -- when you talk about the Mavs it was more offensive-minded and you didn't really talk about defense -- we finally understood what it was going to take for us to win," Kidd said.

Cuban watched the players' faith in Carlisle develop just a few feet from the Mavericks' bench.

"An inflection point for us is guys finally getting to a point where they understood Rick's decisions and trusted him," Cuban said. "Once they trusted him and bought in, it was a matter of learning to execute his system."

Carlisle, by most accounts, is an acquired taste. As one former Maverick said: "He's a strange bird." He can be viewed as out of place as a classically trained pianist in a hip-hop world, an aloof intellectual swimming in an ocean of ego-driven bravado, relying more on analytics than instinct.

But he trusted his gut throughout the 16-5 sprint to the title, from inserting J.J. Barea into the starting lineup against the Heat to trusting Cardinal to maneuvering around injuries to the numerous of adjustments and tactical moves the untrained eye never sees.

Carlisle isn't all Xs and Os. During the Finals he asked video coordinator Mike Shedd to collect some of the NHL's most vicious hits. In a Heat series that became increasingly testy as it went on, the Mavericks watched the motivating montage of hockey collisions spliced into their normal film session before Game 6.