Ranking All 15 Players on the Mavericks 2023 Roster, Worst to Best
2. Kyrie Irving
That Kyrie Irving is only the second-best player on the Mavs obviously speaks volumes about how good our best player is, but more on him in a minute.
Kyrie's obviously not as popular around the league as he once was, and at 31 years old it remains to be seen how much longer his athleticism-heavy style continues to be as dangerous as it is, but there's no denying what he brings to the table in 2023.
Despite concerns about how well it would work playing two ball-dominant stars next to each other, Kyrie averaged 26.5 points, 6.2 assists and 5.2 rebounds per game in 16 contests played alongside Luka.
That production is right in line with what we’re used to seeing from Kyrie (26.1 points & 5.3 boards in 2022-23, 26.3 points 5.5 boards in 2021-22) despite the fact that his usage rate was down to 26.5% in the games he and Doncic both suited up for. For context, he hasn’t posted a usage rate below 28.9% in any of his last eight seasons.
As the NBA No. 8 per-game scorer with the fifth-highest effective field goal percentage among qualifying guards last season, it's clear that Kyrie is still one of the most dangerous offensive threats in the game.
1. Luka Doncic
You weren't scrolling to the end of this list to find out if Luka Doncic was No. 1. You scrolled here to read all of the countless ways we can praise his game.
He finished last season No. 2 in points (32.4), No. 6 in assists (8.0) No. 24 in rebounds (8.8) per game. He barely trailed Lillard in the rankings among guards in effective field goal percentage (11th), and he was right up there with Joel Embiid and Nikola Jokic in most of the catch-all advanced metrics, even though those tend to favor big men.
He's not the best pure shooter, he doesn't have the best pure handle and he's not the best pure facilitator in the game. But he's elite in all three of those categories, and there's simply nobody better in the NBA at running an offense than Doncic right now.
It was a shame to see how little help he got for most of last season, but Nico Harrison has made a clear effort to use this offseason to build a team designed to maximize Luka's strengths and revolve around his abilities.
This Mavericks team will go as far as Luka can carry it, and that's a pretty good place to be