Jaden Hardy takes giant first step toward his sky-high dream for Mavericks

After defeating the San Antonio Spurs in defiant fashion on Thursday evening, the Dallas Mavericks are set to take on the Phoenix Suns tonight in their second regular season contest of the season. This game should be more telling of how good of a team the Mavericks actually are, as this Suns team is better than they were last year despite obvious defensive deficiencies.

The Spurs game on Thursday was still a great litmus test for Mavericks fans to see how this rotation might shake out over the start of the season though, and there were some notable surprises in this Dallas rotation when they took the court for the first time.

First off, Daniel Gafford started over second-year center Dereck Lively II, as head coach Jason Kidd elected to go with Gafford in the starting group even though Lively II was highly rumored to be Dallas' starting center to begin the season. This shows Kidd isn't hesitant to go the flexibility route and make changes to his lineup based on who the opponent is, even if it would be surprising to see Lively II come off the bench if he continues to play how he did on Thursday night.

Hardy begins his journey toward Sixth Man of the Year candidacy

Another rotational decision that Kidd made was making third-year guard Jaden Hardy the primary ball handler off the bench in that contest versus San Antonio, as Hardy clocked the most amount of minutes out of any Dallas guards off the bench with 20 minutes and took the first steps toward cementing his ultimate goal of winning Sixth Man of the Year this season.

While it was anticipated that Hardy was going to get an increased role this season after preseason and the Dante Exum injury, it was great to finally see it come to fruition and Hardy undoubtedly made the most of this opportunity.

Hardy finished with 11 points on 3-6 shooting from the field as well as two assists, as the G League Ignite product brought great pace to Dallas' offense when he was in and thrived in the spacing that was prompted when he played in a three-guard lineup with Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving.

Hardy canned a few 3-pointers in this game and played solid defense, but his shot-creation ability wasn't necessarily even needed with how efficient Dallas' starting lineup was scoring.

It's without a doubt that Hardy is going to have other contests where he has even more of an increased role going forward, especially if he continues to showcase his three-level scoring ability to the same degree that he did throughout the preseason and the first game of the regular season.

Hardy's ball handling in pick-and-roll scenarios and playmaking is only getting better, but he'll need to continue to prove that those areas of his game are more polished if he wants to eventually take home the Sixth Man of the Year award at the end of this season. However, if Hardy continues to be this prolific shooting the ball, he'll quickly out-play the contract extension that Dallas just gave him.

It's extremely encouraging to see Hardy's growth over the past few seasons, and this first game against San Antonio was a great stepping stone to kick off the potential best season of Hardy's career. Hardy will still need to prove that this is something he can deliver consistently throughout the start of the season to solidify his spot in this rotation though, and he will have his next opportunity when Dallas takes on the Suns tonight.