The miracle called the Mavericks awaits the Celtics

On April 6, 2023, just over a year ago, the Dallas Mavericks found themselves at the center of one of the NBA’s most talked-about stories. For some, they were a laughing stock; for others, a cautionary tale of failure. With two games remaining in a regular season that had already been a huge disappointment – a stark contrast to their unexpected but celebrated run to the Western Conference Finals in 2022 – the Mavs still had a chance to secure the tenth spot in the Western Conference and a place in the play-in tournament.

However, this chance was slim: they were one game behind the Thunder and had lost the tiebreaker, meaning that even if they won their remaining games, they would be eliminated if OKC did not falter against a Grizzlies team resting their key players ahead of the playoffs (a reminder of how much can change in a year...).

How the Mavericks 2023 tanked it

With little hope and the certainty that it was just not going to be their year, the Dallas team opted for pragmatism. They benched their starters, chose not to compete in those final two games, and settled into the group of teams eliminated without even entering the play-in (finishing with a record of 38-44, fourteen wins fewer than the previous year). The aim was to increase their statistical chance of retaining their first-round draft pick, which, due to the 2019 trade for Kristaps Porzingis from the Knicks, would go to New York if outside the top ten picks.

With the top-10 protection, missing the play-in and ending up among the first ten teams eliminated, it boosted their chances to 79.8% that their first-round pick would stay with Dallas. As this pick was considered crucial – whether for use in the draft or in a potential trade – to rectify the disastrous season, the Mavericks willingly subjected themselves to public and media scrutiny, which escalated over a few days. They briefly became a symbol of all that is wrong with ‘tanking’ (when a team opts to lose games despite having mathematical playoff chances), and they were fined $750,000 after an NBA investigation confirmed what the Mavericks had scarcely tried to hide.

Mavericks 2024: a completely different narrative

Now, just over a year later, the Mavericks have once again become the NBA’s biggest story, this time to their absolute delight. Karma (as it often goes, right?) remained indifferent, and that much-talked-about tanking episode, a brief but dark saga, has been crucial in transforming the debate over twelve months from ‘how long until Luka Doncic wants to leave’ to ‘how many championships Luka Doncic can win’ if surrounded by functional pieces that complement his (seemingly endless) talents.

The Mavs, who had a mere 3% chance to jump to the number 1 pick for Victor Wembanyama, received the 10th pick in the lottery. They kept their pick and, on draft night, traded it to the Thunder, who wanted to move up to secure guard Cason Wallace. Dropping from 10th to 12th allowed the Mavs to include Davis Bertans in the deal, whose $17 million salary was a significant obstacle for their financial planning. This move created the flexibility to use the full mid-level exception in the market and to select the same player they would have chosen at 10: Dereck Lively II, the towering 7′1″ center from Duke, who was needed to address a critical gap the Mavs had long struggled with: rim protection on defense and vertical finishing on offense.

A Lively future in Dallas?

Lively has shown he can provide this, and more, for years to come, given he is only 20 years old. He has completed a solid season, has been one of the team’s most important players (as a rookie!) in the playoffs, and has developed a synergy with Doncic that is as simple as it is formidable. He protects the rim on defense and offers reliable hands above the hoop to finish off some stunning alley-oops on offense. Basic but crucial. In their 2011 championship run, Nowitzki and the Mavs had Tyson Chandler. The 2024 team (and those of the coming years…) has Lively II, mentored and prepared by Chandler himself, the 2012 Defensive Player of the Year, and his rightful role model.

Thunder aiding Mavericks to make the right moves

These Mavericks wouldn’t be the same without Lively (his rookie contract until 2027 looking like a steal), who arrived thanks to a morally and competitively dubious practice in the spring of 2023. Those who applauded the Texas team for being ruthlessly pragmatic can now boast about their philosophy. But everyone, including those of us who criticized them at the time, must acknowledge (at least) the result. As can happen in the NBA with the numerous sliding doors, it was the Thunder that lent a significant hand to the them – the very team that eliminated them in these playoffs and with whom they will frequently clash in the near and medium-term. Two franchises on the rise in a new Western Conference that is redefining its hierarchies before our eyes.

