This Is An Absolute Embarrassment…

This Is An Absolute Embarrassment…

This is an absolute embarrassment. And with all things considered, the Dallas Mavericks are having a very successful off seasonason. Have we made any crazy five team trade like we did last offseason to get Klay Thompson? No. Did we shed a lot of salary to get better players back? Also, no. But we’ve been making a lot of good moves, albeit small moves, that were the right moves that needed to happen. The Dallas Mavers were able to get Kyrie Irving on another contract. We got Daniel Gaffford on a very team-friendly contract extension. PJs is coming up. We got D’Angelo Russell. We drafted Cooper Flag. AD and Lively both got surgery. The Dallas Mavericks are preparing for a much better season this upcoming year than the one we just had. But with all that considered, it doesn’t stop many people like ESPN to continue to disrespect the Dallas Mavericks. And in an article that came out earlier today, they dropped a list of the top teams in the West and they severely disrespected the Dallas Mavericks. So, in this video, we’re going to take a look at that list, see where they put the Dallas Mavericks, who do they have in front of us, and where I think the Mavericks should be properly placed. But, how’s it going everybody? My name is Marcel Mart. This is Mavericks Digest, bringing you the latest news on everything Mavericks related. And before we get started with today’s video, we’re currently sitting at 21,684 subscribers, getting very close to that goal of 22K. But if you want to be up to date on everything Mavericks related all summer long as we’re counting down the days till the season returns, we’ve got training camp, we got preeason in the next 60 or 50 days. So if you want to be up to date on everything Maverick Mavericks related, make sure you subscribe. But the Dallas Mavericks are constantly getting disrespected. This is something that we knew way back when we had Dirk. This something that we saw just recently with Luga Donuch. And with Cooper flag coming into town, yes, it’s going to continue. The Dallas Mavericks just don’t get the respect that that they deserve. In the season that we had last year, yes, we finished 10th overall. We made it to the playin tournament. We did lose in the second round, but the Dallas Mavericks didn’t fail last year because of a skill issue. It wasn’t because we didn’t have talented players. It was a weird health anomaly that in part was because of Nico Harrison putting the wrong people in charge. But overall, the Dallas Mavericks could not have predicted the wild season that we had with all these injuries, with all these illnesses. And one would assume that it would take another weird, not miracle, but just a weird instance of that happening again. And it’s very unlikely. The Dallas Mavericks, like I said, have been making a lot of good moves to prepare themselves for next season. And even if they’re small moves, they are all the right moves. But that doesn’t stop the disrespect. And I understand why some people may feel that way, but ESPN dropped their list of the top 10 teams. And the Dallas Mavericks may not be as high as some fans want them to be. If we just go right into it, take a look at this article. They dropped earlier today offseason power rankings. Thunder clear favorites to report in West. So let’s get right into the article and see what they’re talking about. And at number one, they got the Oklahoma City Thunder, which I can understand. They just won the NBA Finals. You got to put respect on the Champs. And if you take a look at this, they were third overall in the league last year in offensive rating. They were the number one defense in the entire league last year, as well as having the best net rating. Those are the type of things that obviously makes you projected to be the best team next year, especially when although they had no key additions, they also had no key departures. And yes, they did add a few more, I guess, salary as far as extensions go. did give Chad Homegrrim as well as Jay Williams an extension that doesn’t go into play until next year and by then they still won’t be be in the second apron. They’ll be right below the second apron. So by all means the Thunder are having themselves a very good offseason. So yes, them is number one. It’s no real surprise they were number one the year before when we made the final. So they are doing all the right things to maintain that spot. But the teams that come after them, number two is the Denver Nuggets who last year had the fourth best offensive rating. They were the 21st in defensive rating. Very interesting there. And had the ninth best net rating. Their key additions were Cam Johnson and Jonas Valenunis. While they did trade away Michael Porter Jr. and Russell Westbrook, he just didn’t have a contract. He’s probably going to go to Sacramento Kings. But I do like the additions that the Denver Nuggets have added. Cam Johnson and Yonas will help with their defense. They won’t be hopefully not be the 21st best defense for their sake. They hope that that does improve. Jonas as another backup big as they still have other bigs like Aaron Gordon. They also have DeAndre Jordan still, but I doubt at this age he’s going to be that effective. And of course, they have Jokic as a center who really plays as a point guard. And I mean Cam Johnson will help on both ends of the floor. So yeah. So Denver at number two, I definitely see it. And at number three, they have the Houston Rockets. Some people may argue that the Rockets shouldn’t be that high. Some argue that yeah, they should be that high. But last se last season they had the 12th best offense, the fifth best defense, and the seventh best net rating. Their key additions