Last year, your Dallas Mavericks were aggressively mediocre. Their 33‐49 record gives a bit of a perception, but then again it doesn’t. After Dirk Nowitzki came back from injury last year they managed around a .500 record the rest of the year, but Dirk will be a year older and .500 doesn’t pay the bills.
Then again, you look at their roster last year, and you wonder how it’s possible they were that GOOD. The only guys they had play more than a thousand minutes were Harrison Barnes, Wesley Matthews, and Seth Curry. Their fourth-highest minutes total went to Dorian Finney‐Smith, who scored a grand total of 350 points last year; Dwight Powell came in sixth (after Dirk), and Devin Harris, Yogi Ferrell, and Salah Mejri were eight, nine, and ten. As always, Rick Carlisle is a warlock.
But this year bids fair to be rosier, and in no small part because of the guy their mediocreness added to the offense: Dennis Smith, Jr., out of NC State. Smith, a freshman, is going to need some time to acclimatize himself to the pro game, and Carlisle is going to make sure that he doesn’t get too many minutes to learn bad habits. Still, if after the All‐Star break, he’s not playing the bulk of the minutes at point guard, it’ll be a big surprise.
The Mavericks will also be hoping for a little more health, especially for Nerlens Noel. No matter what anyone tells you, they botched his free agency tremendously, and punted the chance to lock up a good young player for a long time in order to put themselves into a situation, next offseason, which has been a loser for them for six years running. But, that doesn’t mean it’s not set up to be a win‐win next year. Noel will be all in to prove the Mavs made a mistake, and the team will be trying to see if it’s worth offering him a big contract that he’ll spurn in favor of someone else’s money.
Harrison Barnes will also be looking to improve on his surprisingly good performance last year. It’s hard to know whether there really is room for growth there, but certainly his 19.2 points per game were more than a lot of people might have figured he’d get when they signed him to that big contract. And if there is room, it’s in two areas. First, Barnes’ 3-point percentage was below his career 37 percent last year (35 percent), which may just be a feature of having to score against better defenders than when he played with the other Curry, Klay, and Draymond. But, relatedly, Barnes really reinvented himself as an offensive player last year, developing a significant mid‐range game. He may get better at that, and, if he does so, open things up for himself outside.
Seth Curry is another player to watch this year, and his 12.8 points a game was both twice as good as he managed last season and a little bit deceptive with respect to how good offensively he really was. In March, for example, the last month of his season, Seth broke 20 three times and scored 18+ another four times in fourteen games. He also was much closer to adequate as an assists guy, the last two months, than he had been in previous years. To say that Seth shoots like Steph would be insane -‐ Steph takes shots nobody else takes while being maybe the best point guard in the league, and while being covered by some of the best defenders out there. But, it is true that the younger brother shot better than the older one last year, with a .482/.429/.850 line compared to Steph’s .468/.411/.898. Seth is a darkhorse candidate to be the Mavs’ leading scorer next year, although I wouldn’t necessarily bet on it.
Then there’s Wes Matthews, who is a hard man to rate. One indisputable truth about Wes is that his scoring has never recovered from his achilles injury. After shooting 43 and 44 percent for the Blazers for several years, Wes has yet to top 40 percent as a Mav. His 3-point shooting has been perfectly adequate, if about two points off his career average, but he has not been a versatile scorer. However, if his defense is not quite as suffocating as it once was, it still seems to be plenty good sometimes and Wes is still only thirty years old. So, the starting five is likely to be, at least by the middle of the season, something like Smith, Wes, Barnes, Dirk, Noel, or Smith, Curry, Barnes, Dirk, Noel, and that is likely to be a pretty competitive unit on both sides of the ball.
Meanwhile, the team will be seeing whether midseason pickup Yogi Ferrell can sustain his role as an off‐the‐bench spark plug, as well as auditioning several young forwards throughout the season, probably including Germany’s Maxi Kleber, Brandon Ashley, and some others. Josh McRoberts is on board to provide some depth, as is Jeff Withey. I think it’s unlikely we’ll see anything much from Dwight Powell, who has failed to develop over the course of the last three years, or Salah Mejri, who has been an energetic and athletic backup center but has not overall been too impactful and unlike the young guys, he is, at 30, not likely to merit much of an audition for the future – which is a large part of what next year, presumably Dirk’s last or second-to-last, will be about.
It’s hard to believe the Mavs will be a playoff team, with all the powerhouses in the West, but it certainly seems to be a better team than last year that might also get stronger as it goes along. If so, they could improve on last year’s win totals more than people think, and be in the conversation for seventh or eighth place.
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While that might be a longshot, Dallas fans might not mind that much. They are well aware that there are a diminishing number of chances out there to watch Dirk Nowitzki play basketball, and if he stays healthy and gives them some vintage nights, they’re not going to mind getting a reasonably high draft pick to try to build next year’s team. That being said, after years of punting on acquiring talent, the Mavs may now finally have enough talent of various kinds to swing one of those trades they used to be known for (think Shawn Marion or Jason Kidd). If so, the future might get here faster than you think.