Dallas Mavericks complete training camp roster, sign Yudai Baba
By Kohl Rast
The Dallas Mavericks have made their final signing before training camp, adding Yudai Baba to the roster. Baba played for the Mavs in the 2019 Summer League and played in the Japanese B.League before that.
The roster is officially set for the Dallas Mavericks training camp. With the preseason coming in just a few weeks, the Mavs have finally filled out their 20-man roster as news came out yesterday that the team had officially signed Yudai Baba, who played for the team in this year’s Summer League. He also played for Japan in FIBA.
Baba is a Japanese-born basketball player that played professionally in Japan from 2017-2019. After those years with Alvark Tokyo, Baba found his way onto the Mavs Summer League team. He played in 4 games with Dallas in Las Vegas averaging 4 points, 2.3 rebounds and 0.3 assists per game in 12 minutes a night.
Despite pretty pedestrian numbers from Baba, he became a fan-favorite over the summer. Whether that influenced the signing in anyway is, of course, unknown, but he is a very talented player that puts in a lot of work for his game.
The Dallas Mavericks roster now consists of 20 players: Luka Doncic, Kristaps Porzingis, Tim Hardaway Jr., Delon Wright, Seth Curry, Justin Jackson, Maxi Kleber, Dwight Powell, J.J. Barea, Boban Marjanovic, Courtney Lee, Dorian Finney-Smith, Jalen Brunson, Ryan Broekhoff, Isaiah Roby, Josh Reaves, Antonius Cleveland, Dakota Mathias, Aric Holman and now Baba.
The Mavs will have to trim the roster down to 15 before the season starts (not including the two-way contracts of Reaves and Cleveland) meaning that three of these guys will not make the final roster. Those three seem obvious right now, but anything can happen before the season starts.
Yudai Baba will likely not make the Mavs roster, but if he chooses to stick around, the Texas Legends could definitely use him this year. No matter what happens, we wish Baba all the best and hope to see some great moments from him during training camp.