The 2025-26 NBA season will be the first full year the Dallas Mavericks will experience after trading away Luka Doncic last winter. But despite parting ways with the generational talent, they still have plenty of talented players like Anthony Davis and Cooper Flagg. So, they have the makings to be a formidable team in the West. That said, at least as of right now, that is only on paper. NBA insider Tim McMahon has expressed doubts over the roster’s construction around their new superstar.
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Enough time has passed for the majority of basketball fans to move on from the end of Doncic’s tenure in Dallas. This means that when Nico Harrison claims to have received the player he wanted all along in Anthony Davis, he means business. But it doesn’t change the reality that they built the original team around Luka.
The Slovenian superstar was the main ball handler for the Mavericks, with Kyrie Irving playing off of him. Once Doncic was out of the equation, Irving stepped into that role. Once the one-time NBA champion suffered his ACL injury, Dallas’ glaring depth issues were on full display. Dallas attempted to fix that problem in free agency, but Tim Bontemps doesn’t believe it is enough.
“They have one ball handler on the roster in D’Angelo Russell, who you expect to have the ball in his hands,” Bontemps said on The Hoop Collective. “If he’s out for any chunk of time, they’re probably going to have the ball in Cooper Flagg’s hands.”
Flagg certainly has the potential to lead an offense, but he isn’t the ideal solution for a contending team. The 18-year-old still has a lot to learn through experience, which will result in plenty of mistakes. McMahon looks back to Luka as the source of this issue and other roster additions the team made with Doncic’s skillset in mind.
“There’s a lot of talent on the roster, but it’s kind of a funky roster,” McMahon said. “Klay Thompson was brought in to provide spacing and play off of Luka to get a bunch of wide-open threes. They’ve got a lot of pieces that I don’t necessarily know how well they all fit together.”
Aside from Thompson, the Mavericks have Derrick Lively and Daniel Gafford, who thrived alongside Doncic as lob threats. They might find some success with Russell at the point, but he isn’t the long-term fix at that position. He is mainly holding things down until Irving is healthy enough to return to the court.
Regardless, Harrison believes in those players. Earlier this offseason, the Mavericks extended Gafford to a three-year $60 million contract. Irving even received an extension whilst injured for three years, worth $119 million.
No matter what insiders say about the team, the Mavericks believe this group can win at a high level when fully healthy. Only time will tell whether their confidence is well-founded.
