Season Wrap: The 2024-25 Dallas Mavericks

  • By Mike Passador

    Last Updated on June 5, 2025 10:12 am by André Lemos | Published: June 5, 2025

    Oh boy.

    How’d It Go?

    The Mavs were coming off a Finals appearance in which they seemed to have found a winning formula. The team remade itself at last year’s deadline, adding more rim presence and versatility to the frontcourt as a complement to Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving running the show. Essentially, Dallas upgraded the supporting cast to a point where things wouldn’t fall completely apart when Doncic wasn’t at his absolute best. They rode Luka-ball to the Finals, of course, but did will to assemble a group that played to his various strengths and weaknesses.

    It made the summertime shopping list a simple one for Nico Harrison. The Mavs went out and added Klay Thompson, and the thought of him sprinting around the court and feasting on the gravity of Doncic and Irving was easy to like. They also signed Naji Marshall away from the Pelicans and Quentin Grimes out of Detroit. It wasn’t flashy but it was enough to shore up the team’s major areas of need: beyond the arc and on the wing.

    The Mavs weren’t exactly taking the league by storm but for a team that had just been on a deep run, it felt like they were biding their time and saving those extra gears for April and May. Dallas stunned the entire league, however, trading Doncic to the Lakers for Anthony Davis (among other parts of the trade) in a move that nobody outside Harrison’s office saw coming. In the wake of the deal, fan dissatisfaction spiked and Harrison dug himself a deeper and deeper hole with each media leak or press availability. He stressed a “defense wins championships” mantra publicly, while word spread through back channels that the Mavs were not happy with Doncic’s persistent poor conditioning, in-and-out availability or lifestyle away from the game; Harrison was reportedly convinced that Doncic’s body would betray him and was never willing to offer the super-max contract that every other manager in the league would trip over themselves to dole out.

    It got even worse when Davis got injured during his Mavs debut. The whole ordeal ended up dragging Davis — an elite player in his own right — into the mud, and management harping on availability while propping up a notoriously brittle superstar was just begging to end poorly. That kicked off a run of significant injury troubles that left Thompson flanked by players called up from the G League or plucked from obscurity. Kyrie Irving suffered a torn ACL that wiped out any hopes of the Mavs putting a serious playoff run together. Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively missed significant time simultaneously and even PJ Washington wasn’t spared in what was otherwise a strong season overall. The Mavs got some impressive performances and general yeoman’s work from unsung heroes like Marshall, Brandon Williams, Kessler Edwards and even newcomer Max Christie, but they were running on fumes for the last 20 games of the season. Even the fill-ins to the fill-ins got hurt, as Olivier-Maxence Prosper, Jaden Hardy, Kai Jones and Dante Exum all missed time. That led to reporting about the dysfunction among the Mavs training and medical staffs as the team limped to the finish line, literally and figuratively.

    That Dallas sunk to 10th in the standings and got bounced in the Play-In is immaterial. They traded away a beloved superstar for dubious reasons, then watched the replacements fail to deliver in the very same departments that were supposed to be Doncic’s fatal flaws.

    The Dallas Mavericks traded Luka Doncic.

    The Dallas Mavericks traded Luka Doncic.

    The Dallas Mavericks traded Luka Doncic.

    So no, it didn’t go very well.

    Coaching

    Jason Kidd is a confounding coach; a lot of his choices leave you scratching your head, but at the end of the day he did captain this team to a Finals berth. We’re going to find out just how much of that was a direct result of Luka magic.

    In Kidd’s defense, this is no longer the roster he signed up to coach. The significance of the changes to the group would tie any coach’s hands given that the team was literally designed around Doncic’s abilities. The final half of the season was total disarray and the Mavs didn’t know who would be available until game time on most nights; it got to the point where Kessler Edwards’ NBA eligibility was a serious story line that impacted the team’s chances of winning games. Anyone would be hard-pressed to win games with the crew left over, let alone someone with as spotty a track record as Kidd.

    The Mavs were a mediocre 19th in net rating, but with so much of the season spent with a new unit that had no time to coalesce on top of major injury troubles, it’s difficult to get a read on the quality of the coaching work. This season didn’t do much to sway opinion of Kidd one way or another; if anything it confirmed your priors, and the team’s problems are now stemming from way up top. Before you could argue that Kidd was not going to be the guy running the show if and when the Mavs hit their summit. Now there are much bigger fish to fry.

