Klay Thompson refuses to embrace Mavericks' potentially painful playoff reality

The Dallas Mavericks are in the midst of a perilous decision as to what direction the franchise should take over the next 15 games. The Mavericks could opt to tank in hopes of improving their odds in the NBA Draft Lottery or they could give their best punch at making the NBA Playoffs. Whatever the Mavericks do will likely be met with mass criticism from large portions of the fan base, as Nico Harrison and Dallas' decision to trade Luka Doncic on February 1 has caused Mavs fans to no longer give this front office the benefit of the doubt.

This along with the Quentin Grimes trade are both moves that look like they could haunt the Mavericks for years to come, and Harrison didn't think these moves out from start to finish or had a flawed process when making these decisions. If Grimes and Doncic were still on the roster, Dallas would likely be jostling for position in the 4-7 seed range, even with all the adversity they've faced this season from an injury perspective and Kyrie Irving tearing his ACL.

Unfortunately though, Mavericks fans will be forced to continue to succumb to a new harsh reality, and they can only hope the team does what they think is best at this point. With the Phoenix Suns having the highest opponent winning percentage in the league on their remaining schedule, the Mavericks would have to pull off a tank job of epic proportions to fall below the Suns and out of the play-in this season.

Klay Thompson refuses to throw in the towel on Dallas' playoff push

This isn't something that veteran sniper Klay Thompson seems like he is particularly keen on though, as Thompson carries the notion that Dallas should still be trying to compete as hard as they can for the rest of this season, and you can't blame him based on what he signed up for this season initially.

"We still have big goals. We still want to make a run," Thompson said following Monday night's win versus the San Antonio Spurs. "Injuries have been awful, but I still love our team. We have an amazing frontcourt, we miss those guys dearly. Obviously you can tell with the lack of size out there, they're a strong part of our team, but we're showing as much heart as we can."

Thompson brings up some tremendous points here, especially when it comes to the morale he is trying to bring to this team as one of their veteran leaders. Dallas is throwing out two-way and end-of-the-bench players for 30-40 minute stretches of entire games because of how depleted their roster is, and Thompson is extremely proud of how this team is encountering this adversity, which means a lot considering how many different scenarios he has been a part of in 14 NBA seasons.

Dallas getting some frontcourt reinforcements would have drastic ripple effects on this team's chances of escaping the play-in, as teams don't have any tape of Dereck Lively II and Anthony Davis on the floor together, and there's a fair chance both big men and maybe even Daniel Gafford return before the end of this regular season.

Even though Irving has already gone down, Dallas' bigs returning would give them a fighting chance to at least make the playoffs, which is something the Mavericks owe to Thompson after falling wildly short upon the expectations he had coming to Dallas as a multiple time NBA Champion and All-Star last summer. Thompson envisioned playing alongside Doncic with offensive spacing galore, but fans only saw Thompson, Irving, and Doncic together on the court for a laughable amount of games, and now the Mavericks will have to self-correct the insanely large mistake that trading Doncic was.

Thompson's goal for this Mavericks team to keep their foot on the gas is commendable, and it may be the best decision considering how abrupt it would be for Dallas to start tanking while still clearly a few games ahead of Phoenix for the 10th seed and not far behind the Sacramento Kings for the ninth seed. It's too late for Dallas to perform so bad that they'd have top-five odds for the first overall pick in this year's draft, which will likely be potential generational talent Cooper Flagg, and the Mavericks will still likely be picking late-lottery where they could find some substantial talent to help them next season considering this is one of the more loaded draft classes in recent memory.