The Mavericks are stuck in embarrassing company for a reason that makes no sense

There are only three teams in the entire NBA without a five-man lineup that has played at least 100 minutes together. Surprisingly, the Dallas Mavericks are one of them, alongside the Indiana Pacers and Washington Wizards, neither of whom won even 20 games this season. That alone shows just how far the Mavericks are from forming a cohesive unit.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. The Mavericks weren’t supposed to be a part of a group like this so soon after an NBA Finals appearance in 2024. Sure, the same could be said for the Pacers, who made an even more recent Finals run, but Indiana lost its best player to a torn Achilles in Game 7, effectively turning this season into a gap year.

The Mavericks' self-inflicted decline

Dallas doesn’t have the injury excuse. What it does have is a series of decisions that derailed what once looked like an ascending team.

It starts with parting ways with Luka Doncic, the player the roster was built around, and pivoting to Anthony Davis, a talented but ill-fitting replacement given the team’s construction and timeline. And that move was only the beginning of a string of questionable choices. The Mavericks didn’t just take a step back — they changed direction entirely, and the roster has yet to recover.

Dallas was built without balance

The current Mavericks roster is overloaded with wings and bigs but lacks a true facilitator. From the outset of the 2025–26 season, point guard play has been a persistent issue, and it hasn’t improved.

Dallas has uncovered some intriguing options in Ryan Nembhard and Brandon Williams, but neither profiles as more than a stopgap starter. The results have even reflected that. The Mavericks’ two worst five-man lineups to log at least 40 minutes each include one of the two guards.

The Mavericks’ most-used lineup hasn’t been disastrous, posting a -0.6 net rating in 92 minutes, but its flaws are easy to spot.

Featuring Cooper Flagg, Daniel Gafford, Max Christie, Naji Marshall, and P.J. Washington, the group is long and athletic, yet limited offensively. It has just one reliable shooter in Christie and one true go-to scorer in Flagg. The rest bring useful skills, but there’s too much overlap. It’s a lineup built on similar archetypes rather than complementary ones.

Neither the Indiana Pacers nor the Washington Wizards get positive returns from their most-used lineups. Like Dallas, however, both teams see better results from their second-most-used groups. It’s a strange trend for teams near the bottom of the standings, but in the Mavericks’ case, the explanation is simple: their more effective lineups include a primary facilitator.

The Mavericks are without an identity

Nonetheless, this isn’t really about which lineup has been better. It’s about the fact that the Mavericks haven’t been able to rely on any lineup at all.

They’ve gone from building around a perennial MVP candidate to cycling through combinations in a lost season. It’s a steep fall, and being grouped with the league’s worst teams only underscores how far Dallas has fallen from a roster-building standpoint.