Building a Mavericks “dream team” if they picked right in every NBA Draft

2016 NBA Draft: Fred VanVleet over AJ Hammons with the 46th pick

In another case of the Dallas Mavericks picking a player who went undrafted, this selection may be the biggest reach of this entire list, as they would have had to have great insight.

The Mavericks picked AJ Hammons with the 46th pick in the 2016 NBA Draft. Hammons played unjust 22 games for the Mavericks and was out of the league after just one season.

Meanwhile, Fred VanVleet went undrafted in 2016 and went on to become one of the most successful undrafted players in the history of the NBA.

VanVleet was picked up by the Toronto Raptors, who have done a great job developing unknown talent and helped them win a championship in 2019.

By the 2021-22 season, VanVleet made his first All-Star team as the starting point guard on the Raptors, teaming up with Pascal Siakam to form a playoff-caliber duo.

Saying the Mavericks should have drafted VanVleet with the 46th pick in the 2016 NBA Draft seems a bit unfair. That assumes he would have gone 14 selections higher than where he actually went (which was nowhere at all).

However, considering how flexible the second round is, there’s always a chance this could have happened. If the Mavericks had invested more time into VanVleet, maybe he could have gone higher.

That being said, this is, as mentioned, the biggest reach on this list. But we’ll roll with it because it’s fun to think about what could have been had the Mavericks struck gold with VanVleet in the second round.