were Kevin Durant, Dorian Finny Smith and Clinkapella, while the key departures were Dylan Brooks and Jaylen Green. And when it comes to the Houston Rockets, I was very surprised that they did trade away Jaylen Green. Now, obviously, it was get Kevin Durant, a player that has been linked to the Dallas Mavericks for quite some time, at least all of last season, but the additions do kind of outweigh the departures. Jayen Green is a young talent, but he’s just that, a young talent. He hasn’t won anything yet. He hasn’t be able to to show that he can lead his team to a deep playoff run. And then you got Dylan Brooks, who is a great defender. He is a good role player. But I’d argue that the players that they added like Dorian Finny Smith, as well as Clink Capella, will definitely help the Rockets out a lot more. And so those are your top three. The Oklahoma City Thunder, the Denver Nuggets, and the Houston Rockets. So where do they have the Dallas Mavericks? Where is this disrespect that I was telling you about? Well, if we just continue with this article, I’m sorry. Oh, I’m all over the place. They have the Dallas Mavericks at number eight, which is an improvement from last season as the Dallas Mavericks finished as a 10th seed. But to think that we’re only going to be two spots better is kind of questionable. Now, obviously, if we’re taking a look at how poorly, I guess not as good, but as bad as we played last year, then yeah, you probably wouldn’t have a lot of expectations for this team going forward, as we did have the 18th best offense, the 20th best defense, and the 19th best net rating. Now, obviously, with all the injuries that we had, all the illnesses, the trades, all of that combined would equal all of those negatives, the bad offensive rating, the bad defensive rating, the bad net rating. I’ve spoke about on this channel how we were one of the league’s worst three-point shooting teams. There’s a lot of context that is to be added to that. In this upcoming season, there are a lot of questions for the Dallas Mavericks. Will our three-point shooting improve? Will our defense improve? Will AD play more than 50 some odd games? Will Kyrie Irving return just in time to help turn things around? So, yes, I understand there’s a lot of questions surrounding the Dallas Mavericks and our success and how far we can go, but to think that we’d be the eighth seed, especially when I show you the team that’s ahead of us is absolutely insane. And that team is the Golden State Warriors, who they have projected finishing seventh overall. And last season, they had the 16 16th best offense, the seventh best defense, and the 10th best net rating. They added absolutely nobody all off seasonason. And as a matter of fact, they actually lost Kavon Looney going to a whole another team. I want to say he went to the New Orleans Pelicans. And then Jonathan Kaminga, which if you’ve been following the news, he don’t even want to be there. He’d rather play in Sacramento. So that shows you that the Warriors, who didn’t add anybody, who are about to lose their second player this off season. How are they in the seventh seed? And if you look at the top, they did have them as the fourth seed last week, and they’ve had a significant drop. And I get it. But the Dallas Mavericks, we just go back to the Dallas Mavericks at number eight. Let’s see why they have us at number eight. And the key additions this offseason were Cooper Flag and Nandel Russell. Two additions I think are great. A key departure being Spencer Denwidy. And if that is your only key departure, and those are your key additions, then I think we’re doing pretty well. But three numbers to know. At the time that Luca Dodis played his last game with the Mavs, December 25th, which was Christmas, they had the league’s fourth ranked offense and had outscored their opponents by 6.1 points per 100 possessions. After that, they ranked 23rd offensively and were outscored 5.6 per 100. And I already know there are a lot of you guys watching this video who don’t want to hear any Maverick creator talk about Luca Don. They you want to say, “Get over it. He’s not here anymore. Stop crying.” Blah blah blah. But the facts remain and then the facts that you just saw that before we lost Luca Don before we traded him, we had the league’s fourth best offense. And after that, what we were 21st, we were I’m sorry, we were the 18th best offense. That’s a big drop when you trade away Luca Donis. Now, obviously, including all the context, we had injuries, players missed time, we almost had to forfeit games and played our two-way guys heavy minutes. So, I get the context around it. However, although Luca only played about 20 some odd games with the Mavericks, we were still the fourth best offensive team in the league and we dropped to 23rd. And the other thing that we want to take a look at is here. They saw the league’s biggest drop in the percentage of their shots that came from three-point range. We’ve talked about that from 44.1% second highest in 23-24 to 38.9 24th last season. PJ Washington saw the second biggest drop from 50.9% to 35.9% among 130 players with at least 500 field goal attempts in both seasons. And that is very telling. One of the things that PJ definitely improved upon was his three-point shooting. But to know that his field goal percentages dropped that drastically, it’s very telling. It shows you a lot. But the last thing here, the Mavs allowed 9.7 fewer points per 100 possessions with Derek Live on the floor than they did with him off the floor. That was the biggest onoff differential on defense among 314 players who played at least 750 minutes for a single team. Lively played just 54 total minutes alongside Andy Davis with the Mavs allowing less than a