Dallas Mavericks

A postcard competition and a $12.5m entry fee

Dallas entered the NBA in 1980 on a $12.5 million expansion fee, half of it put up by the businessman Don Carter. The name came from the television western Maverick, picked after roughly 4,600 fans posted in suggestions. The first team went 15-67 and still drew well.

Rolando Blackman and Mark Aguirre turned that into a decade of relevance: a first division title in 1987 and a Western Conference finals in 1988 that went seven games against the Lakers. The collapse that followed was total — 22-60 in 1991-92, then 11-71 in 1992-93, among the worst records of the modern era. Jason Kidd, drafted in 1994, began the slow repair. Mark Cuban bought the club in January 2000 for $285 million, by which point the 1998 draft had already delivered Dirk Nowitzki.

Nowitzki, and the only banner

The Nowitzki years produced the franchise's defining results and its defining near-misses. Dallas reached the 2006 Finals and led Miami 2-0 before losing in six. A 60-22 season followed, with Nowitzki taking the MVP award in 2007. The title came in 2011, again against Miami, with Nowitzki carrying the scoring load through the whole run.

Five numbers hang in the rafters: 12 for Derek Harper, 15 for Brad Davis, 22 for Blackman, 24 for Aguirre and 41 for Nowitzki. The most recent deep run came in 2024, when Luka Dončić took the club back to the Finals. That is the context for everything that happened next.

2 February 2025, and the year the building turned

On 2 February 2025 the Mavericks traded Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis. The reaction never subsided. General manager Nico Harrison became the target of chants inside the American Airlines Center from Dončić's first return as a visitor, and the club eventually began putting the NBA fan code of conduct on the videoboard to discourage them. Supporters were ejected during a 129-128 overtime home defeat to Sacramento for a sign and chants aimed at him.

The first full post-trade season was worse than the mood. Dallas lost its opening two games, including 117-107 at home to Washington, and Harrison was dismissed on 11 November 2025 with the record at 3-8. The team finished 26-56, twelfth in the Western Conference, placed behind New Orleans on a 1-3 head-to-head tiebreak despite matching records, and was mathematically eliminated on 23 March after an overtime loss to Golden State. By early April the home run of defeats had reached fourteen straight.

The lottery, and a teenager carrying the offence

The one thing that went right was the 2025 lottery. Dallas won it and took Cooper Flagg first overall. He averaged 21.0 points, 6.7 rebounds and 4.5 assists across 70 games at 46.8 per cent from the field, and was voted Rookie of the Year ahead of Kon Knueppel — the second-youngest winner of the award behind LeBron James. Since steals were first recorded in 1973-74, only Michael Jordan had previously led his team in total points, rebounds, assists and steals as a rookie.

The signature night came in April 2026 against Orlando: 51 points on 19-of-30 shooting, 24 of them in the fourth quarter, with the crowd standing when the fiftieth went in off balance. It made him the first teenager in NBA history to reach 50, and the youngest player to do it at 19 years and 103 days. Dallas still lost 138-127, with Jason Kidd and Naji Marshall ejected for arguing a non-call. Over his final 26 games Flagg averaged 25.2 points, 7.2 rebounds and 5.3 assists.

New management, new coach, new frontcourt

The rebuild of the organisation came before the rebuild of the roster. Masai Ujiri was appointed president of basketball operations on 4 May 2026, with Mike Schmitz as general manager under him. Kidd was let go on 19 May after five seasons. On 23 June the club announced Dusty May as head coach, less than three months after he had taken Michigan to 37-3 and the NCAA title in his second year in Ann Arbor.

Davis was traded to Washington, and the $20.9 million exception that created was later used to absorb Zaccharie Risacher, the 2024 first overall pick, in a three-team deal with Atlanta and Oklahoma City. Santi Aldama and Marcus Sasser also arrived; Klay Thompson left for Miami. The 2026 draft brought Morez Johnson Jr at ninth, Koa Peat at 30th and Tobi Lawal at 48th. Kyrie Irving, who tore his left ACL against Sacramento on 3 March 2025 and missed the whole of last season, played again for the first time in 19 months in the second preseason game in Macao on 11 October, scoring 17 points.

The injury list is still long — Dereck Lively II's foot, Aldama's recent knee surgery, Johnson's lower leg — and the club's deadline to give Lively a rookie-scale extension expires at 5pm Central on 19 October, after which he plays out the fourth year of his rookie deal at $7,239,131. Betting markets set the win total at 34.5 and the title price at +20000, with Dallas ranked seventeenth in preseason power rankings. Play-in basketball is the realistic ceiling; another Irving absence is the floor.

What a night in Victory Park looks like now

Home is the American Airlines Center, opened on 17 July 2001 at a cost of $420 million, designed principally by David M. Schwarz and seating 19,200 for basketball, or up to 21,146 with standing room. The main approach is PNC Plaza on the south side, with fountains laid out by the artist Athena Tacha in 2000 and Daktronics screens mounted on the arena and the surrounding office blocks.

The basketball on offer is new. May wants a top-five pace and the ball moved before defences are set; through three preseason games Dallas attempted 46.7 threes a night, a figure that would have led the league last season, including 51 attempts in the 135-117 Macao defeat to Houston. He has said he expects to use more than nine players, his staff having spent weeks studying how the best benches of the past three or four seasons were deployed. The rough edges showed too — 25 turnovers in one outing, a 135-111 home loss to Atlanta, and an 0-3 preseason record at the American Airlines Center.

The schedule starts away: 21 October at Houston at 7.30pm Central, 23 October at Indiana, then the home opener on 24 October against San Antonio and the NBA Cup opener at home to Houston on 30 October. The two Macao preseason games, on 9 and 11 October at the Venetian Arena, carried a neat piece of symmetry — the venue sits in a Sands property, and the Adelson family, which controls Sands, holds the Mavericks' majority stake alongside Patrick Dumont, with Cuban retaining 27 per cent.