Mavericks' hidden gem is already silencing his biggest critique

The Dallas Mavericks’ best draft of all time was easily in 2018, as the franchise secured two future MVP candidates in Jalen Brunson and Luka Doncic, yet has lost both of them just a few seasons later. However, Dallas’ 2025 draft class could be a close second in comparison to the 2018 draft, as undrafted rookie Ryan Nembhard is already looking like a hidden gem, and Cooper Flagg obviously has superstar potential.

Being a smaller guard, one of Nembhard’s biggest perceived weakpoints is lack of size defensively, but this was never a prominent issue through four preseason games for him. Granted, teams aren’t playing to their full potential in preseason for the most part, so we’ll still need to see Nembhard prove this during the regular season, but he held his own with opposing ball handlers and played with relentless effort in one-on-one matchups throughout preseason.

Looking at former Mavericks who were under 6-foot-2 such as Yogi Ferrell and J.J. Barea, they made their mark in Dallas through their witty three-level scoring ability and high-level playmaking, and even though neither of them were elite defenders by any means, they were at least league-average due to how much of a pest they were and how hard they competed on that end of the ball.

Ryan Nembhard is already silencing defensive concerns

This will be the same formula Nembhard needs to strive for if he wants to see consistent minutes in Dallas, as opposing ball handlers have never had more length and size than they do at this point in league history, so there will undoubtedly be times that he gets scored on due to a sheer lack of size and talent.

Nembhard is already proving he can be an elite playmaker from the jump, but as a smaller guard, he has to be uber-efficient offensively for his defensive concerns to be truly mitigated, so he’ll need to prove he can be a more dynamic scorer as well, especially with Dallas’ lack of guard depth with Dante Exum and Kyrie Irving out of the lineup to start the season.

While Brandon Williams will definitely be pining for minutes in Dallas’ guard rotation heavily as well, Nembhard has an early opportunity to be Dallas’ backup or third string point guard, which is seldom seen for a first-year player on a two-way contract. It is really starting to appear like Dallas got a steal by signing Nembhard from the undrafted pool, as all signs are pointing to NBA teams having overlooked Nembhard coming out of the draft because of his age and size.

It’d be setting the table too high to expect Nembhard to ever be an elite point-of-attack defender, but he can certainly be elite on the other side of the ball and carve out a long career if he can at least be average defensively as aforementioned, as he has an extremely high basketball IQ and appears to be in great shape with elite conditioning.