NBA team presidents aren’t a particularly bright lot. Very few think outside the box – even though the box is usually full of either dated or bad ideas. The recent conventional wisdom on roster construction,for one example, has been to find a couple of superstars, pay them an obscene amount of money, and cobble together a cast of competent role players around them. While that approach applies to most of the champions in the last quarter century, it has also led team executives to throw superstar money at mediocre-to-good players in the hopes they would develop into franchise cornerstones. In reality, many of those players (Tim Thomas, Keith Van Horn, Anfernee Hardaway, Jalen Rose, and Zack Randolph, just to name a few) were just another brick in the wall.

Then the Detroit Pistons came along and began to change some of the entrenched thinking about roster construction. Since there are only about a dozen true superstars in the league, the Joe Dumars model of creating a championship team around a starting five of solid but not otherworldly talents had considerable appeal. But finding five guys of that caliber is no easy task. And if you do, holding onto them after a prolonged period of success is even harder.

The year’s championship series between the Dallas Mavericks and Miami Heat, which gets underway on Thursday night, may begin to change the thinking again.Though the Heat are a fine example of the old-school superstar approach working to perfection (Shaquille O’Neal + Dwyane Wade + some other guys = success), the Mavericks have built a versatile team that uses players one through 11 to create matchup problems for their opponent.

In the Western Conference semifinals against San Antonio’s big lineup, Dallas went with a smaller, quicker lineup, and before the Spurs could adjust, they were in a 3-1 series hole. In the following series against Phoenix’s small lineup, Dallas countered with DaSagana Diop, an unusually agile center, then used a battalion of swingmen to throw the Suns off balance.

Yes, Dallas has a superstar-caliber player in forward Dirk Nowtizki, and a stellar marksman in guard Jason Terry, but according to the plus/minus stats at www.82games.com, the team didn’t suffer a substantial dropoff when those two left the floor. The Mavericks’ roster is flexible enough to make up for the shortfall in scoring that their absence creates. Few other teams can boast such versatility.

Is this sort of roster construction the wave of the future?

It’s possible. There are a few teams with the talent base and/or the rebuilding mandate to follow the Mavericks’ lead. In the Eastern Conference, Orlando, Boston, and Toronto could attempt to follow this structure. Out West, Seattle and the Los Angeles Clippers are prime candidates because each team has youth, roster flexibility, and athletic big men.

The Clippers’ performance in their seven-game Western Conference semifinal series against Phoenix may have set the template for the Mavs’ strategy for playing the Suns in the next round. The Clips have a traditional center in Chris Kaman, but when they needed to combat Phoenix’s rapid pace,they were able to go to 6-foot-10-inch sharpshooter Vladimir Radmanovic, who could spot up at the 3-point arc and open the lane for slashers like Corey Magette and Shaun Livingston.

Radmanovic is now a free agent, and the best reason to pony up the cash to keep him (or to sign Phoenix’s Tim Thomas,who has a similar game,to a reasonable deal) is to maintain this flexibility. The Clippers won 47 games this season, and with a little strategic initiative, they could move into the league’s elite.

The SuperSonics declined by 17 wins from last season’s 35, and their drop obscured a key development – the emergence of four young big men: Johan Petro, Robert Swift, Nick Collison, and Chris Wilcox, who should give them the flexibility to mix and match with small forward Rashard Lewis and sharpshooting guard Ray Allen, and vary tempos to their advantage.

The Raptors are short, so to speak, on traditional pivotmen, and they are now run by former Phoenix team president Brian Colangelo. With two fours, two point guards, and a cache of veteran swingmen, the Raptors are a team ripe for an up-tempo style.The biggest question would be how to adapt the logo (everybody knows that dinosaurs prefer half-court ball). An up-tempo style would enable them to pursue traditional big men as reserve options, which would be much easier on the budget.

Since taking over the Celtics three years ago, Danny Ainge has stocked the roster with young players, and units of varying tempos might be the best way to get this deep team appropriate playing time. They could easily switch between traditional half-court players like center Raef LaFrentz and swingman Wally Szczerbiak and up-tempo oriented guys like forwards Al Jefferson and Ryan Gomes.

The Magic, Miami’s upstate rival, also have reason and the personnel to create units geared toward different tempos of play. With two pivotmen – young Darko Milicic and veteran Tony Battie – complementing power forward Dwight Howard, they have flexibility on the frontline and a variety of guards who could give them significant options. Orlando is already the hip choice to move out of the ranks of the lottery into the playoff field, and creative use of their young, deep roster could bring them a bigger gain.

The concepts of utilizing varied tempos and playing personnel in units weren’t introduced to the game yesterday,but rarely has a team owed so much of its success to the strategy as the current Mavericks. Since copying a proven formula is always a safe approach in any business, expect to see several teams aim to copy the Mavericks’ deep, flexible roster construction. Ultimately, it will create not only a faster-paced game, and but better strategic dilemmas than whom to foul and when.

mjohnson@nysun.com