Mavericks and Suns ponder how the West was lost

You say you want a revolution (cont.): To show how fast things are changing in the West, take a look at the likely final four:

Three are rising powers (Lakers, Hornets, Jazz) with three 30-year-old starters put together.

The fourth is the last member of the old establishment standing, the Spurs, who have four starters over 30 all by themselves.

Meanwhile, the other traditional West powers are continuing their transition into whatever comes next.

In Dallas, owner Mark Cuban just figured out the problem with the Jason Kidd trade – it wasn’t the trade, itself, but Avery Johnson, whom he fired.

This gives Cuban the distinction of firing the winningest coach in NBA history, not to mention the 2006 coach of the year.

Johnson did the improbable, taking a high-scoring Don Nelson Mavericks team and turning it into one that defended too, posting win totals of 60 and 67, despite losing Steve Nash.

For all this season’s struggles, the Mavericks were 35-17 when they acquired Kidd, 23-6 against the West.

They finished 16-14, going 10-13 against the West.

That still left Johnson with a .735 winning percentage, best for any coach with 100 wins.

Kidd was wasted in an offense that ran isolation plays with no one else moving. Making their chemistry a complete disaster, Josh Howard decided the playoffs would be a good time to detail his ongoing marijuana use.

Let’s see: Can we find takers for Jason, Josh and whomever?

Nah …

Meanwhile in Phoenix, where the Suns took a flyer on their own Golden Oldie, President Steve Kerr said that Mike D’Antoni has denied the SI.com report that he would leave.

Despite the differences between D’Antoni and Kerr, Kerr didn’t want D’Antoni out and still doesn’t.

The differences were real. D’Antoni is offense-minded and Kerr, who was on championship teams in San Antonio and Chicago, is defense-oriented.

However, the real problem was the transition from the Jerry Colangelo era, in which D’Antoni was a sun god, and the Robert Sarver era, in which his stock rose and fell.

When Suns’ owner Sarver let GM Bryan Colangelo, Jerry’s son, leave, he avoided a crisis by giving the popular D’Antoni control of the entire basketball operation.

But a year later, after winning 61 games and losing in the second round to San Antonio after Amare Stoudemire’s suspension, D’Antoni saw the basketball operation taken away from him and given to Kerr.

Kerr, a rookie exec as well as a philosophical polar opposite, made lots of suggestions, several of which came in the press.

For his part, Kerr thought of them as mere suggestions.

For his part, D’Antoni thought the tide was definitely running out for him in Phoenix.

SI.com’s Jack McCallum, a D’Antoni intimate after spending a season with the Suns writing his book “Seven Seconds or Less,” has a story in this week’s magazine detailing a season’s worth of friction between D’Antoni and Kerr.

It actually goes back to the off-season when Shawn Marion issued one of his patented poor-me manifestos, which in the past had prompted management to bring him in and reassure him about his value to the team.

The holdovers thought Kerr handled it in the Spurs’ style, like who cares if he’s upset?

Marion went into a permanent funk, although that may have been inevitable.

With one year at $17.8 million left on his contract, he heard the same thing everyone else did – the Suns had no intention of re-signing him.

In any case, Marion moped so badly, D’Antoni joined Sarver and Kerr, jumping at the chance to get Shaquille O’Neal for him.

Next week, Sarver and Kerr will meet with D’Antoni, who has two years worth $8.4 million left on his deal, to tell him they want him back.

D’Antoni talked for 90 seconds Wednesday, telling Phoenix writers who asked if he wanted to stay: “We’ll sit down and talk and evaluate everything and see where we are.”

Making it official, Kerr said, “I’d like to see him back. I’d like to see us working together. It’s been well documented we’ve got some different ideas and different approaches. What we have to do is talk and communicate and make sure we can get on the same page in terms of how this organization can get better and how this team can get better.”

D’Antoni may well be too far out the door emotionally to bring him back and teams (New York, Chicago) are already lining up to talk to him.

However, one thing is clear after San Antonio closed them out while their once-feared offense ground to a halt, pounding the ball inside to Boris Diaw:

With or without D’Antoni, the Suns we loved are gone.

mark.heisler@latimes.com