Dallas Mavericks must avoid dangerous Spencer Dinwiddie trap this season

The Dallas Mavericks are finally back in the swing of things, as Dallas completed their first preseason game on Monday night versus the Memphis Grizzlies. While it is just preseason, this is the first chance fans have to evaluate the Mavericks after a wild offseason, so there are still many tidbits to take away that can give us a hint as to what this Mavericks rotation will look like once the regular season starts.

Dallas is already in the process of fine-tuning their 21-man roster, as they cut wing A.J. Lawson yesterday. Clearly, the Mavericks are trying to figure out what their full rotation looks like sooner rather than later, as the expectations to place high in the regular season standings and make it back to the NBA Finals have never been higher for the Mavericks.

One addition that the Mavericks made to their rotation this past offseason was bringing back Spencer Dinwiddie on a one-year deal. While fans were extremely excited by this move at first glance, especially because of Dinwiddie's heroics for the Mavericks toward the end of the regular season and playoffs in 2022, Monday gave fans reason to believe Dinwiddie isn't the same player he was before Dallas traded him.

Spencer Dinwiddie isn't the same player he was before

While we must take into consideration that this was only one preseason game, Dinwiddie's performance versus Memphis was reminiscent of many of his performances with the Brooklyn Nets last season, that being that he was largely inefficient from the field and struggled to control the ball.

Dinwiddie finished the game shooting 1-6 from the field and had three turnovers in only 17 minutes, as he oftentimes was trying to foul-bait on drives unsuccessfully and settled for questionable shots beyond the arc.

It's well documented that Dinwiddie played much better in Dallas than he did with the Nets and even the Los Angeles Lakers last season, though it must be noted that this can also be attributed to the fact that Dinwiddie was often playing with multiple shot creators when he was on the floor with the Mavericks during his first tenure in Dallas.

In 48 games as the starting point guard for the Nets last season, Dinwiddie averaged 12.6 points per game and 6.0 assists per game on 39.1/32.0/78.1 shooting splits. Dinwiddie was slightly more efficient with the Lakers but took more of a backseat role as he was relegated to being more of a 3-and-D player.

It's clear Dinwiddie had quite the drop off in production and efficiency since he left Dallas, which isn't ideal considering that he turns 32 years old toward the end of this coming season. Luckily for the Mavericks, they have a plethora of guards in their backcourt that should be able to contribute at a high level off the bench this season, though it's arguable Dinwiddie has the highest offensive ceiling out of any of those options.

Dinwiddie's recent preseason dud as well as his inefficiency last season are definitely concerning and are factors to weigh for Dallas' coaching staff when they start considering who should assume most of the guard minutes off the bench.

However, while Dinwiddie doesn't seem like the player Dallas traded for back in 2022 anymore, it still remains to be seen how he fares in a complete lineup with other dynamic ball handlers once the regular season starts. It's way too early to write Dinwiddie off, but Dallas can't fall into the trap of relying on Dinwiddie too heavily if he continues to struggle this season, especially when one considers how solid third-year guard Jaden Hardy has looked thus far.