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Unless Mark Cuban has some tricks up his sleeve, the Dallas Mavericks will head into next season with a team that has little chance of winning an NBA championship.

For the last few years, under Cuban’s reign, the Mavs have been one of the most exciting teams to watch. Their run-and-gun style of basketball has been a refreshing change of pace from the defensive-minded mentality of most NBA teams. But by focusing virtually all of their energies on putting the ball in the hoop, Cuban’s exceedingly exciting team consistently got killed on the defensive end of the court. Without a conscious effort to play defense, the Mavs continued to fall short of their goal of winning a title.

The last team to win a championship without playing any sort of defense was the 1995 Houston Rockets — who allowed their opponents to score an average of 101.4 points per game against them. Since those Rockets, the NBA has gone defensive. Instead of focusing on running fast breaks and shooting the ball, NBA teams have turned to weight training and long, drawn-out, half-court sets. With the greater emphasis on ball control, defense has taken precedence over offense in the NBA today. Realizing the boring slowness of NBA games, commissioner David Stern was compelled to implement new rules to put some life back into the game. But in spite of Stern’s efforts, teams continue to live by the mantra of “defense wins championships.”

In 2004, the defense-less Mavs allowed 100.7 points per game to their opponents. Considering the inferiority of their defense in this defense-minded age of basketball, many expected that Cuban would pay big money for some solid defensive players. Unfortunately for Mavs fans that continue to long for a championship-caliber team, Cuban kept bringing in more scorers into the fold.

The team is fun to watch, but until some stoppers are brought into the mix, top Western teams will continue to stop the Mavs when it matters most.

Vincent Lim resides in sunny Southern California and writes for Sportsfiends.com.