The Hoop Obsession NBA Forecast: 30 to 1
#25 — Dallas Mavericks
Hoop Obsession Prediction: 33-49
Vegas Over/Under: 34.5 winsThere is one person in Dallas who could wreck this projection, and it is not Cooper Flagg (photo below) or Kyrie Irving. It is Dusty May.
We are big believers in May's basketball mind because he seems to view the game through a relatively simple lens: find advantages and exploit them. At Michigan, one of those advantages was size. His Wolverines were bigger at the three, four and five than almost every opponent they faced, and May used that size rather than trying to force his personnel into somebody else's preferred style. Michigan went 34-3 last season, won the national championship and finished May's two-year tenure at 64-13. Now we get to see whether that philosophy translates to the NBA.
That jump is worth mentioning because the history of successful college coaches moving directly to NBA head-coaching jobs is decidedly mixed. John Beilein lasted only 54 games in Cleveland and went 14-40. John Calipari finished 72-112 with the Nets, while Rick Pitino's much-hyped Boston tenure ended at 102-146. Tim Floyd went 93-235 in Chicago. There have certainly been successes. Brad Stevens, Billy Donovan and Quin Snyder among them, but dominating the college game has never guaranteed anything at the NBA level.
We think May has a chance to be one of the exceptions, and one of the first things we will be watching is whether he goes big. If Dallas gives substantial minutes to Dereck Lively II and Daniel Gafford, rather than routinely downsizing with P.J. Washington at the five, we could easily be too low on the Mavericks. May's championship team at Michigan featured size and physicality, and Dallas has enough legitimate NBA bigs to pursue the same advantage.
One of May's former Michigan players is now along for the ride. Morez Johnson Jr. was the No. 9 pick in June after averaging 13.1 points and a team-high 7.3 rebounds for the national champions. The 6-foot-9, 250-pound Johnson made the Big Ten All-Defensive Team and brings the kind of physicality and rebounding that May already knows how to use. We are less certain that Johnson immediately cracks a crowded NBA frontcourt rotation, but there could hardly be a better coach for him to begin his professional career under.
Obviously, Cooper Flagg remains the main attraction. After winning Rookie of the Year, the next question is how quickly he can progress from terrific young player to the guy who drives a winning NBA team. Just as important for this particular season is the return of Kyrie Irving, who missed all of 2025-26 while recovering from the torn left ACL he suffered in March 2025. Irving said in late May that he was close to 100%, and the Mavericks expect him back this season. Before the injury, he was averaging 24.7 points and shooting 40.1% from three. That matters enormously for an offense that ranked 27th in offensive rating last season at 111.2 points per 100 possessions.
Dallas also played at the NBA's fourth-fastest pace and still finished 26-56. Once again, pace by itself did not create winning basketball. What Dallas desperately lacked was efficient offensive creation, and Irving supplies exactly that.
Our concern is what surrounds Irving and Flagg in the projected main-five. Max Christie, Zaccharie Risacher and P.J. Washington have all shown useful NBA qualities, but from an efficiency standpoint we see that group as more average-to-below-average than difference-making. Can Irving's return and Flagg's continued growth raise the entire lineup enough to overcome that? Maybe. We just are not ready to project it yet.
The second unit is also difficult to pin down this early. Our current projection has Marcus Sasser, Caleb Martin, Naji Marshall, Santi Aldama and Gafford, but there are plenty of ways May could rearrange those pieces. Aldama and Lively could easily become main-five fixtures. Johnson could force his way into the rotation. Sasser arrives from Detroit as part of a massive offseason trade that also brought Aldama over from Memphis.
We also liked what Dallas did on draft night because the Mavericks appeared to be thinking beyond simply filling the most obvious immediate need. Johnson was the first piece at No. 9, but Dallas then traded the rights to No. 30 pick Koa Peat and additional assets to acquire Sergio De Larrea, the 25th pick. De Larrea is a 6-foot-6 Spanish guard who was named Liga ACB's Best Young Player after shooting 42.9% from three for Valencia. He has legitimate size for a ball-handler, international experience and enough skill to be an interesting long-term backcourt investment.
Dallas also drafted super-athlete Tobi Lawal at No. 48 and then purchased the rights to Vsevolod Ishchenko, the 56th pick. Ishchenko is another developmental international guard, and Dallas acquired him essentially for cash. None of those later additions has to help immediately for the draft to make sense. We like that the Mavericks used the night to add different types of prospects at different stages of development instead of acting as if every pick had to solve the 2026-27 rotation.
There are enough moving pieces here that Dallas is one of the harder teams to project. Irving completely changes the offense if he is healthy. Flagg could make another significant leap. May could find lineup combinations that better utilize Dallas' size than the previous staff did. And if Lively stays healthy, the Mavericks have the ability to play much bigger than most teams without sacrificing mobility.
Our hesitation comes from trusting all of those things to happen at once. Irving is 34 and returning after missing an entire season. May has never coached an NBA game. Flagg is still only entering his second season. The rotation has changed significantly, and last year's team was not simply unlucky, it ranked 27th offensively, 20th defensively and finished with a minus-5.4 net rating.
We can see the upside, though. If May gets the frontcourt combinations right and Irving resembles the player he was before the ACL injury, Dallas has a very real chance to finish higher than No. 24.
Vegas has the Mavericks at 34.5 wins.
We have Dallas at 33.
That puts the Mavericks at No. 25 in the Hoop Obsession NBA Forecast.
