CONTEST: Mavs Season Record Prediction

[SleepingHero]

https://theathletic.com/4964033/2023/10/...hollinger/




Good read on the lower-tier teams in the West

In the wake of April’s embarrassing last-ditch tank to preserve a top-10 protected pick, 2023-24 feels like a huge year in Dallas, and I’m not sure how well it’s going to go. There is definitely the potential for the bottom to fall out if Luka Dončić decides he’s had enough and would rather be elsewhere, but don’t worry: The always-dependable Kyrie Irving is here to save the day.

Dallas’s depressing finish last season exposed all the holes on this roster beyond the top two names, and it’s unclear if any element of that improved in the offseason. It wasn’t for lack of trying, though: The Mavs turned the 10th pick into pick Nos. 12 and 24, while also flipping Bertāns into the slightly less onerous contract of Richaun Holmes, turning Reggie Bullock into Grant Williams via a sign-and-trade and re-signing Dwight Powell on a bargain deal. The Mavs did some discount shopping to land Seth Curry, Dante Exum (good in Europe last year!) and high-flier Derrick Jones Jr. for the bench.

As for those picks, first rounders Dereck Lively Jr. and Olivier-Maxence Prosper certainly check lineup boxes — Lively as a rim-diving shot blocker in the Tyson Chandler mold and Prosper as a big wing with 3-and-D possibilities. If those two click and Jaden Hardy evolves as a scoring guard, there’s at least the glimmer of hope of the Mavs having genuine young talent to surround Dončić in his prime years. Late-summer buzz had the Mavs looking at starting both rookies after they impressed in open runs.

On the other hand, the talent surrounding Dončić at present is decidedly underwhelming, Irving aside. It’s hard to come up with another Mav who would start for more than a small handful of the league’s other teams. Dallas’s third-best player is … Grant Williams? I guess? The rest of the roster is dotted with one-way players who have obvious limitations, from nil-and-D guy Josh Green to the aforementioned Curry and Jones to the streaky Tim Hardaway Jr. One of the reasons they can’t quit Powell (and Maxi Kleber, for that matter) is that they have so few players who are even half-decent on both sides of the ball.

Irving, of course, presents his own problems. A hugely talented offensive player, he teams with Dončić to make the Mavs an elite attack almost regardless of which three other players share the court with them, at least on the days when Irving is a) healthy and b) not blowtorching his team’s chemistry.

Dallas got 66 All-NBA-caliber games from Dončić last season and still went 38-44; the Mavs never recovered from the own goal of losing Jalen Brunson to free agency. Irving was theoretically the cure for what ailed them, but he only played 20 games for them after the deadline, so we still don’t have a great sample size for how this looks.

However, even in the best case where he and Dončić click for 75 games or so and the Mavs’ role players are acceptably mediocre, this doesn’t feel like a contending roster. The saving grace, however, is that Dončić is a one-man floor and an elite offense unto himself. He should keep the Mavs afloat for as long as it interests him.


^ Hollinger's write up on the Mavs.