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Mark Cuban and Donnie Nelson praised his work, and Avery Johnson said there was absolutely no bitterness about his dismissal as Mavericks coach the day after their playoff elimination.

Let's be honest about this thing for a second.

What looked like a perfect marriage barely three years ago ended in a very ugly manner Wednesday. And whatever happens next, it won't put the Mavericks back on the level of championship contenders.

Johnson's demeanor and his emphasis on defense, borne out of his San Antonio Spurs background, looked like the perfect addition to a team that had played some beautiful offense and some pathetic defense under Don Nelson.

And for a while it looked so good.

But the 2006 Coach of the Year wasn't anything close to it just two years later. His team played shoddy defense all season and almost none in the playoffs.

There have been the publicized incidents – shouting match with Cuban, Josh Howard's determination to "party on" even down 3-1 – but the most telling thing for me was Johnson's sarcasm toward his team and his cancellation of what would have been its final practice.

I think Johnson tuned out his players as much as they tuned out their coach.

No one said anything like that Wednesday, of course. Jason Terry was "shocked" by the firing. Howard said Avery was a great coach and still their leader. Erick Dampier said everyone believed in the General.

They might have believed, but they haven't behaved that way since the end of the 2007 regular season.

Does bringing in another defense preacher make any sense for this team?

I would say it makes sense for this franchise but not for this collection of players.

Bring in Jeff Van Gundy, keep Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Kidd (you don't have any choice about that one at $21 million) and get rid of anybody else you choose to get rid of.

Van Gundy was less than a raging success in Houston, but he got Tracy McGrady to play defense and he had that team on the brink of a nice upset of Dallas three years ago even if the Rockets failed in the seventh game.

He doesn't just talk defense, he gets people to play it. And as we have seen from the vacations that the Mavericks, Suns and Nuggets are now free to pursue, defense matters.

Of course, at that point you're building around a 30-year-old power forward and 35-year-old point guard, but you have to start somewhere.

And it should be obvious now that this isn't going to be a 60-win team again any time soon.

For all of those waiting for me to apologize for applauding the Kidd trade, that won't be happening. Sorry.

You make your decision at the time and you live with it. If this team hadn't made the deal, I think Johnson would have lost them even sooner. They still would have lost in five games.

They would have a couple of younger players, but Devin Harris and DeSagana Diop aren't cornerstone players. As for the draft picks, when's the last time the Mavericks did anything really enlightened in the draft?

This team was headed one direction from the end of the Golden State series, and it stayed that way all season. The fact that Nowitzki thought playing New Orleans was a favorable matchup is absolutely laughable.

Howard said Wednesday the team needs to get back to the way it played two years ago, which he described as "leaving it all out on the court."

The fact that this group of players hasn't bothered to do that for two playoff series is why Johnson will be coaching in another city next fall.