It's been an hour since the Mavericks checked into their Memphis hotel, and already Steve Nash has made Room 1203 his own. As in the bed unmade and clothes strewn on the floor. Which goes to show that while those around him have seen significant strides toward domestication, some old habits are going to stick around for a while.

Not unlike his team's effort to tidy up its defense.

The critics were quick to suggest the Mavericks were still from Allas -- without any D -- when the Grizzlies scored 108 points in the Mavs' season-opening win, as if one training camp should've done the trick. "What I liked is that it didn't feel like a winning locker room," said owner Mark Cuban. "Our guys weren't happy with the way they played."

Cuban, a billionaire courtesy of the instant-gratification world of the internet, is demonstrating surprising patience about his team taking the last arduous step to legitimate title contention, which is developing the mental toughness and general stinginess to win games when their offense isn't flowing. Cuban is not, however, being subtle. He directed coach/GM Don Nelson to make defense a preseason priority and in case anyone wondered why, hung a banner on the practice court wall that advertises the 115 layups and dunks the Kings scored out of 207 total field goals while dismissing the Mavs in their second-round series last spring.

The 15-foot banner is hard to miss. As are the indications that Nash has completely flipped for a personal trainer from Paraguay (Alejandra) he met in New York last year. The same guy who described his townhouse as an unfurnished frat has been seen browsing in boutique furniture stores. And his locker actually doesn't look that much worse than Michael Finley's next door.

"Let's just say on the spectrum between slob and neat freak, he's closer to the neat freak end than he's ever been in his life," says center Shawn Bradley.

What's the connection? Well, if anyone knows that appearances can be deceiving, it's Nash. Listed at a generous 6'3" and without a dunk in an NBA game, he defies the standard profile for an all-star and all-pro point guard. Sure, there's John Stockton, but at least he has hands the size of snowshoes and comes from a basketball-oriented American family. Nash is from a small town in British Columbia with a bloodline in a sport (soccer) that doesn't use hands, his brother and father having both played professionally, and there isn't anything noticeably extraordinary about his physique.

But that's mainly because it's impossible to see inside his chest -- where the team's biggest lungs reside -- or his head, where the next time he concedes defeat will be the first time.

"If Steve says he'll do something," says lifelong friend Chris "Duck" Isherwood, "I'd put my life on him doing it."

Appearances were equally misleading, Nash insists, when rumors floated that he went from dating one of the Spice Girls, Geri Halliwell, to Elizabeth Hurley. Halliwell showed up at several of his games after being introduced by a mutual friend, and Hurley hung out with Steve and his buddies after they met at a team lawyer's party, but neither relationship went beyond one night. That gave him a Playboy tag that never has gone away.

"Even when I was hanging out with the boys, this," he says, referring to his current committed relationship, "was always more attractive."

The Mavs are beginning to feel the same way about defense. They're now 7-0, and only two teams have scored 100 or more points. Granted, the schedule has been relatively generous with only one back-to-back set of games and three playoff teams (Portland, Detroit, Toronto), but winning ugly, as they did in topping the Blazers 82-73 Monday night, wasn't anything they even aspired to do before.

Nash, of course, understands that learning playoff-caliber D can take years. It starts with a desire, which leads to a mindset, which inspires a collective confidence that it can be done, against anyone, under any circumstances. There are no shortcuts. But he points to the Celtics of the '80s as a team that played great defense without having great individual defenders. "It's a process, but there's no reason we can't do it," he says.

A lot of players could say that and it would carry no weight. But Nash has struggled through injury-wracked seasons and inherent doubts raised by his size and pedigree and his teammates have seen him do it. They know he knows of what he speaks. Finley is a leader by virtue of having been around the team the longest and being its most naturally gifted player. "Nashy has become a leader with his toughness and yet without undercutting what Finley means to us," Cuban says.

Maybe the Mavs won't make it anywhere near the finals this season again. But Nash says his only goal now is to win a championship, and if you've seen him play -- constantly moving, attacking, rarely beating you with one decisive move but simply wearing you down with his persistence -- you have some sense of how this is going to work. The Mavs will continue to press forward, slowly but surely, until one day they'll be recognized for doing what no believed they could.

Duck has a lot riding on it.

Ric Bucher covers the NBA for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at ric.bucher@espnmag.com.