Dallas Mavericks: Grading Maxi Kleber’s 2019-2020 season

Grading Dallas Mavericks big man Maxi Kleber’s 2019-2020 season

The Dallas Mavericks brought Maxi Kleber to the NBA in 2017. He had played professionally for five years in Europe including the previous two at Bayern Munich. The German was a role player packed with potential. Kleber recently talked about almost giving up on his NBA dream because of injuries.

Luckily he did not. The 28-year-old has continued to improve every season. He averaged just 16.8 minutes per game as a rookie. That number increased over 21 a night in year two.

Kleber had a career year this season. He set new per game bests in points, rebounds, assists, blocks, 3-pointers made, 3-point percentage, free throw percentage, and minutes. Kleber is a versatile big man that gives Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle a lot of lineup options.

Fans know by now that the NBA season was suspended on March 11 because of the novel coronavirus. The league is attempting to pin down its return plan, but no final decisions have been made. There is optimism that a champion will be crowned in 2020.

It looks like games are not going to return until July at the earliest. That means a full offseason will have passed by the time players take the court again. The pre-hiatus stretch will always be its own season in many ways.

The stoppage provides a perfect time to reflect on a player’s performance. Today, Maxi Kleber takes the spotlight. We will hand out offensive and defensive marks before determining an overall grade for his performance in the 2019-2020 season thus far.

Next: Offensive grade