3 Overreactions to Mavericks' Preseason Opener Loss vs. Timberwolves

Folks, the NBA season is here. It may have been at noon in Abu Dhabi, but we got our first game action in months with the Dallas Mavericks opening the preseason against the Minnesota Timberwolves.

You never want to overreact to a single game, let alone a preseason game, but also when it's the first of the season you absolutely want to overreact. We've been starved for basketball. Give us this.

Plus, with every overreaction comes a little bit of truth too.

Here are my three overreactions (and the truth that might lie within them) from the Mavs vs T-Wolves preseason opener.

Mavericks vs Timberwolves: 3 Overreactions

1. Luka Doncic is Winning MVP

Luka Doncic went off for 25 points in 16 minutes in his season debut. I'm no mathematician, but with that scoring pace for the 36.2 minutes per game last year means he's going to average over 50 a night.

"Small market" team or not, nobody is going to be able to ignore Luka when he's averaging 50!

Okay, maybe he won't average 50. But what we saw in this debut was a very encouraging sign that he could be in for the biggest offensive season of his career, which would absolutely put him up among the favorites to win MVP.

The shot distribution between Doncic (14 field goal attempts plus 7 free-throws) and Kyrie Irving (6 attempts from the field, 0 free-throws) is hard to ignore.

Everyone wants to create drama around whether Kyrie and Luka can coexist, but from what we saw in a limited sample last year and now in the first game of the 2023-24 campaign, they can. It just happens to be with Doncic remaining the clear No. 1 option in the offense.