Dunc'd On Podcast by Nate Duncan and Danny Leroux have hosted a paywalled program covering the league for the past few years. I've transcribed the relevant section on Dallas from their Western Conference Over-Unders:

DANNY: We'll start alphabetically, A–Z, with the Dallas Mavericks. I mentioned this at the outset. Their over/under is set at 33.5 wins. And last year, to the point you mentioned, there weren't really any teams that won roughly that many games. The New Orleans Pelicans won 26 games, the Bulls won 31, and the Warriors won 37. So there weren't many teams like this. So what I did for this exercise, for a few teams, was look at what things were like at the All-Star break. Which isn't exactly the inflection point, but it's close enough. At that point, teams with differentials in this vicinity: the Bucks, the Grizzlies before they stopped playing a big man ever...were in this range. So would Dallas be a team like that? Both of those franchises were in the low teens on offense and the mid-20s on defense. But there are a lot of ways to get to a negative 4 net rating, or something in that vicinity.

NATE: Yeah, so I haven't done their outlook yet. I wish I could've done all of them and thought about some of this a little more, so I'm turning my eye to them for the first time. There is some news involving the Mavericks, starting with Dereck Lively II, because he's not going to be ready to start the season. They haven't given us a timeline, but I'd be shocked if it were soon. He had a second foot surgery in December, after a surgery to remove bone spurs in his right foot in July 2025, and he spent most of last season in a walking boot. Even as recently as June, he said he couldn't run. I haven't seen the exact nature of this latest surgery. It was said he had a small fracture in his foot. We haven't heard the dreaded word "navicular," but if it were something on the outside of the foot, like a Jones fracture, we wouldn't be on this kind of timeline. So I'm just speculating here, but this timeline is consistent with something navicular-adjacent. Some sort of "something is wrong overall" type injury, not just an acute one. Going back even to his second season, when he had that stress-fracture situation, the whole Belton/Bisborough thing of them working him out with a broken foot. Obviously they want a slower timeline here. Him starting on the treadmill probably just means he's on the AlterG treadmill with less than his full body weight, doing a little bit of jumping. So, I'd imagine it's going to be, at minimum, a couple of months before he debuts. This also has implications for his possible extension, and for the Mavs' overall team-building. There are guys who've come back from this kind of thing, but at this point you have to be very skeptical he's going to be a foundational piece for this team.

DANNY: Unfortunately, I agree. Dereck Lively showed a lot of flashes in his rookie year of a center who could be very useful, the kind of center who'd typically be a good fit next to Luka Dončić, who's unfortunately no longer there. You just can't count on it. I'd find it very hard to extend Lively at a number that's anything close to the mid-level exception, just because you don't know what you're going to get from him.

NATE: I think they should do that, honestly. I mean, obviously if it's "hey, his foot is totally screwed up, he's not on schedule to return," that's one thing. But if their information is that he's on track to return from this latest injury, I'd offer him something in that mid-level range, because that's not going to kill you. Three years in that range could really work out to be a huge value contract. And if it doesn't, it's not the end of the world. But maybe you disagree. We talked about this a little.

DANNY: I actually do agree with you, but I think a lot of teams don't approach it that way. The Mavericks also just don't have a ton of money on their books, so that small bet isn't that big a deal for them. But for Lively, the question is how aggressive are they willing to be, because he's clearly a much better player, when healthy, than some of the guys who've been "risk mitigator" signings in the past like a Zeke Nnaji or something like that. So it's perilous, it's a challenging situation. One thing I look at is how healthy was he last year? Last year, the Mavericks got 62 combined games out of Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively. I hope and expect that number will be higher this year. The question is how much higher. I think it'll be higher, but not that much higher. So that's a real concern for the Mavericks, even with Cooper Flagg now being taller, which is good.

NATE: Yeah, he's 6'10" in socks. Measured at the combine at 6'7¾" in socks. That's crazy that he's that big, almost power-forward size, isn't it, Danny?

DANNY: A point forward, at least.

NATE: Yeah. So as I look at this roster...Lively, I'm not going to assume they'll get a ton from him. Gafford really struggled with recurrent ankle injuries last year. They've tried to trade him and reportedly couldn't get a first for him. Then Morez Johnson...some of this Lively news, I think, is part of why they brought him in; he's really kind of a four or five. Same thing with Santi Aldama, who they traded for. They still have PJ Washington on this team, and obviously Flagg. Where they're very weak is shooting. Kyrie Irving and Max Christie are really the only guys I'd characterize as shooters. I'd say everybody else on this team is a below-average positional shooter. Jett Howard on a two-way...John Poulakidas...those guys are shooters, but they're both on two-ways. And Tarik Biberović too, I don't really know much about.

And before we really talk about how it all fits together, there's a possibility Kyrie Irving doesn't finish the season on this team. And there's also a good possibility, since the Hornets' pick is top-2 protected, that they end up playing out the string here too.

DANNY: Very true. And if we're evaluating the Mavericks on their current merits...you brought up shooting as a limitation, another one for me is ball-handling creation. Cooper Flagg had a lot of that last year, but if you think about how a rotation runs, Flagg and Irving presumably start, and then maybe Marcus Sasser is your other guy.

