Disaster Watch: Episode 1
Dallas Mavericks
First up on Disaster Watch: the Dallas Mavericks.
A franchise that managed to lose Luka Dončić, bet their future on Anthony Davis’s medical chart and handed an entire offense to an 18-year-old. This is how you turn a Finals team into a crisis in under a year.
THE BLUEPRINT FOR HOW TO BLOW UP A FRANCHISE
Some rebuilds are forced.
Some rebuilds are strategic.
Dallas chose one voluntarily and then tried to pretend it was a championship plan.
The result is a franchise sitting at the bottom of the West, 5–13 out of the gate, with the worst mix of misfortune and mismanagement in the league.
This is the Dallas Mavericks in 2025–26.
A team that traded a generational talent, doubled down on a fragile star, handed the offense to a rookie and then fired the architect when the house caught fire.
This is the deepest disaster in the NBA.
THE TRADE THAT WILL FOLLOW THEM FOREVER
Everyone remembers exactly where they were when it dropped.
Luka Dončić.
Five straight All NBA First Teams.
A Finals run.
A 40 point playoff average.
The single best player the franchise has had since Dirk.
Shipped to the Lakers for Anthony Davis and minimal draft compensation.
You do not trade players like Luka.
You do not trade them in their prime.
And you definitely do not trade them for a 32 year old big whose medical chart needs its own filing cabinet.
This wasn’t bold.
It was reckless.
Dallas thought they were getting a superstar who could anchor a contender and unlock a late window for the current roster. Instead they inherited a player who has already missed the first month of the season with a calf strain and is projected to have availability swings all year.
Luka is thriving in Los Angeles.
Dallas is drafting in April mentally and it’s only December.
This is the kind of trade that becomes a chapter in 30 for 30 documentaries.
The trade you spend the next decade explaining away.
THE DOMINO EFFECT: EVERYTHING THAT FELL APART AFTER LUKA
It didn’t just cost them a superstar.
It cost them their direction.
When you make a trade that dramatic, everything that follows becomes a reactive move.
Kyrie Irving’s ACL tear removed their only true creator next to Luka long before Luka left. After the trade, it left them without any elite initiator at all.
Daniel Gafford sprained his knee early. Their interior collapsed.
Davis sat out the early stretch. Their identity vanished.
Klay Thompson’s decline is no longer a theory. It's a stat sheet.
Dallas did not just lose their best player.
They lost any sense of foundation.
Cooper Flagg flashed superstar potential in the preseason. Dallas treated that flash like it was a finished product and shoved him into the role of offensive engine at 18 years old.
He is talented.
He is special.
He is also a rookie in a situation built entirely to make numbers look worse than they are.
THE OFFENSIVE COLLAPSE
The Mavs are built like a team that should score.
They do not.
The numbers tell the full story.
Offensive rating sits in the bottom five leaguewide.
Shooting efficiency has cratered.
They are bottom tier in three point percentage.
They produce one of the lowest assist totals per game.
Their pace is sluggish.
They have the third highest turnover rate among teams trying to win games.
This isn’t a slump.
This is structural.
Everything they run requires someone to create an advantage. That someone was Luka. Then Kyrie. Then briefly Gafford with vertical spacing. Now it is a rookie, and teams know exactly how to kill that.
They blitz Flagg.
They pack the paint on Davis whenever he plays.
They dare Klay to beat them.
They turn every possession into a deep-water survival test.
It is not fair to the rookie.
It is not fair to Davis.
And it is not fair to fans who were told this team was still building toward contention.
THE DEFENSIVE COLLAPSE IS SOMEHOW EVEN WORSE
This is the part that has genuinely stunned people.
Anthony Davis, even in limited time, is still one of the best defenders in basketball.
And yet:
Dallas sits bottom five in defensive rating.
They foul at one of the highest rates in the league.
Their transition defense is a haemorrhage.
Their defensive rebounding numbers are among the worst in the West.
Opponents get clean looks early in the clock far too easily.
This does not happen to well built teams.
This happens to teams with no cohesion.
Their roster is full of veterans who were once strong defenders but now survive more on reputation than execution. Their young pieces are learning on the fly. The lineups make no tactical sense. They have no identity. They have no anchors unless Davis is on the floor, and even then the perimeter collapses like wet cardboard.
THE KLAY THOMPSON REALITY
Dallas believed they were buying the intangible side of Klay Thompson. The presence. The calming effect. The championship DNA.
Instead they got the numbers.
10 points per game.
Mid 30s shooting percentage.
Lost lateral movement.
Opponents ignoring him off the ball.
Zero defensive impact.
The idea of Klay is still elite.
The reality is a replacement level shooting guard.
The problem is Dallas needs the idea version more than any team in the league.
COOPER FLAGG IS THE FUTURE, BUT HE IS ALSO BEING ASKED TO FIX THE PRESENT
Flagg is the bright spot.
He has put up solid scoring nights. He rebounds. He blocks. He drives. He plays with a poise that should not exist at 18.
But his reality is cruel.
He is playing without a stable creator next to him.
He is playing with veterans who are declining.
He is playing in lineups where the spacing dies instantly.
He is being asked to create offense against grown men who know exactly how to pressure young stars.
Flagg’s year is not about numbers. It is about environment.
Right now the environment is designed to suffocate his efficiency and blame the rookie for the organisation’s decisions.
This should have been a grooming year.
Instead it is a salvage mission.
THE NICO HARRISON SACRIFICE
The firing was inevitable.
You do not trade Luka Dončić and then watch the team start 5–13 without consequences.
Nico Harrison paid for the trade with his job.
The front office publicly insisted the plan was stabilised.
Ownership quietly made it clear someone needed to answer for the mess.
But firing the GM does not undo the trade.
It does not add shooting.
It does not repair the roster.
And it does not give Davis a new body.
The problem was never one man.
The problem was the conviction behind a plan that had no ballast.
THE DRAFT CAPITAL TRAGEDY
The Mavs do not control the majority of their own drafts.
Between previous trades and the Luka deal, the franchise has limited leverage for a reset. They cannot tank effectively.
They cannot buy their way back into the first round cheaply.
They cannot flip Davis for a treasure chest without admitting a second defeat.
This is the dead zone.
Not competing.
Not rebuilding.
Not flexible.
The worst place a franchise can sit.
THE DAVIS QUESTION Lingers Over Every Decision
Do they trade him.
Do they keep him.
Do they rebuild around Flagg.
Do they try to make the Davis flagg pairing work long term.
Both options carry pain.
Trading Davis means conceding that the Luka trade died in less than a calendar year.
Keeping him means praying his body allows him to appear in even half the season.
Dallas is too proud to admit defeat.
But too broken to pretend this is working.
THE FULL PICTURE
This is what Dallas actually is.
A franchise that tried to accelerate into the future by trading away its present.
A roster constructed around hope instead of alignment.
A rookie being asked to carry a veteran group.
A superstar big man whose availability dictates their survival.
A declining shooter taking high usage on a team with no spacing.
A fanbase caught between defending the past and surviving the now.
A GM firing trying to paper over a foundational mistake.
This is not a bad team.
This is a blown up organisation trying to convince itself it is still competitive.
It is the truest disaster team in the NBA because the collapse was optional.
They chose this path.
And now they are walking it with no map, no light and no Luka.