    The Players

    Anthony Davis
    C, Dallas Mavericks
    SeasonTeamGPGSMPG FGMFGAFG% FTMFTAFT% 3PTM3PTA3PT% PTSREBAST STLBLKTO
    24-25 DAL 51 51 33.5 9.2 17.8 51.6 5.6 7.2 77.5 0.7 2.4 28.2 24.7 11.6 3.5 1.2 2.2 2.2
    23-24 LAL 76 76 35.5 9.4 16.9 55.6 5.5 6.8 81.6 0.4 1.4 27.1 24.7 12.6 3.5 1.2 2.3 2.1
    22-23 LAL 56 54 34.0 9.7 17.2 56.3 6.2 7.9 78.4 0.3 1.3 25.7 25.9 12.5 2.6 1.1 2.0 2.2

    ADP: 7.3/10.6 (Yahoo/ESPN) | Total Value: 44/39 (8/9-cat) | Per-Game Value: 5/4 (8/9-cat)

    You have to feel for Davis to a certain extent, as he’s been put in the unenviable position of having to live up to Luka Doncic’s status in Dallas. He’s a great player but the Mavs fanbase loved Doncic in a rare way, and it’s going to take lots of on-court productivity for AD to get anywhere close to the same stratosphere. Davis was dynamite for the Lakers, posting top-flight value while missing only five games, and only once missing multiple games in a row. The Lakers’ lack of depth forced him into an increased scoring role (25.7 points per game) and paired with his always-elite defense, Davis was outdoing his lofty ADP. It was all coming up roses with another-year-older LeBron James looking happy to ease into games and facilitate for his teammates rather than go into takeover mode every night.

    Then everything changed with the most shocking trade in recent history. Davis had gargantuan shoes to fill but the front office set him up to fail with their insistence that 25-year-old Doncic’s conditioning would lead to more injuries; the 31-year-old Davis got hurt right before the trade and ended up missing his first three opportunities to play for the Mavs. His team debut was going great as Davis racked up 26 points, 16 rebounds, seven assists and three blocks in 30 minutes, but he suffered a groin strain in the third quarter that wound up costing him the next 18 games. All told, Davis only suited up in nine games for the Mavs, in which he was outside the top-50 because of big drops in FG% (.528 to .461) and FT% (.788 to .688). He clearly wasn’t at full strength for those and hopefully a full offseason can get him right. Lord knows he’ll need to stay upright and productive to keep the fans from totally checking out.

    Kyrie Irving
    PG, Dallas Mavericks
    SeasonTeamGPGSMPG FGMFGAFG% FTMFTAFT% 3PTM3PTA3PT% PTSREBAST STLBLKTO
    24-25 DAL 50 50 36.1 8.9 18.9 47.3 3.9 4.3 91.6 2.9 7.2 40.1 24.7 4.8 4.6 1.3 0.5 2.2
    23-24 DAL 58 58 35.0 9.7 19.5 49.7 3.3 3.6 90.5 3.0 7.3 41.1 25.6 5.0 5.2 1.3 0.5 1.8
    22-23 DAL 60 60 37.3 9.9 20.1 49.4 4.1 4.6 90.5 3.1 8.3 37.9 27.1 5.1 5.5 1.1 0.8 2.1

    ADP: 26.5/32.7 (Yahoo/ESPN) | Total Value: 68/65 (8/9-cat) | Per-Game Value: 18/12 (8/9-cat)

    Irving went from the most lethal second option in the league to the primary offensive option over the course of the season, not that it had a ton of impact on his fantasy stock either way. His elite credentials are well-known and Irving was doing his thing for most of the season. He was even able to limit his absences for the most part, missing a few single games and one stretch of five contests but otherwise avoiding the in-and-out nonsense that made him so frustrating in previous seasons. Things were looking even better for him in the wake of the Doncic trade as Irving was cooking in an elevated role, posting top-5 value with 25.4 points, 5.0 rebounds, 3.8 assists, 1.7 steals, 0.9 blocks and 2.7 3-pointers on .445/.961 shooting splits in his final 10 games of the year.

    Sadly, the “final 10 games of the year” part is the key phrase. Irving suffered a torn left ACL in March that ended his season and figures to impact him significantly going into 2025-26. The good injury luck Irving seemed to sport for most of the campaign went up in smoke and sent the entire team into a tailspin as G Leaguers and deep reserves were thrust into major roles while Dallas sunk down the standings. Irving was shaping up as a guy who could win fantasy leagues given his setup for the stretch run, making his injury sting more than most.

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    June 5, 2025, 8:29 am