NBA Finals: Luka Doncic Doesn’t Need 2nd Star; What Mavs Need is This
Being able to assemble a roster with multiple star players is something general managers around the league dream of. Despite all the company lines about how much a team loves it’s role players and doesn’t want to risk hindering chemistry, if your team hasn’t won a championship yet, there’s a good chance they’d shake things up to form a superteam if given the opportunity.
Sometimes superteams work the way they’re supposed to, like when LeBron James and Chris Bosh joined Dwyane Wade on the Miami Heat in 2010, or when Kevin Durant joined the Golden State Warriors in 2016. But sometimes they don’t, as we saw with the Brooklyn Nets this year with the trio of Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden crumble.
The Dallas Mavericks are coming off a 52-win season that ended in the Western Conference Finals against the Golden State Warriors. The Mavs lost to the Warriors’ championship-proven trio of Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, but it was more because of a lack of depth than it was a lack of talent. Dallas got the shots they wanted against Golden State, but more times than not, it couldn’t convert due to fatigue.
At the end of the WCF, the Mavs’ two best 3-and-D wings — Dorian Finney-Smith and Reggie Bullock — had played more than 100 more minutes than the top-2 minutes leaders on the Warriors, Curry and Thompson. If that disparity wasn’t so large, there’s a good chance the Mavs would be playing in the Finals right now.
Pairing another star player with Luka Doncic would be fantastic for the Mavs, but it might not be necessary for them to win a championship in the near future. Doncic has proven that he can carry Dallas to within three wins of the Finals despite battling illness and fatigue. As of right now, he owns the second-highest points-per-game average (32.5) in NBA playoff history — second only to the guy he signed his shoe deal with, Michael Jordan.
With Jalen Brunson’s new contract coming up, and cap space essentially being nonexistent this summer, there’s not much the Mavs can do in free agency, even in the form of sign-and-trades. Because of that, Dallas’ biggest offseason additions could end up being who they draft at No. 26 on June 23 and who they decide to use their $6.3 million taxpayer MLE on.
Although the idea of adding another All-Star like Zach LaVine or Rudy Gobert is nice, simply adding two more dependable role players in the form of a versatile rim protector and another backup wing is what can get Doncic and the Mavs over the hump in 2022-23.
Some people criticized GM Nico Harrison when he traded Kristaps Porzingis for Spencer Dinwiddie and Davis Bertans because KP, despite his bloated contract and injury history, was still perceived as giving the Mavs’ roster a higher ceiling. Dallas squashed that theory quickly by winning its first playoff series and more in 11 years without Porzingis.
Harrison is still new and getting the hang of this NBA executive thing, but he’s done enough already with the KP trade and the signing of Bullock last summer to earn the benefit of the doubt for now.
Even if the Mavs don’t have a splashy summer, it should still be a productive one with marginal additions… and that can be enough to push Doncic and this roster over the hump next season.
