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Basketball

Feeling a Draft: It’s Time to Reckon With the Mavericks’ 2020 Failure

It was the draft they couldn't afford to screw up. They did. And not just because a TCU alum ripped them apart last week.
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The Dallas Mavericks knew the 2020 NBA Draft was big for the organization. Thanks to a trade with Golden State that ended up giving the Mavs the first choice in the second round, the team would essentially have two first-round picks (Nos. 18 and 31). Before the night was over, the Mavs would also come away with another high second-rounder (No. 36). Through a few shrewd maneuvers, the front office had created a prime opportunity to bolster its nascent core with two—maybe even three—low-cost additions.

They wouldn’t get many more chances like this. The Mavs still owed New York a pair of first-round picks from the Kristaps Porzingis trade one year earlier, and whatever room the team had under the salary cap was about to be largely swallowed up by contract extensions. They couldn’t blow it.

Less than two seasons later, it is glaringly obvious to even the most optimistic observers: they blew it. And it is killing them.

What they need more than anything is shooting, especially on the wings. That much is clear after a nationally televised loss to the Nets on Tuesday night when they went 9-46 from behind the arc (that’s less than 20 percent), including 0-6 from Reggie Bullock and 0-7 from Tim Hardaway Jr. The lack of shooting has plagued the Mavs throughout their 12-12 start to this season, and it was a problem last year as well. In 2020, they missed out on two players who could have provided it. (We’ll get to them in a moment.)

Instead, two of the players they chose—Tyrell Terry (31) and Tyler Bey (36)—are no longer with the organization. In fact, neither one is currently in the NBA. And Josh Green, picked at No. 18, plays so little (and such meaningless minutes) that you could be forgiven if you forgot that he was still on the roster. He might as well not be. When Green played seven minutes against the Nets, it was the first time he got into a game that wasn’t already decided since he played five minutes against the Spurs more than a month earlier. Green has appeared in only 13 of Dallas’ 24 games, and he’s gotten more than eight minutes in two of them—16 in a 31-point loss to the Nuggets and an uneventful 10 last night against Memphis.

Here is how inconsequential Green is to Jason Kidd’s rotation: in a November 23 game against the Clippers, Frank Ntilikina and Bullock were out with injuries, and then Jalen Brunson was forced out early in the first half. Luka Doncic was just coming back from missing the previous three games after banging up his left ankle and knee. The only wing/backcourt players on the bench in a game that ended up going to overtime were the undersized and mercurial Trey Burke plus Sterling Brown, who has been thus far ineffective since arriving in free agency. And even in that scenario, Green couldn’t get a single second on the court. Dorian Finney-Smith played almost 49 minutes.

It’s not as if there is a “Free Josh Green” movement swelling among the fanbase, either. On the rare occasion that he has gotten a chance to show what he can do, Green profiles as maybe the eighth or ninth man in the rotation. He has a better feel for the game than was advertised when he was drafted after only one season at Arizona, but he has no standout skill, nothing to build on. Green is a pretty good finisher on a team that doesn’t run and a decent team defender on a squad looking for a stopper. I would probably trust Boban Marjanovic to make a three before him. Of course he doesn’t play that much.

Worse for Green is that two players who were in consideration for his spot have thrived since being passed over by the Mavericks. Prior to the draft—and I swear this is not hindsight talking—the player I wanted most was Saddiq Bey, who seemed like a prototypical 3-and-D wing out of Villanova. But I didn’t think he would fall to the Mavs. Most mock drafts had him going around 12 or 13. I was also intrigued by Desmond Bane from TCU, who was a better shooter than Bey, and maybe a better all-around offensive player.

Either one was ready to step in immediately—not to become stars, but day-one contributors. And that’s what the Mavs needed. That’s what they need. Projects are worthless when you have a pair of win-now stars playing in a city that has never been a free-agency destination.

Somehow, Bey remained on the board when the Mavs were on the clock. But Green was a favorite among analytics guys like Haralabos Voulgaris, the team’s now-former shadow GM, and so he was the choice. While I was talking myself into Green, I kept hoping that Bane would be around when the No. 31 selection came up. But the Grizzlies grabbed him one pick earlier, and the team has said they wouldn’t have taken Bane anyway, instead favoring Terry.

Bey was a first-team all-rookie, playing exactly as I imagined he would, showing off a smooth stroke and polished play. Bane made the second team and has gotten even better in his sophomore season. The Mavs got to see his improvement up close when he sonned them at the AAC in early December, going for a career-high 29 points.

“I know almost all of the guys who were drafted in front of me,” Bane said afterward. “I mean, Josh Green was drafted in front of me. I don’t know if he played tonight, but that’s on them. That’s not on me.”

Bane’s performance made it even more laughable that Terry (another Voulgaris pick, apparently) was taken over him. I have a theory about this. Actually, two theories.

The first is that in Terry, a diminutive gunner out of Stanford, the Mavs thought they could trade for Doncic and wind up with Trae Young, too. They saw a little wisp of a guard with floppy hair bombing threes and thought they had their man. But Terry was barely with the team and didn’t seem to be much of shooter when he was. They cut him prior to the start of this season.

The second theory isn’t really a theory so much as it is a, let’s say, lukewarm take: taking Terry with the No. 31 pick was more detrimental to the roster than picking Green over Bey or Bane (or Tyrese Maxey or Immanuel Quickley, for that matter).

Terry was the second player the Mavericks took that night, but he was the one being hyped more as an immediate contributor than Green was thanks to his supposed elite-level shooting. Taking Terry allowed Dallas to trade Seth Curry to Philadelphia for Josh Richardson and the No. 36 pick (which ended up being Bey, who I will note was maybe the fourth-best rookie on the roster last season, after the undrafted Nate Hinton). Richardson was supposed to improve the team’s defense without compromising much of its record-setting offense. But he didn’t pan out as hoped, to say the least, and was traded to Boston in the offseason. The Mavs still miss Curry’s shot-making and shot creation.

In other words, in a draft the Mavs couldn’t afford to screw up, they didn’t just lose out on three players. They missed out on four. The impact is seen every time the team seems one wing defender short, every time they don’t have enough shooters to stick in the corners, every time they’re dismissed in trade scenarios for not having enough young players other teams might want. Who knows how long that will end up costing them?

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