![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/coop-pj-784x441.jpg\")
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Cooper Flagg and P.J. Washington look to help lead the Mavericks into a new era.<\/p>\n
Get Caught Up<\/a><\/p>\n \u2022 Last Season: 26-56 (12th in West, missed postseason) Season Outlook<\/p>\n The Mavericks have officially shed their questionable past and are ready to surge in a new direction, in every way. Masai Ujiri, who built a championship team in Toronto, was hired to run the basketball operation, and he in turn hired Dusty May, a first-time NBA coach who won a national championship at Michigan.<\/p>\n The goal is obvious \u2014 build a contender with Cooper Flagg as the centerpiece. On the heels of his very solid rookie campaign, Flagg seems ready to make an All-Star push, remarkable for a 19-year-old. He\u2019ll finally know what it\u2019s like to have a point guard with the credentials of Kyrie Irving; the question is, will Irving still be around after the trade deadline, regardless of how well he bounces back from missing a season with injury?<\/p>\n The same goes for others (P.J. Washington, Dereck Lively II, etc.) who were contributors to the team that advanced to the Finals a few years ago. Essentially, the Mavs want to know who\u2019s worth keeping for this transition.<\/p>\n Breakout Candidate: Zaccharie Risacher<\/p>\n Lost in the recent rash of standout first overall picks is Risacher, who was mostly underwhelming during his two seasons with the Hawks. It\u2019s rare when a team quickly surrenders a player drafted so high \u2014 he fell out of the Hawks\u2019 rotation in last year\u2019s playoffs \u2014 and one who\u2019s just 21 at that.<\/p>\n The Mavericks are encouraged by the latter, and also that, in some situations, a player is just in the wrong place and at the wrong time. If a change of scenery is just what the basketball doctor ordered, then Risacher could thrive in his new environs. There\u2019s a flow to his game and his fundamentals are solid. He just needs to drop the burden that comes with being No. 1, along with improved confidence and a team and coach who believe in him. Mostly, he needs to give the Mavs a reason to suspect they stole a solid rotational player.<\/p>\n 1 Number To Know<\/p>\n 11.4% \u2014 The Mavs had the league\u2019s biggest differential between their effective field goal percentage in the first six seconds of the shot clock (64.1%, fifth best) and their effective field goal percentage thereafter (52.7%, 28th).<\/p>\n If the Mavs weren\u2019t in transition, they were struggling to score. According to Synergy tracking, they ranked second in transition efficiency (1.20 points per chance), but 30th in half-court efficiency (0.93 points per chance). The latter is more important and the Mavs ranked 27th offensively overall.<\/p>\n The return of Irving will obviously help. Over the last three years, the Mavs have scored 1.11 points per chance when an Irving isolation has led directly to a shot, turnover or trip to the line, a rate which ranks seventh among 110 players with at least 300 direct isolations over that stretch. His pick-and-roll efficiency (1.04 per chance) isn\u2019t quite as high, but is still significantly higher than that of any of the ball-handlers the Mavs had last season.<\/p>\n \u2014 John Schuhmann<\/p>\n 5 Must-See Matchups<\/p>\n \u2022 Oct. 24: Mavericks vs. Spurs \u2014 There will be three consecutive No. 1 overall picks on the floor in this one, with Risacher and Flagg joining Victor Wembanyama.<\/p>\n \u2022 Nov. 14: Mavericks vs. Cavaliers \u2014 Irving no doubt will get a hero\u2019s welcome in Cleveland, where his Game 7 shot in 2016 helped produce the city\u2019s only basketball championship.<\/p>\n \u2022 Nov. 15: Mavericks vs. Celtics \u2014 Flagg returns close to his home state of Maine, where he grew up a Celtics fan.<\/p>\n \u2022 Dec. 17: Mavericks vs. 76ers \u2014 LeBron James has spoken highly of Flagg, who might someday become one of the league\u2019s marquee players once LeBron retires.<\/p>\n \u2022 Feb. 13: Mavericks vs. Hornets \u2014 Not only will Flagg play against his college teammate Kon Knueppel, but Washington is a former Hornet.<\/p>\n > Complete regular season schedule<\/a><\/p>\n Preseason Storylines<\/p>\n The Mavs have a surplus of big men, and that\u2019s actually a nice problem. Washington, Lively and Daniel Gafford are joined by Santi Aldama, who arrived this summer from the Grizzlies, and Johnson, a first-round pick.<\/p>\n Aldama is a solid rotational player who showed improvement over the last three seasons; he averaged double figures in scoring in each. As for Johnson, he helped Michigan win a title and the Mavericks selected him on the recommendation of May, his college coach.<\/p>\n At some point, a pecking order must be established, and the competition for minutes will only help the Mavericks.<\/p>\n > Complete Preseason schedule<\/a><\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Shaun Powell has covered the NBA since 1985. You can e-mail him at\u00a0spowell@nba.com<\/a>, find his\u00a0archive here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0follow him on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cooper Flagg and P.J. Washington look to help lead the Mavericks into a new era. Get Caught Up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,153390,103,153392,153391],"class_list":["post-444318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-mavericks-season-preview","tag-dallas-news","tag-mavericks-preview","tag-mavericks-season-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\u2022 Key Additions: Santi Aldama, Tarik Biberovi\u0107, Sergio De Larrea, Morez Johnson Jr., Tobi Lawal, Zaccharie Risacher, Marcus Sasser
\u2022 Every Mavericks move this offseason<\/a><\/p>\n