point per possession in those minutes. That is absolutely insane. Derek Lively may have more value than we thought. And I and I’m not going to lie, I’m definitely team Gaffford. I love Gaffford. I love Lively. I think they’re 1A, 1B, but when people talk about who needs to start, who comes off the bench, I always think that Daniel Gaffford should start and Dererick Lively come off the bench because he’s young, injuryprone for the most part, but he can still learn a lot by coming off the bench for Daniel Gaffford. But the numbers there don’t lie. The fact that we had one of the best defenses when Derek Liy was on the floor versus when he’s off the floor is actually kind of insane. And the fact that they allow what AD and Lively both allow less than one point per possession per minute while they’re both on the floor. First of all, that gets me very excited for next season to know that when they’re both fully healthy to start the season, the Dallas Mavericks defense should be one of the better defenses in the entire NBA. But there, that one thing goes is health. That’s the one thing that every Mavericks fan is saying. If we’re healthy, when we’re healthy, and I truly do believe that once when the NBA season starts, once we have 20 games under our belt and we see ourselves in a very good standing in the West, then we can have a better feeling about this season. If we are a top six team that I think we will be in the first 20 games, then yes, we can put the whole if we’re healthy, when we’re healthy thing away, we’re fine. If the opposite happens, then yeah, we’ll have to talk about it. But as of right now, where Anthony Davis just had surgery to correct some things, so did Derek Lively. He actually just had a basketball camp. He’s moving around feeling good. The Dallas Mavericks should be in a very good spot. And I myself had placed the Dallas Mavericks in the six seed. I had tweet out earlier today my Western Conference standings predictions for next season. I got Thunder, Nuggets, Rockets, Timberwolves, Clippers, Mavericks, Lakers, Spurs. Now, obviously all that can change and you could say I’m a homer. Obviously, I favor the Mavericks. And you’d probably be right. But I think the six seed is fair. The Clippers made some good moves. So did I mean the Timberwolves really didn’t make any moves, but they’re still a good team. Rockets and Nuggets also made good moves. That’s why I put them there higher. Spurs are coming along as well. And the Lakers, I love Luca Donis. I just don’t love the Lakers. But I think the Mavericks are able to be in that fifth to six seed spot. But that’s where things start to come into question because we don’t have Kyrie Irving for about the first half of the season. Meaning, we’re going to be relying heavily on Anthony Davis to help us win games, to close out games, to be our go-to guy to drop probably 30 points a game. I know he averaged about 24 26. We are looking for about 30 points a game from Anthony Davis. Kyrie Irving, his production isn’t there anymore. Other players will have to step up. And if we’re still without Kyrie Irving and Anthony Davis has to miss any amount of time, whether it be five games to 10 games, it makes it that much harder for us to win games, especially if we’re on a road trip, especially if we’re at the part of the season where our schedule is the toughest. We are going to need Anthony Davis. in the success of this team until Kyrie Irving returns, hangs in the balance, and really just hangs on the shoulders of Anthony Davis. But with all that being said, I’m not worried about the Dallas Mavericks. We have shown several times over the last seven years. As long as we make the playoffs, we will be a problem. The Dallas Mavericks have only ever finished fourth. One time in the last seven years that we had Luca Donis, that was the best we have ever finished. And that was just one time. Every other time we were less than the fourth seed, fifth seed, six seed, seventh seed. we were still a successful playoff team. The Dallas Mavericks have showed time and time again, it doesn’t matter what seed I am. Get me to the playoffs and I can do something. We made the finals as the fifth seed. Now, yes, we had Luca Don, we don’t have anymore, but I’d argue that aside from having a star like Luca Don, the team around our stars, Kyrie and AD, we have a much better supporting cast. So, why not make the finals? Why not be the fifth or sixth team, six seed team? Why not be able to make the playoffs after having an abysmal season last year? But let me know what you think in the comments section down below. Do you think the Mavs should be able to finish six seed or do you agree with ESPN that eighth seed is exactly where we’re going to finish? Let me know in the comments section down below. We’ll have a conversation about it. But that’s all I got for you guys today. Thank you so much to the video. Make sure to check out our Twitter and Discord links in the description below. And as always, y’all take care. Drink water. Peace.

In this video, Marcel Martin dives into ESPN’s latest Western Conference rankings and calls out the blatant disrespect shown to the Dallas Mavericks. He breaks down why the Mavs deserve far more recognition after their abysmal season, but smart offseason moves. Tune in as Marcel pulls no punches and sets the record straight on where Anthony Davis and company truly stand.

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Mavs Digest is a channel that breaks down all of the latest news, reports and rumours on the Dallas Mavericks. This includes coverage on players such as Luka Doncic, Kyrie Irving, Derrick Lively, PJ Washington, Daniel Gafford, Jason Kidd, Mark Cuban and more!

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