Jason Terry got a tattoo of the Larry O’Brien trophy the day before a Dallas Mavericks preseason game the year they won the NBA Finals. Everyone knows the story. It’s not just something people in Dallas talk about, it’s one of those NBA anecdotes that’ll be passed around for as long as the sport of basketball is relevant.
“It’s a legend. Folklore, I call it,” Terry told Mavs Moneyball’s Mike Taddow back in 2019.
“When he first got the tattoo, I said he was crazy,” DeShawn Stevenson said at the time.
“I didn’t say it to him. But I’ve never been to the [NBA Finals], and for him to have that now. Wow. And he got that tattoo in October, and it means a lot with what we’ve been through.”
Getting a tattoo of a championship trophy you haven’t won yet is bold. It’s brash. It’s Dallas.
In Through Painted Deserts, Donald Miller wrote “Dallas blew in on the wings of a Gulf coast hurricane and rained glass and steel onto a field of bluebonnets.” It’s a city that appears out of nowhere on the North Texas plains, gleaming skyscrapers beside a muddy river, sprawl in all directions built on swamps and farmland. In Dallas, all you need to be a star is the confidence that you can be a star.
Terry brought that type of bravado into the 2010-11 season when he got that tattoo, and even better, he backed it up during the Mavericks’ run to the championship. He averaged 17.5 points and 3.2 assists per game and shot 44 percent from deep during that postseason. Terry hit a ludicrous shot over LeBron James from 25 feet to seal Game 5 of the Finals, a shot he absolutely shouldn’t have taken, but only he had the courage to put up. It’s a legendary shot, one that should be talked about more when discussing the greatest shots in NBA history.
“Never the most talented, far from infallible, always a hero,” Andrew Tobolowsky wrote about Terry in 2013. The perfect way to describe someone who would take such a ridiculous shot—and make it.
Terry finally stepped up to be the costar that Dirk Nowitzki needed all those years. Nowitzki was the steady presence, the backbone of the team. Terry provided the fire, refusing to believe that anything but a championship was possible. That alone makes him one of the most important players in franchise history.
There’s the stats, of course. Terry is ranks eighth in franchise history with 619 games played. He’s third in 3-pointers with 1,140, and eighth in assists with 2,524. He’s fifth in steals with 735. Always a scorer, he’s seventh in points with 9,953.
The playoff numbers are even better. Terry is third in total playoff points for the Mavericks with 1,466 scored. He’s played the second-most playoff games in franchise history, suiting up for 87 postseason games. He leads the Mavericks in all-time playoff 3-pointers with 167.
But this isn’t about the stats. It’s about what he meant to the franchise. What he meant to Dallas. Terry was there through it all. The Finals collapse against Miami in 2006. The meltdown against Golden State in 2007. The lackluster playoff exits the next three years. Terry suffered through every obstacle, every setback. It was him and Dirk the whole time.
Even with all that on his back, he had the confidence to get that Larry O’Brien tattoo. He refused to let the losses in the past define the future. Instead, he bent the future to his will with pure belief and faith in a success he and his teammates hadn’t yet seen. What’s more Dallas than that?
The Mavericks made things right when they retired Mark Aguirre’s number last season. It’s time for them to do the same to one of the most important members of the franchise’s only championship team so far. Jason Terry deserves to have his number retired, and his name hanging in the rafters of the American Airlines Center.