NATE: Sergio de Larrea...that's the other thing too, they're going to have incentive in the form of Zaccharie Risacher. Let's see what happens with his fourth-year team option at $17 million. They've got Morez Johnson, they've got de Larrea, so they're actually going to have young guys they'll want to get out there at some point. And again, they don't control their own pick, so they don't really have an incentive to win. They don't have an incentive to lose, but they don't have much incentive to win either. So all of that's pretty interesting to think about with this team.

DANNY: Right. And I still do notations for all these teams on what the pick situation is, whether it's in their control. The incentives are so different now, because the reason I want to note teams that don't control their own pick is in some of the worst-case scenarios, which really only affect things on the margins, it's not that a team is incentivized to lose, it's that they have a less strong incentive to win than other teams. For example, if you're at the bottom of the league and you have your own pick, you really, really need to push to win games at the end so you're a "three-ball" team, not a "two-ball" team. So if you have a smaller incentive to win, maybe you lean a little more on your young guys, or in the case of a team like the Mavericks, you just do what's best for your franchise long-term. And that's the other element of tanking that persists: okay, say Kyrie Irving finishes the season on the Mavericks, and they're eliminated from playoff contention...

NATE: He also has a player option next year, by the way, right?

DANNY: True. But let's use him as an example since we're talking about the Mavericks. Unless he really wants it, you're not going to play him as much, either in minutes per game or total games, because you don't want to put unnecessary miles on him. So even though that might be a little different for teams with full control of their pick who want to be a "three-ball" team, there's still going to be some of that. You're just not pedal to the metal. You're pedaled to somewhere, but somewhere less than the metal.

NATE: You put it in neutral, even if you're not hitting the brakes.

DANNY: Yes, I think that's another good way to put it. So I could see Dallas in that circumstance, even though it's not as extreme as it used to be. The other angle here is even if there isn't as much incentive to lose now, there's still incentive around the league to allocate your roster in a way that maximizes your timeline. If the Mavericks are going to be at their best two to three years from now, or even further out, then a player like Kyrie Irving isn't rigidly aligned with that timeline, and there are other teams trying to win now who could give you assets that align better with your timeline. So a move like that, even though you and I both believe the Mavericks should have already made it, if it happens, it's still reasonable for it to happen in the January–February window, even if the incentive isn't as clear-cut as it used to be.

NATE: Yeah, and I think it's just going to be really hard for this team to be a good offense. Maybe with Kyrie on the floor, I could see them approaching league average. There's also performance risk with Kyrie, in addition to the fact that he probably won't play as many minutes, probably won't play back-to-backs, for all the reasons you noted, for both him and the team. It doesn't really make sense to push now. One thing that could change that is if they're close to the play-in and the bottom of the West is as bad as I think it could be...and they just decide, "let's go for it and get Cooper Flagg some experience." Again, this is a franchise player they're on the clock with in some ways. Having another totally desultory year...well, at least last year it got him Rookie of the Year, even as they lost a ton of games, but that won't matter as much this year.

But I think these guys are close to a bottom-five offense. They just don't have enough shooting. Gafford, I don't know how effective he'll be if he's even still on the team. Morez Johnson is a rookie. Whenever Kyrie's off the floor, they're really not going to have enough shooting. As I said, he and Max Christie are their only shooters. Their backup playmaking...I like Sergio de Larrea, but rookie point guards usually suck. He's someone who'll probably get more run as the season goes on, as will Marcus Sasser. So there is talent on this roster, and especially with this 6'10" thing, I remain very high on Cooper Flagg...I think he's going to shoot it better, and he's also going to have the ball a lot. Ultimately, we'll also see what Dusty May is like as a coach — penciling him in as a rookie coach, slightly below average, not saying he'll necessarily be good or bad.

So ultimately, with all the injury issues and possible trades, even though I really believe in Cooper Flagg, I don't know that they have another above-average starter on the team outside of him and Kyrie. So I've got to go under the 33.5. If this were last year's team, I'd say, "oh yeah, they could win 37 games". But especially without the incentive to push at the end of the year, I think these guys are under.

DANNY: They're under for me as well. And this isn't a clear one. I don't think it'll be one of my best bets, because there are plenty of scenarios where they could be in the play-in vicinity and just push, with Cooper Flagg being that guy. If he's the second-best young player in the league, he can propel that. And we both really want to see him do more defensively. They still have too many forwards, and all that. But him being taller might make it easier, and him having a new head coach could potentially shift things too. But just the way Masai Ujiri has built this roster, there are a lot of other guys there. They haven't done the sorting I thought needed to happen, with guys like PJ Washington still around, and they've even brought in more power forwards somehow. So I think they could go over, but I think the under is the right play.

NATE: And I think the way they'd have to do that is defensively, with Lively out and a bunch of young guys. Gafford's never been a great pick-and-roll defender, but again, I don't know what shape he'll be in. So I don't feel super strongly about this, but the under's got to come from somewhere. Since it seems like I'm leaning over on most of these other teams, I'll take the under here.

Overall, I think I'm inclined to agree with them. 33.5 is a very low number, but different roster dynamics like a potential Kyrie trade, the sheer lack of ball-handling creation, and the lack of proven shooting will result in a tall task for Dusty to sort out. And the pick situation creates incentives that are ultimately going to force certain priorities too relative to other teams. Unless Coop takes a Luka-like leap into top 5 or top 10 territory, my expectations are low.

Some people here last year described max christie as not a hustle player. They weren’t to pleased with him. The stats show exactly that if you look at his D-Playmaking stats which are mostly hustle stats he ranks near the bottom percentiles for his position.