Cursed with a long offseason, Dirk Nowitzki plans to spend much of it figuring out what went wrong for him and the Dallas Mavericks in the playoffs.

"The next couple of weeks are definitely going to be tough," he said Saturday. "A lot of thinking."

The one question Nowitzki WON'T ask himself is the one everyone else is asking about him: Does he have what it takes to lead a team to a championship?

"I think I did a decent job in the regular season of taking over when I had to," he said. "For whatever reason, this playoff series I couldn't do it. I couldn't put my stamp on it the way I wanted to. It was definitely very disappointing. I still think I have pretty good leadership skills. I just didn't show it this playoff series."