The Dallas Mavericks had a strange offseason this past summer. After a poor 2018-19 season, the franchise re-signed practically its entire bench and brought back former Mavs guard Seth Curry along with trading for bench piece Delon Wright.
Team owner Mark Cuban admitted on Friday that the team's plan all along was bringing the bench players back to build on continuity.
Per Brad Townsend of the Dallas Morning News:
“When you’re a bad team like we’ve been the last couple of years, people just downplay your second unit automatically: ‘They must be bad because they’re the second unit on a bad team,’” Mark Cuban said.
“They weren’t bad. We just didn’t have all the pieces we needed. That’s why we kept everybody together. We knew our second unit was pretty darn good and with just a piece here or there we could be a whole lot better.”
The much-maligned offseason moves may have paid off because it provided the right kind of role players to surround budding superstar Luka Doncic, who is now nearly averaging a triple-double.
Along with re-signing the bench, the Mavs also inked one-time All-Star power forward Kristaps Porzingis — acquired from the New York Knicks last January during the Latvian's ACL recovery — to a max contract extension.
The signing paired the two European players together to form a formidable Batman and Robin tandem that should dominate as the faces of the franchise while the bench fills in the gaps. The Mavs have a 15-6 record so far this season and are in the right position to contend in the Western Conference.
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