Yahoo Sports senior NBA reporter Jake Fischer and NBA writer Dan Devine discuss the Mavericks outlook for the upcoming season and the team’s potential building behind a trio of Luka Doncic, Kyrie Irving and Dereck Lively. Hear the full conversation on “No Cap Room” – part of the “Ball Don’t Lie” podcast – and subscribe on , or wherever you listen.
Video transcript
For Dallas to get back to this stage.
They have a tall task just being that the West is really tough.
Their off season isn’t really that interesting.
I will say being that they also have pretty much everyone on the books for next year except for Derek Jones like Derek lively 20 year old rookie Jason Kidd said it after game four when he hits that corner three, we are super impressed by this kid.
That’s the next step of his progression.
There’s someone with Dallas who said to me in Dallas before game four that they expect wild, his growth to be so rapid that they were going to view him as a free agency signing every single year moving forward because they expect him to take such high leaps.
Then it’s the Luca stuff we talked about and maybe Luca fully rested, fully healed.
Take some more responsibility on the defensive side of things, signs a super max extension and they’re right back in the thick of things in the West, which not for nothing isn’t the worst plan I ever heard if Kyrie continues to be on the path of like, I know that I’m the second banana here and I know how to get in where I fit in and how to elevate and keep prodding this forward.
That’s the recipe for like a top 78 offense.
Right.
And so then the question is always, what can you do on the other end of the floor?
The future goes as Luca Kyrie Derek lively kind of move it this season when they had those, those three guys on the floor, they scored 100 and 22.1 points per 100 possessions, which would have been the number one offense in the league.
The defense was below league average.
But I think with, we’ve seen a lot enough to be really encouraged by what lively can be as an anchor on that end.
Lively just creates new possibilities for what you can be defensively.
They’ve got something there in that battery.