Dirk Nowitzki was a shell of himself during the 2018-19 season, his last campaign in the league. He was coming off the bench and could barely keep up with the up-and-down NBA action. The then Dallas Mavericks principal owner Mark Cuban was worried about how the Mavericks would remain a winning franchise after his departure. However, the unprecedented growth of Luka Doncic and Jalen Brunson eliminated his anxieties.
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On Brunson’s Roommates pod, Cuban expressed his gratitude to the former Wildcat for enabling Mavs’ smooth transition in the post-Nowitzki era. The 66-year-old touched upon his uneasiness during the 2018-19 season that began right from the draft day in 2018. He recalled that Doncic wasn’t considered worthy of a top-three selection during the 2018 draft.
Despite that, the Mavericks traded up from the fifth spot to the third spot for Luka Doncic. Then in the second round, they struck gold with Brunson as their #33 pick. Instead of choosing to build the squad around Dennis Smith Jr., who was the 9th pick of the previous year’s draft, Cuban and the Mavs chose to build around Doncic and Brunson, a gamble that paid huge dividends.
The decision panned out magnificently because Doncic and Brunson both improved their game rapidly. Thus, Cuban gave Brunson his flowers for being a huge factor in the recent ascension of the franchise, saying,
“That was a scary season for us because we had traded up to get Luka and he wasn’t a consensus top-three pick in the draft. We had Dennis Smith from the previous year. It was Dirk’s last year. So just trying to figure all that out and see what we were gonna be. How things were going to go moving forward. Kudos to you because you made it all work for sure.”
Brunson relayed that he tried his best to help the Mavs team, despite falling under the radar in the 2018 NBA Draft. He was indeed a huge factor in turning around the 2011 Champions. The decisions made in 2018 bore fruits for the franchise in the long run.
Doncic and Brunson converted the Mavs into contenders
During the 2018 draft, the Hawks selected Doncic as their third pick while the Mavs chose Trae Young as their fifth pick. However, the Mavericks traded up for Doncic by giving up Young along with a protected 2019 Draft pick who later turned out to be Cam Reddish.
The Mavericks won the trade in the long run as Doncic has carried them to two Western Conference Finals appearances since 2022, including a Finals appearance last season. Brunson was one of the main reasons the squad made it to the 2022 WCF as his first-round heroics made up for Doncic’s absence during the first three games of the series.
While Brunson left for the Knicks before the 2022-23 season, he may have indirectly enabled a pathway to acquire Kyrie Irving too. He helped elevate the Mavericks’ profile as a championship contender, making it a lucrative spot for Irving.
