Do Mavs Have 'Most to Gain' From Moving Up in NBA Draft Lottery?
"Can you imagine, dude? Oh my goodness. What do you do?," asked The Ringer's Kevin O'Connor shared his sentiments on the idea of the Dallas Mavericks potentially pairing Luka Doncic with the projected No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 NBA draft, Victor Wembanyama.
On Wednesday's episode of "The Ringer's NBA Draft Show," O'Connor and J. Kyle Mann discussed which teams have the most and least to gain in next week's draft lottery, which included the Mavs, who have the 10th-best odds of winning it.
"You already have Luka, one of the best players in all of basketball," O'Connor said. "If they were to slide up to No. 1 and you pair Wemby with Luka, that obviously goes without saying how magical that combination would be with those two guys."
If the Mavs land Wembanyama to pair with Doncic, the league should be on full notice for at least the next decade. But, what if the Mavs move up but don't land at No. 1? Still, Dallas would be one of the biggest immediate beneficiaries with adding a young talent in the likes of Scoot Henderson, Brandon Miller, and Amen Thompson or having a top-4 pick in their arsenal to trade for a win-now piece.
"If they were to move up, they're a team that suddenly could really propel themselves back into that upper class in the Western Conference that they have so quickly fallen out of," O'Connor said.
"It'd be a better version of what we imagined he would be like with Porzingis," Mann said of pairing Doncic with Wembanyama. A better version of the Doncic-KP duo sounds like a dream Mavs fans would want to be a part of.
We'll find out the Mavs' lottery fate on Tuesday in Chicago as GM Nico Harrison is set to represent his team when those envelopes are opened.
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