The Dallas Mavericks tanked the end of their season in the hopes of keeping their first-round pick (top-10 protected) from the New York Knicks. They accomplished the goal and ultimately walked away with two Mavs draft picks — Duke’s Dereck Lively II and Marquette’s Olivier-Maxence Prosper — in the 2023 NBA Draft. And of those, getting the Blue Devils center in the way that they did was the team’s best move.

Trading back and getting Dereck Lively II was the Mavs' best move in the NBA draft

The 2023 NBA Draft could have gone a lot differently for the Mavs. The team tanked down the stretch to avoid the play-in game and keep their No. 10 selection away from the Knicks. The ping pong balls at the lottery were kind to Mark Cuban’s bunch, and that’s exactly what happened.

And during the draft itself, general manager Nico Harrison made some shrewd moves to make the team better and give the franchise more flexibility heading into the 2023 offseason. Plus, they got the exact player they needed in Dereck Lively II.

Right now, all of Mavs nation, including the organization itself, is operating as though re-signing Kyrie Irving is going to happen. Is that the best idea? Probably not. Irving is a well-documented team killer and signing him to a max money, long-term deal will almost certainly come back to bite them in the end.

That said, is it the best bad option currently available to the Mavs after last season’s trade deadline deal with the Brooklyn Nets? Yes.

So, the goal now is to put the best team around Irving and Luka Doncic and hope for the best.

That’s exactly what Dallas did by trading back in the draft, shedding a bad contract, and getting a center with good skills and a ton of upside.

First, there was the trade back in the NBA draft, where the Mavs went from No. 10 to No. 12. The team still got the player they wanted and jettisoned contractual anchor Davis Bertans in the process. Bertans has $17 million on his deal this year and a player option for $16 million next season.

In the 2022-23 season, Bertans played a career-low 10.9 minutes per game and was a tenth of a point off his career low in scoring at 4.6 points per game. He still shot threes at a 39% clip, but his lack of defense and shot creation just didn’t jive with Doncic, Irving, and the Mavs. Giving up a player to trade back is an odd move, but in this case, it makes sense, especially since Dallas still got the player it wanted two picks later.

Last offseason, the Mavs thought they got the center the team needed in Christian Wood, and offensively, his 16.6 points per game was helpful. Again, though, Wood is not a defender at all, and the lack of rim protection from the team’s primary big hurt.

In Dereck Lively II, the Mavs got a player who, at worst, can do some similar things to Wood. At best, they got a star who is one of those players who is just built for the NBA and struggled in college at times because of that.

Lively was the No. 1 high school prospect in the Class of 2022 and signed with Duke alongside several other top-30 prospects like Dariq Whitehead (No. 2), Kyle Filipowski (No. 7), and Mark Mitchell (No. 28). Filipowski and Mitchell are both bigs with much more traditional college offensive games, so they both performed better than Lively, who averaged just 5.2 points per game at Duke.

However, Lively has unique athleticism and skill at the rim for a 7-foot-1 player and will be a major asset in pick-and-roll, a set that nearly every NBA team uses a lot and the Blue Devils did not. He’s also an underrated passer and has the touch to develop into a good outside shooter.

Where Lively did excel in college was on defense. He averaged a staggering 2.4 blocks per game on his way to making the ACC All-Defensive team. Plus, in the pros, he’s so athletic that he will be a fantastic, switchable pick-and-roll defender. The Mavs draft pick truly has NBA All-Defense or even Defensive Player of the Year upside.

There are plenty of critics of this Mavs draft pick because of how Lively underwhelmed in college as the top recruit in the country. But the Mavs took a player in the NBA draft with a ton of upside who should shine in the pros (while also getting rid of a bad contract in the process), which is why this was the team’s best move on draft night.