1. The Mavericks’ offseason has reached stasis for now. After a furious opening flurry of transactions, the NBA’s transactional period has slowed down considerably, with more teams eyeing the trades that seem to be inevitably coming from Brooklyn. You can count Dallas as one such team.
Dallas has one roster spot remaining. The roster is light on ballhandling and possibly still missing the backup wing that Nico Harrison entered the summer saying he wanted to acquire — while a glut of centers exists. Even if the Mavericks involve themselves in the forthcoming Brooklyn trades — or with another team preparing for those deals — it isn’t going to represent something seismic. Dallas isn’t, for example, trading for Kyrie Irving; most of their rotation players are in place for the coming season. But another pragmatic deal this summer could better glue together this roster from top to end. That’s the aim, anyway, especially as Luka Dončić recently indicated he hopes more moves are coming.
I’ll say this much: This hasn’t been what I’ve expected from this offseason. But I also didn’t anticipate Jalen Brunson would leave. (And, to be fair, nor did many members of the team when the season ended.) A straightforward path to moderate improvement was excised once that happened, and Dallas is stuck with this alternate path that’s too soon for sweeping assessments. There are still some smaller elements of the offseason I’d like to address.
2. This is what the depth chart would look like if the Mavericks took the roster, as currently constructed, into next season.
Mavs’ 22-23 depth chart
PG | SG | SF | PF | C |
---|---|---|---|---|
Doncic |
Dinwiddie |
Bullock |
Finney-Smith |
McGee |
Ntilikina |
Hardaway |
Green |
Kleber |
Wood |
Hardy |
Pinson |
Bertans |
Powell |
|
2W: Dorsey |
2W: Wright |
Jason Kidd has declared that Spencer Dinwiddie and JaVale McGee will be starters, joining incumbent starters Dončić and Dorian Finney-Smith. I’ve been told the team’s planning to keep Reggie Bullock as the fifth starter. As things currently stand, the team’s splashiest acquisition this summer, Christian Wood, will come off the bench.
This would be the Mavericks’ nearest facsimile of the starting lineup that brought them postseason success: two playmaking guards, two 3-and-D wings and a tone-setting center who plays fewer minutes than his counterparts off the bench. Dinwiddie replaces Brunson, and McGee takes over for Dwight Powell, who started 89 of this past season’s 100 games but averaged fewer minutes than Kristaps Porziņģis and Maxi Kleber.
Dinwiddie could be more complementary to Dončić than Brunson was. After being traded to Dallas, Dinwiddie took about the same number of catch-and-shoot 3s (2.3) as Brunson (2.6) while making more (42.3 percent to 40.7). Where Dončić and Brunson were methodical drivers, Dinwiddie has the ability to make lightning-quick decisions on the weak side of the floor: instantaneous drives, swings or launches from triple-threat positions. His tendency to devolve into long-winded isolation possessions was less prevalent when Dončić played with him. That catch-and-shoot percentage might have been a half-season outlier, but he still averaged 37 percent on such shots his last three complete seasons. It was the pull-up attempts that drove down his overall percentage.
McGee represents an even more certain upgrade. Last season, he had about the same number of pick-and-roll possessions as a roll man (2.1) as Powell (2.0), and he averaged 1.40 points on those plays, just shy of Powell’s 1.42. While he lacks Powell’s incessant motor and technical finishing chops, he makes up for it with even longer limbs and higher reaches. (He’s also shot 67 percent from the free-throw line since 2018.) Where McGee offers a substantial upgrade is his rim deterrence. Among players 6-foot-10 and taller who defended at least four shots per game within six feet of the rim — basically every center in the…
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