New Orleans Pelicans: Projecting the Next 5 Years in the Southwest
By Tim Burke
New Orleans Pelicans: Evaluating the Dallas Mavericks
Dallas Mavericks
The Mavericks have maybe the most exciting young player in the league with second year guard Luka Doncic. The team recognized the asset they had in Luka by trading for the OG Unicorn in Kristaps Porzingis. By pairing those two together Dallas knows they have a very high floor and can be more discerning in finding the right pieces to fill out the roster.
While Porzingis has had an up and down year, his first since missing a year and a half after ACL surgery, he’s still put up a very strong 19.2 points and 9.5 rebounds while blocking 2.1 shots per game.
Doncic on the other hand, picked up right where he left off last season after winning the Rookie of the Year Award, averaging nearly a triple-double with 28.7 points, 9.3 rebounds and 8.7 assists per game. Doncic garnered MVP buzz as late as March 2020, and while he won’t win the award, the fact that a 20 year old, second year player is having the year he is, is just amazing.
It should come as no surprise then that Doncic leads the team in Win Shares by a considerable margin with 8.1, while Maxi Kleber, Dorian Finney-Smith and Porzingis come in at 4.6, 4.5 and 4.3 WS respetively.
The Dallas Mavericks have the best offense in the NBA this season with an Offensive Rating of 115.8, which is mainly due to Doncic. Although it can’t be forgotten that Dallas almost plays with two different playbooks depending on whether Doncic is on the floor.
When Doncic is on the floor he commands the ball and runs a heavy dose of the pick-and-roll surrounded by shooters. With him on the bench however the offense is much more reliant on ball movement. This makes it much harder to scheme a defense against the Mavericks as opponents need to have two different plans.
Dallas currently holds the seventh seed in the west, but they are only four games back of the third seeded Denver Nuggets. The eight games teams are going to play in order to finish this season could have a huge impact on seeding in the west.
Currently only Porzingis makes more than $20 million per season and the next two highest salaries (Courtney Lee and Tim Hardaway) are free agents after this season and next respectively. This leave a ton of cap space in the near future to add a third star to the pairing of Doncic and Porzingis.
Dallas is going to be a contender as long as they have Doncic and one or two savvy moves could make them a favorite to win several titles over the next five seasons. Dallas, Memphis and the New Orleans Pelicans are the three best young teams in the NBA and will be so for the foreseeable future.