Dallas Mavericks: Who the team misses most from last year

The Dallas Mavericks let a few different players go on to greener pastures this season and it has been an adjusting period for both parties. Who of the players that left Dallas this year is the team missing the most?

Players come and go all the time when you are a fan of an NBA franchise. The Dallas Mavericks know all too well what can happen when they start to let good players walk, but I think the team has learned its lesson since 2011. Aside from the rough treatment of a Mavs great, Tyson Chandler, the team has slowly been learning their lesson.

Last year, Dallas kept a vast majority of their roster. Aside from many of the end of the bench type players, Dallas lost out on Doug McDermott, Seth Curry and Yogi Ferrell, most notably. These three guys represented a lot of the Mavs solid three-point shooting last year and there were concerns that the team would miss that this year.

That doesn’t seem to be the case so far as the Mavs are firing up plenty of threes and making a lot of them. They could be making more, but the three-point shooting doesn’t seem to be a major concern for the team at this point. That was the main thing that each one of these guys brought to the court.

Let’s take a look at how these guys are doing on their new teams.

Doug McDermott

Dougie McBuckets is getting a lot of playing time with the Indiana Pacers this season. He is averaging almost 18.5 minutes per game as of now and is shooting the ball fairly well at 7.7 points per game. His three-point percentage is currently at 43.5% and his overall shooting percentage at 54.3%.

Doug is a nice player off the bench who can bring instant offense to any team. His defense is less than stellar, but he has shown a lot of hustle to make up a little bit for his physical inabilities. Either way, there are very few three-point shooters as efficient as McDermott.

Seth Curry

Curry has been a constant presence on the court for Portland this year, averaging just under 18 minutes per game. Although he isn’t getting many shots off (4.7 field goal attempts per game), he is shooting a solid percentage and scoring just under 6 points per contest.

Curry is a great shooter and has proved it so far this year with his 50% three-point shooting and 46% from the field. His defense isn’t perfect but he can be a serviceable defender with quick hands.

Yogi Ferrell

Yogi started a pair of games for the Sacramento Kings already and has played around 17 minutes per game thus far this season. Although his numbers aren’t popping like they did in Dallas, Yogi has been a good player for the Kings. He is averaging 7 points per game on about 45% shooting.

Yogi is also a pretty good defender, especially considering his size. Dallas was able to utilize Yogi in many situations last year simply because of how good he was defensively. The lack of defensive prowess from the current guards on the roster is a concern for the Mavs.

In my opinion, the Mavs are missing Yogi more so than either of the other guys. It would be nice to have some added shooting, especially off the bench, but the defensive ability of Yogi as a guard would be the most important ability to the Mavs from any of these guys. I believe the Mavs should have offered Ferrell a better deal than they did, even if I don’t agree with how everything went down.

Dennis Smith Jr. and Luka Doncic have not been great defensively so far this year. Wesley Matthews is constantly locked in with the best player from the other team, meaning that the teams with good backcourts are going to continue to kill the Mavs. It would be nice to have another guard to be able to throw in against these excellent offensive players.

This Mavs team is better than they look. They are going through some growing pains right now, but the team is going to do well this year and a lot of that will be due to young talent. We may miss the guys that were here last year, but the Mavs are trending in the right direction.