More serendipity for the Mavs came when the Thunder used Bertans’ contract to secure Gordon Hayward via trade, avoiding competition in the buyout market. Hayward, valued as a veteran capable of doing a bit of everything, contributed absolutely nothing in the playoffs and cost the Thunder, besides Bertans’ $17 million, a couple of second-round picks, namely Tre Mann and Vasilije Micic. From the same team, the Charlotte Hornets, and on the same day (February 8, the trade deadline), in Dallas they were acquiring PJ Washington, who has regularly been the necessary glue for the team, a defensive enforcer and finisher on offense. His cost (arriving along with a couple of second-round picks) was a 2027 first-rounder and two players Dallas was eager to offload quickly: Seth Curry and Grant Williams.

To top it off, on that same pivotal day in February, the Mavericks also brought in center Daniel Gafford from Washington in exchange for a 2024 first-round pick and Richaun Holmes. That first-rounder belonged to the Thunder and had been acquired by the Mavs in a parallel deal in which they gave OKC the right to swap first-round picks in 2028. Crazy as it seems now, the Thunder were involved in the Dallas arrival of Lively, Washington and Gafford, all within a few months. This injection of muscle, defense, and additional resources near the rim has radically transformed a team that went from fragile to dominant.

This is not to criticize the Thunder or their architect, Sam Presti, one of the NBA’s best executives, if not the best. It’s merely to point out that sometimes things just happen a certain way. The Thunder are thriving in their rebuild but missed players like Washington and Gafford in the playoffs.

Derrick Jones Jr a Dallas treasure

And then there is someone like Derrick Jones Jr, a 27-year-old veteran who joined Dallas on a minimum contract after seven NBA seasons. He signed on August 18, when the summer market was exhausted and all teams had the chance to pick him up for a bargain. The Mavericks are his fifth team and time will tell if they are his last. He has earned a substantial raise (he’ll be a free agent) that Texas must find a way to pay, especially if he keeps doing this.

All his potential as a high-value role player (work ethic, full-court defense, a handful of open threes, and finishes near the rim) has finally materialized with the Mavericks. They are discovering something all champions (and contenders) eventually learn: few things are more valuable in the NBA than unlocking the potential of players on team-friendly contracts. This competitive advantage is even greater now in a league redefined by the new collective bargaining agreement, which aggressively punishes big spenders. Having a player like DJJ on a minimum contract is a treasure.

Lively, Gafford, Washington, and Jones Jr have transformed the Mavericks’ defense, which was one of the NBA’s seven worst last season. They’ve opened new possibilities on offense: a more spread-out court, corner threes, and more clinical above-the-rim. In the playoffs, Lively (1.4 per game), Gafford (1), and Derrick Jones (0.6) are the top three players in the NBA for alley-oops per game. Collectively, these four players are earning less than $37 million this season. Only Jones Jr isn’t secured for the next two seasons under excellent salary conditions. The Mavericks have struck gold, finding exactly the type of players needed to minimize the defensive weaknesses of Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving and to maximize their insatiable offensive capabilities. It’s also worth remembering that this group also includes Dante Exum, who has had less presence in the playoffs but was very effective during the regular season, whom the Mavericks recruited from Partizan, where he had steadied his course after stints with Barcelona and under the (healing) guidance of Zeljko Obradovic.

Mavericks vs Celtics: nothing like that of 2022

As things stand going into the finals we know much has changed. Of the six Mavericks players seeing the most action in the 2024 Playoffs, two were not on the team by New Year’s, and two arrived without much fanfare last summer – one via the draft and another from the market’s final scraps. Alongside Doncic, the sixth is Irving, who joined on February 6, 2023, for what now seems a paltry return: Spencer Dinwiddie, Dorian Finney-Smith, a first-round pick (2029), and two second-round picks. At the time, Kyrie (burnt out with the Celtics and unhinged with the Nets) seemed like a player with one foot out of the NBA, a generational talent buried under a mountain of noise and problems. In Dallas, he has refocused, speaking mostly about basketball, and has returned to a form that, perhaps not coincidentally, is better suited as a secondary role. Just as with LeBron James back in the day, but now at 32 years old, he’s no longer keen on flying solo.

Some thought the Mavericks might get something like this out of their partnership with Kyrie, but I think more of us doubted it, especially after their record from his arrival until the disastrous end of last season was 9-18. But Dallas stuck with their plan, just as they did in the last winter market, transforming a team that was eighth in the West on March 16, just two and a half months ago.

