3 things the Mavericks need to improve by start of the regular season

2. Pace of play

Jason Kidd has greatly emphasized that the Mavericks will have a faster pace of play this season early on in his training camp and preseason media availabilities.

The Dallas Mavericks have been wanting to play faster after ranking 28th in pace last year per NBA.com’s PACE metric, and it was readily apparent in Luka Doncic’s efforts to cut weight this off-season that the Mavericks are dialed in toward playing faster.

The Mavericks have a lot of defense and athleticism at the point of attack to generate turnovers and fast-break points, but the question in Dallas lies in their wings' ability to be serviceable on offense as well so they can play long stretches next to Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving.

Josh Green and Grant Williams are definitely proven commodities from the standpoint of being able to generate turnovers to crank up the pace, but the other wings in Dallas will have to prove their ability to translate defense into offense if the Mavericks want to play faster.

The Mavericks did a far better job in their last preseason game with this as they got 20 fast-break points, which clocked in as their highest total fast-break points out of any preseason game out of the four they played.

Dallas certainly has the personnel to up the ante in transition, but they’ll need to prove it once the season starts since they haven’t had their full personnel together in one preseason game. Doncic’s role in pushing the pace of play will be very key, as he’ll need to be looking down the court to make an outlet pass the second the possession turns if he’s too tired to go end-to-end himself.

The Mavericks will need to make pushing the pace a much larger part of their offense this season, and it plays into another area of improvement they’ll need to focus on that we have next up on our list.