As a fan of the Dallas Mavericks (9-16 and bless their pointed little heads), one of two lines of thought may be running through your head right about now, as the team has beaten three legitimately good
teams among four wins in its last five games.
Is it okay to feel feelings about this team again?
And, what should my expectations be for this team going forward?
No one should gate-keep anyone else’s fandom, of course. There is a certain joy and catharsis in watching a team that showed us through a quarter of the season that they were the peers of bottom-feeders like the New Orleans Pelicans, the Washington Wizards and the Los Angeles Clippers turn it around to show the likes of the Denver Nuggets, the Miami Heat and the Houston Rockets who’s boss for a night.
Feel it. Revel in it while it lasts, by all means.
But take caution against letting it further cloud your vision of the road ahead. That road is cloudy enough as it is. Four wins in five games does not a playoff team make — especially not one built around an injury-prone big man and two rookies while the team waits in hope that a 33-year-old Kyrie Irving can save it from irrelevance with whatever stretch he is able to play coming off knee surgery later this season.
If you’re letting visions of the six seed in the West dance through your head at this point, you’d do just as well waiting up on Christmas Eve for a dude with a big bushy beard and a sack full of toys to come down your chimney. Last year’s Western Conference six-seed, the Minnesota Timberwolves, carried a 49-33 record into the playoffs. To get to 49 wins this year, the Mavericks would have to go 40-17 the rest of the way, starting on Friday, when Dallas hosts the Brooklyn Nets at American Airlines Center. That ain’t happening.
That’s to say nothing about the team’s potential posture come trade deadline time. The Chicago Bulls have reportedly considered trading for Anthony Davis amid rumors swirling about the oft-injured veteran’s future with the Mavericks. Even more recently, though, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst said on a recent episode of his Hoop Collective podcast that, “what I have heard, what people are saying Anthony Davis’s trade value is right now, not because of him as a player, to be clear, not because he’s diminished as a player, but because of the idea of paying an injury prone 30, mid-30s guy, 50, $60 million in the apron era is unpalatable.”
Let us not take for granted the potential tussle for Giannis Antetokounmpo’s services, though, which may erupt this season. Any losers in that bidding war could talk themselves into Davis trade as a sort of consolation prize.
Whatever the case, Davis’ big games, coming off that calf strain that held him out for 14 games, against the Nuggets (32 points, 13 rebounds two blocked shots), the Heat (17 points, 17 rebounds, three blocked shots) and the Rockets (29 points, eight rebounds) have been foundational for Dallas’ recent string of success. The blueprint for beating good teams recently seems to be big nights for Davis and rookie sensation Cooper Flagg, plus a big night from anyone else on the roster. Under those circumstances and with no small amount of uncertainty regarding Davis’ future, the extent to which one is willing to start feeling feelings again about this team will vary.
But for many, still smarting from lingering disdain or malaise in the wake of The Trade That Is And Should Not Be, how ready are you to invest yourself 10 short months later? Is this cobbled-together version of the Mavericks your team? Does it belong to you in your bones like it once did? Do you hang on every possession?
For me, the correct posture is perked, but ever wary. I’m interested. You have my attention, Mavericks, due as much to the try-hard, never-say-die mentality that permeates this scrappy roster as to Flagg’s emerging dominance. Davis’ presence and impact on the roster remain a few items down the list of reasons why I’m willing to give the team credit and continue to creep closer to something bordering excitement about the 2025-26 Mavericks.
I don’t trust for one second that Davis will be healthy the rest of the year, nor do I have any degree of faith that the Mavericks can net a good haul for him at the trade deadline. If the Mavs are not sellers at the trade deadline, some middling level of ladder-climbing in the West seems like the most likely outcome this season — just enough to prevent Dallas from obtaining one of the best prospects in the 2026 NBA Draft, but not enough to make them a playoff contender in any way, shape or form. That middling success, if you can even call it that, would be the worst possible outcome for a team that owns a first-round pick in the vaunted 2026 draft, then likely won’t control its own again until 2031 (Dallas will swap its 2028 first-round pick with the Oklahoma City Thunder, owns the Los Angeles Lakers’ 2029 first-rounder and will swap the team’s 2030 first-round pick with the San Antonio Spurs).
Some of the other on-court outcomes of late seem unsustainable as well. The Mavericks are shooting 46% from 3-point range in their last four games after a 20-game stretch of being one of the worst shooting teams in the NBA. If we’re able to accept the idea that the Mavericks are going to be decent for a while, when does the log of shooting variance bonk them on the head again? It’s a matter of when, not if. All of these factors combine to lock a thinking man’s fandom in this preternatural holding pattern that is at once confusing, irritating and exhausting.
Perhaps it’s not fair to form expectations for this team until the trade-deadline dust settles. Perhaps forming any at all is a fool’s errand, given the franchise’s erratic nature over the last few years.
Maybe the Mavs will win four of their next five, too, and force the front office to seriously reconsider selling off any of the team’s aging parts. Maybe regression is inevitable. Maybe we should all just wait and see, and remember to breathe as we ride the seesaw of the 2025-26 season. Because while the Mavericks’ ceiling ultimately remains much lower than the apologists will have you believe, the floor has just been raised.
