Dallas Fan Weekly

The Mavericks have looked better this season than last. Dereck Lively is already better than everyone (except me of course) could have anticipated. I do not think it is realistic to expect a rookie to complete transform a team’s defense by himself immediately. Which he pretty much has.

It would be nice if he could have some help from a few of the people we started paying tens of millions of dollars to help out our team. Grant Williams seems to be doing his best Reggie Bullock impersonation and seems like he won’t be showing up for majority of the first portion of the regular season. Maxi Kleber may just be an injury guy now. Even when he was playing it sure was not giving us hope that the old Maxi still exists.

I think most fans had high hopes of Josh Green turning into a marginally better player as most young people do when they continue developing. He seems to be losing his playing abilities after receiving his $41 million extension last offseason. Now he is dealing with some mysterious injury that showed up out of no where. Is it simply an Australian thing to receive large payments and stop playing basketball? Ben Simmons seems to have mastered that playbook. I’m assuming he figured it out and brought his plan back to the land down under.

If the Mavericks are unable to see significant help from these three guys that were supposed to be the whole entire focus of our new and improved defense can we survive? Is it realistic to expect Luka and Kyrie to out score every NBA roster without being able to get any help on the defensive end?

There’s always been the rumors that Luka would be the next superstar to become unhappy and leave. I have always denied those claims because all European stars have always been loyal. If the Mavs are unable to actually build a team around him how long is he going to tolerate that? Is he willing to raise his daughter in an environment where she has to watch her other worldly father continue to dominate the sport of basketball in a losing effort? I’m not sure I can say that is the life I would want for my children. Even if my dad raised me to be a Dallas sports fan which has led to a pretty disappointing tenure as a fan. Shit happens.

How do the Mavericks fix this? Nico Harrison has seemed capable of making good moves, and I do believe he has done pretty well maneuvering the assets we’ve had into a better team. I am not sure exactly what the next move to make this team into a true contender is.

Do the Mavericks have the assets to bring in an OG to solidify our wing defense? I doubt it. I’m not even sure we can outbid most teams in a battle for Alex Caruso. Is Dorian Finney-Smith going to find his way back home to Dallas where he belongs?

As is the case for most years in Dallas sports history all we can do is sit back and hope for the best. Traditionally this methodology has not worked great for us, but I guess it worked for the Rangers. 2023 World Series Champions might have to be enough to get us by for a while.

-Gunner