If you scroll down the list of biggest team-level disappointments in the NBA last season, not many clubs rate higher on the scale than the Mavericks.
Sure, the Bucks got bounced in five games in the opening round of the playoffs after logging the league’s best regular-season mark. And the Celtics boasted more than enough talent to get back to the NBA Finals for a second straight year. But then there’s Dallas, which failed to make the postseason at all just one year after making it to the Western Conference finals with superstar Luka Dončić.
And that reality raises the question of what this year will look like for the franchise, which recently traded for Boston forward Grant Williams and handed free agent Kyrie Irving a three-year contract for north of $120 million.
The addition of Irving, particularly after the club inexplicably let highly valuable guard Jalen Brunson walk as a free agent, took care of one key concern. For all of Dončić’s otherworldly skills, his usage rate was unsustainably high, leaving him at higher risk for injury. Irving gives the Mavs another high-level ballhandler and magician, and from that standpoint perhaps it’s not that surprising that Dallas logged a whopping 119.4 points per 100 possessions with the duo on the court together. (For context, the Kings—which broke the NBA record for offensive efficiency this past season—scored 118.6 points per 100 possessions.)
This isn’t to suggest that the Mavericks didn’t find themselves at a disadvantage in other ways. With the iso-heavy style that Dončić and Irving play, the team generally fails to capitalize on fast-break opportunities. (Dallas took an average of 8.1 seconds—the longest of any team in the NBA by far—to get off a shot after forcing a turnover, according to advanced data site Inpredictable.) The squad was the worst in the league at offensive rebounding, and was among the worst when it came to defensive rebounding, too.
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As you might have guessed with that two-headed monster featuring Irving and Dončić, the Mavs’ defense wasn’t stellar, either. Dallas went just 5–11 with both in the lineup, posting a painful 117.5 defensive rating. (That was worse than the team’s 116.1 rating overall, the sixth worst in the NBA. For context, the Mavs had the seventh-best defense in 2021–22, the season they reached the West’s conference finals.) Jason Kidd’s unit fouled too much, rarely forced turnovers and struggled mightily with rim protection, ranking eighth worst in that regard.
The acquisition of Williams, who’s bulky and versatile defensively, should help plenty. (So should losing someone like Christian Wood, who was often a sieve on that end.) And if the club can get anything at all out of a gamble like injury-prone wing Dante Exum, it’s an enormous plus.
The defense—from players like guard Josh Green down to a big man like Maxi Kleber—will end up mattering most. That was the reality when the team dropped seven of nine games during a crucial stretch in March, and the Mavericks surrendered 110 points or more in eight of those contests.
So long as Irving and Dončić are healthy and in the lineup, offense will always be there for Dallas. It’s the defense, and whether it can manage to rank within the league’s top half, that will dictate the team’s likelihood of becoming a contender again in the near future.