Nico Harrison: the man with the Mavericks plan

The fact is that on February 1, 2023 – just under 16 months ago – the Mavericks did not have five of their current top six core players. Nor did they seem to have a plan, a way to properly support their Slovenian superstar who was beginning to grow impatient. However, they had secured a historic rookie extension (August 2021): $207 million for five extra years, from 2022 to 2027. With Mark Cuban stepping back, becoming less visible, and now out of the primary ownership of the franchise, the fingerprints all over this excellent exercise in reinvention belong to Nico Harrison, the executive who arrived in the summer of 2021 to succeed the historic tenure of Donnie Nelson, which ended in turmoil.

A high-level executive at Nike for two decades, Harrison came with many NBA contacts, an excellent reputation, and the promise of a new vision. Judging by his two-plus years of work since, the reputation was well deserved. All the moves mentioned above, from Doncic’s extension (an easy decision, of course) to risky trades, small deals facilitating bigger ones, and selecting the right pieces, bear his signature.

This doesn’t negate the fact that luck always plays a role in the NBA. There are crossroads where everything seems random; being in the right place at the right time or rolling the dice and having them land in your favor. More so now, in a new landscape (the collective bargaining agreement, again) where it’s easier for rewards to go to those who take risks, dare, and seek ways to win the next ring, not the first one of the next decade. That Harrison seems, by all accounts, an excellent executive, is compatible with the Mavericks stumbling into some brilliant decisions: Kyle Kuzma didn’t see moving to Dallas favorably because he didn’t consider the Texans a strong contender. So they turned their attention to Washington. Derrick Jones was a plan C after Mathisse Thybulle, to whom the Mavs offered a three-year, $33 million deal matched (he was a restricted free agent) by the Trail Blazers. Dinwiddie also preferred, when cut by the Nets, to go to the Lakers instead of returning to Texas. History books writes themselves. Perhaps the Mavs would have been just as good with players like Kuzma and Thybulle. But, simply, no one in the franchise would rewrite the books now to find out.

Grant Williams, a summer bet that lasted very briefly, recently revealed he was close to going to Milwaukee in exchange for Bobby Portis. But he ended up with the Hornets... in exchange for Washington.

Doncic, Kyrie and the new Mavericks

The Mavericks have played in two of the last three Western Conference Finals, with a nightmare year in between, and only Doncic remains among the top six in minutes played for both teams. In 2022, the other five were, in the regular season, Dorian Finney-Smith, Jalen Brunson, Tim Hardaway Jr, Kristaps Porzingis, and Spencer Dinwiddie. Reggie Bullock, who played the most minutes after them, can be included in those playoffs, where Porzingis was already traded to the Wizards in February. Only Hardaway Jr, Maxi Kleber, Dwight Powell, and Josh Green remain on the team two years later, besides Doncic. Of them, Kleber (injured for weeks) is the most important in the rotation. Powell was sidelined by the arrival of much more impactful big men, Green is still trying to become a truly useful 3-and-D player, and Hardaway Jr is exhausting a toxic contract (ending in 2025) with scoring streaks that rarely offset his scoring slumps.

The Mavericks are, essentially, a new team. One much better suited to Doncic and with a luxury secondary star, one of the best possible in that role. Kyrie’s ability to be Kyrie again has helped heal the wound left by the lack of faith in Jalen Brunson, who ended up going to New York, where he became a superstar, basically because his mind was already there when the Mavericks realized they should have bet on him.

With two megastars capable of blowing up any game in any circumstance, the key that unlocks many playoff doors, the rest is provided by that praetorian guard (Lively, Washington, Jones Jr, Gafford) that always does what it needs to, never shies away from hard work, and never overreaches. Everyone – and I suppose Jason Kidd deserves recognition here, a coach with a strange resumé who was heavily questioned until not long ago – knows their role, and everyone knows that by doing a handful of simple, easily repeatable things from game to game, they will have a chance to win every time they step onto the court.

Now Doncic is able to show what happens when he steps onto the court being well-supported all around. Defense, muscle, rebounding, shooters, alley-oop jumpers, another star to cover his gaps... and beyond all that, add his magic. Thus, in two years of changes and just over one year after being a punching bag in the NBA universe, the Dallas Mavericks have earned the right to fight for the second championship in their history. They just have to overcome the number one team.