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to a two-way contract, a player most considered top-45 entering the evening.

On Thursday after the draft, Dallas signed TCU guard Mike Miles Jr. This was an organization that not that long ago drafted a player in the second round (Santam Singh) with the sole purpose of selling jerseys in India. Only one other time between then and now did Dallas acquire a first rounder, buying the 25th pick in 2010 for straight cash from the Memphis Grizzlies, which turned into Dominque Jones.įrom 2004 until Thursday night, the Mavericks draft history was littered with wasted picks, blown trades, and uneven fits. When Dallas jumped back into the draft to trade for the 24th pick, it was the first time Dallas had traded for a first rounder since 2004, when the organization traded for the fifth overall pick and took Devin Harris. That’s quite the haul, even before Lively and Prosper set foot on an NBA court. That 10th pick was turned into the following:ĭallas effectively turned one pick into three players, four if you count the mid-level exception opened up by trading Bertans. There have been some bright spots in the draft for the Mavericks here and there - trading up for Luka Doncic, taking Jalen Brunson in the second round of 2018 the obvious ones - but in terms of really using the draft, of playing the board in front of you and maximizing your return, it’s hard to think of a better played draft from the Mavericks than what they did on Thursday.Įntering the draft Thursday night Dallas was armed with just the 10th pick. The thing we do know, however, is that the plan to get them to Dallas is the plan Dallas should have been following for years, a plan that feels like a breath of fresh air when compared to the previous decade of Mavericks roster building - the Mavericks finally took the draft seriously. But we certainly don’t know right at this second that those two will pay off, surrounding Luka Doncic with the necessary defense and athleticism a player of Doncic’s stature needs to win. Or they might be All-Stars! Or, most likely, something in between. There’s a chance the two players Dallas picked - Duke center Dereck Lively and Marquette forward Olivier-Maxence Prosper - won’t be on the Mavericks roster in three years. No one will know if the Mavericks were right for some time, so goes the process of drafting and developing young players. When I first waded into the discussions around the Mavericks 10th overall draft pick for the 2023 NBA Draft, my main thesis was taking a player or trading the pick, it didn’t matter - the Mavericks just had to be right.