Avery gathers all to say his hands are clean, but mud clings to him

DALLAS -- To be frank, a simple goodbye would have sufficed.

But, no, Avery Johnson just wanted one last time to charm us, one last time to publicly wash his hands of the whole mess.

Fired by the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday, Avery packed the room Thursday with cameras and notepads, as he knew he could. His farewell press conference was held at the Ritz-Carlton, and Johnson did everything Thursday but book us rooms and put mints on our pillows.

"It's time to move on," Johnson said. "There are no hard feelings. There's no bitterness. I'm a man of integrity and honesty. I can look at myself in the mirror with every decision I made and feel really proud of it."

That simple disclaimer set the tone for Avery's entire self-serving press conference.

When the Mavericks were good, Johnson informed us, it was because they were listening to him. When the team went sour, he implied, it was because they wouldn't listen. He made good teams better, he seemed to say, and average teams over-achieve.

The Jason Kidd trade? Johnson's answer was purposely vague, it seemed, saying only that owner Mark Cuban and general manager Donnie Nelson both know how he felt about the deal.

"Here's the thing," Johnson said. "That trade that was made, we don't want to bring Devin's name in on it or Jason Kidd's. I'm not going to give you guys something on Jason Kidd or Devin Harris or Mark or Donnie. The deal was made and at the end of the day, we're here today. We're not slamming anybody's name through the mud."

Again, a simple "yes, I was for it," or "no, I hated it," would have sufficed. (People in the organization have said that Avery pushed for the trade.)

But in saying that he didn't want to sling mud Thursday, Avery ended up getting it all over his pin-striped suit.

We should have seen this coming. Johnson's feelings about veteran point guard Kidd could be found last Tuesday night in the lavish praise that he heaped on the New Orleans Hornets' Chris Paul.

"He and his coach have a great chemistry," Johnson said of Paul after the Game 5 defeat. "He seems like he's very coachable."

There's nothing like quick, young point guards, you see. Avery made the point Thursday of reminding everyone that he had one, but, well, somebody traded Devin Harris away.

"That's why I wanted to develop Devin Harris," Johnson said. "I said, 'I've got to get this boy to a point where he can be a scorer first and pass some.' We got him to a point where we were knocking on the door with this young man making the All-Star team. He was going to be an 18-and-8 player."

Because of Avery, said Avery, Harris was on his way to stardom.

He was?

To some of us, Harris' inability to develop into a capable, dependable NBA point guard stands as one of Johnson's notable failures.

In fact, though Avery said that the Mavericks were at their best when they allowed him to "motivate and teach" them, I can't think of any young player whose game significantly improved during Johnson's watch -- unless you want to count big-bodied Brandon Bass.

In the end, Avery, as teacher, was a surprising disappointment for this franchise. The decline of Josh Howard has to be prominently laid at his doorstep.

A good teacher should have handled the Howard birthday party episode differently. I can't blame Johnson for being angry and abruptly calling off practice Monday after hearing about the party at a Dallas nightclub.

But what lesson did he teach Howard by allowing him to start and play 30 minutes the next night?

Avery is no fool. He knows how to play the public end of the coaching game.

But for him to imply that Dirk Nowitzki was the one who provided the impetus to get him fired is a low blow. Nowitzki, if anything, emerged as a proud leader of this fractured team. That was him on the floor in New Orleans, giving everything he had for 48 minutes.

"We feel proud overall of what we did with what we had to work with," Johnson said, summing up his four uneven seasons.

Thanks to the posh hotel surroundings Thursday, Avery was allowed the dignity of a classy public farewell.

There were plenty of notepads and cameras, as he knew there would be.

But make no mistake, he had an agenda. As we scribbled his words, Avery Johnson washed his hands.

A simple goodbye would have been so much classier.