Kyrie Irving and Cooper Flagg take Mavs into new era after hard reset for franchise in offseason

Last season: 26-56, missed playoffs

COACH: Dusty May (first-time NBA head coach, hired June 22).

SEASON OPENER: Oct. 21 at Houston.

DEPARTURES: G Klay Thompson, G Brandon Williams, G Ryan Nembhard, F Khris Middleton, F Marvin Bagley III, G AJ Johnson.

ADDITIONS: F Morez Johnson Jr., G Sergio De Larrea, F Zaccharie Risacher, F Santi Aldama, G Marcus Sasser.

The offseason brought the hardest reset for Dallas since Mark Cuban bought the team in 2000. Cuban sold his majority stake almost three years ago, and it's been a wild ride for the franchise since then. The bottom line is the Mavericks finally have a somewhat orthodox organizational structure after it was anything but that under Cuban, who called all the shots and had a handshake agreement with his personnel chief at the time, Donnie Nelson. Principal owner and team governor Patrick Dumont hired Masai Ujiri as president and alternate governor in May and turned all the basketball decisions over to him. Ujiri fired Jason Kidd with four years left on the coach's contract, hired a general manager in Mike Schmitz and pulled May out of the college ranks to replace Kidd after May led Michigan to the NCAA championship. The roster turnover is also significant, so the Mavs are about to find out whether they can contend with nine-time All-Star Kyrie Irving returning to play alongside 2025 No. 1 overall pick and reigning Rookie of the Year Cooper Flagg, a fellow Duke alum. Irving missed all of last season after tearing the ACL in his left knee in March 2025.

The good: The Mavericks and their fans have been waiting a long time to see what it looks like to have Irving and Flagg on the court together. Irving initially was expected to return during Flagg's rookie season, but he revealed this preseason that he had a two-month setback with a calf injury while rehabbing the knee. Dallas was never specific while continuing to expand the timeline for Irving's return. The team was buried in the standings when the announcement was finally made that he wouldn't play in 2025-26, the first time Irving has missed an entire season. Dallas has a pair of solid and versatile veteran forwards in P.J. Washington Jr. and Naji Marshall.

The not-so-good: Irving and Flagg are a stout combination in the backcourt, but neither is a true point guard. The Mavs gave up the NBA's best at that position in the ill-fated trade of Luka Doncic that ultimately cost former general manager Nico Harrison his job and helped keep Dallas out of the playoffs each of the past two seasons after reaching the 2024 NBA Finals. Rookie Sergio De Larrea of Spain is a tall point guard in a mold similar to Doncic, but it's ludicrous to take the comparison beyond that. De Larrea is likely to need time to grow into a productive NBA player, which means the Mavs won't really have a primary option at the point. If center Dereck Lively II can't get healthy and stay healthy after nearly two full seasons of foot issues, Dallas will be missing an important piece in the middle.

Morez Johnson Jr. tops this list because the Mavs used the ninth overall pick on him, and he played for May at Michigan. If Johnson is good enough to make the rotation, Dallas suddenly has plenty of depth in the frontcourt after there were times that the void at center was massive the past two seasons, mostly because of injuries. A close second is 2024 No. 1 overall pick Zaccharie Risacher, who had a promising rookie year in Atlanta but never developed further in his second season with the Hawks. The 21-year-old from France was part of a three-team trade in the offseason.

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