Dusty May and Masai Ujiri sit at a press conference for the Dallas Mavericks.
Dusty May and Masai Ujiri will help oversee a new era of Mavericks basketball.
The Mavericks entered a crucial offseason with a new brain trust, limited assets, and a mandate to establish a culture of winning around Cooper Flagg. Could they build a foundation capable of eventually competing with the elite of the Western Conference?
That responsibility falls to president of basketball operations Masai Ujiri, who has been busy since his hiring in May. Ujiri’s first move was appointing Mike Schmitz as general manager. The 36-year-old, a former draft guru for DraftExpress and ESPN, spent the last four years in Portland as assistant general manager and has literally scoured the globe, traveling to more than 50 countries evaluating talent. Those travels often put him in the same gyms as Ujiri, who recognized his eye for talent, his work ethic and his character.
Ujiri and Schmitz got busy reshaping Dallas roster, from a seismic head coach hire to drafting a quartet of high-upside rookies to some deft work on the trade market. With a new season tipping off next week, what clues do those moves give us about the contender Ujiri and Schmitz want to build?
Let’s start with the hiring of Dusty May as head coach, fresh off leading Michigan to the NCAA championship. With Flagg just 19 years old, Dallas is playing the long game, and the priority was to hire someone who could mold him and his eventual co-stars. May is a true teacher of the game, and his jump to the NBA is different from those of college coaches in the past. What was once a stark divide between the two levels is far less jarring in 2026; college basketball programs are essentially professional operations. The alternative would have been promoting a young NBA assistant ready for the next step. But there’s a significant difference between sitting in the second chair and the first. Maybe someone who has already been the one making the decisions, who knows the burdens of the hot seat, is the better bet.
From there, it was time to reshape the roster and get May more young talent to teach. You need veterans, and 34-year-old Kyrie Irving remains a key part of Dallas’ plans. But beyond Irving, the Mavericks will currently enter this season with Caleb Martin as the only player older than 28. Thirteen players—including potential two-way players—are 26 or younger.
The draft brought Morez Johnson Jr., a 6-foot-9, 250-pound beast who will be up for the fight when whistles get swallowed in the postseason. He’ll slot alongside Flagg and do the things you don’t want Flagg to have to do: defend the opponent’s best player, clean the glass, and embrace the physical work. Think Tyson Chandler next to Dirk Nowitzki. He can play the four or pivot to the five as well to maximize spacing.
Elsewhere, Dallas’ other first-round pick, Sergio De Larrea, showcased his vision and passing during Summer League. At 6-foot-5, the 20-year-old Spaniard is a point and combo guard who can immediately slide into the rotation. Virginia Tech product Tobi Lawal is a freak athlete and an intriguing two-way candidate. The Mavs’ final pick, Vsevolod Ishchenko, is a 6-foot-8 wing from Russia who fits the profile of the player teams look back on a few years from now and wonder why they didn’t take a stronger look at him.
Then came the trade market, which was powered by the return from February’s Anthony Davis deal. Much like a different big-man trade with Washington, the Davis deal created sorely needed financial flexibility and roster optionality. It brought back the expiring contract of Khris Middleton, A.J. Johnson (who had another year remaining on his deal), two first-round picks, and three second-rounders. It also yielded a $20.8 million trade exception that Dallas could absorb salary into.
One of those first-round picks became De Larrea. The other, combined with Middleton’s rights and Johnson, yielded Santi Aldama, Marcus Sasser, and Tarik Biberovic.
Aldama stretches the floor and plays with pace. Sasser played for Kelvin Sampson at the University of Houston, which tells you everything you need to know about his toughness and defensive mindset. A change of scenery and expanded opportunity may be exactly what the former first-round pick needs. Biberovic was the best shooter in Europe, period. The Mavericks desperately needed what the Turk brought last season. They attempted and made the third-fewest three-pointers in the league and ranked 27th in three-point percentage. In their first two preseason games, they attempted 50.8 percent of their shots from deep.
Because resources were limited, the front office had to get creative. By including Middleton in a sign-and-trade as part of the six-team deal, Dallas preserved the full $20.8 million trade exception. That flexibility enabled the Mavericks to use part of that exception to acquire Zaccharie Risacher, the No. 1 overall pick just two years ago.
Risacher, still just 21 years old, had fallen out of Atlanta’s rotation. That’s exactly the kind of upside swing you take when the opportunity allows. At 6-foot-8, he has size, length, shooting ability, and is a switchable defender. Speaking of length, only two players on the roster are shorter than 6-foot-5, and nine now stand 6-7 or taller.
Every acquisition won’t be a home run, but you bet on talent and take multiple swings and see who develops. The burden now shifts to May and his staff to develop them. The players, in turn, have to produce.
While the team has added 10 new players already, more moves could be coming. The first of those potential moves was to retain one of their own, signing Naji Marshall to a three-year, $52 million extension. The Mavs also bought out Klay Thompson, which got them down to 15 guaranteed contracts entering training camp. (Dwight Powell, who has played the fifth-most games in Mavs history, is vying to make the opening roster on a nonguaranteed deal.) The Mavericks own six first-round picks, three of which are currently tradeable, although some carry swap obligations. They have no second-round picks. They still possess $7.8 million of their trade exception and roughly $12 million of their mid-level exception (you can trade a player into that as well).
The Mavericks enter 2026-2027 younger, more athletic, physical, longer, more skilled, more versatile, and better equipped to shoot and space the floor. Better still, Ujiri and Schmitz didn’t have to surrender too much value to pull that off. And they’ve done it all while maximizing the skill set to fit around their 19-year-old generational talent.
The job is far from done, but the new front office understands the assignment. And despite them being on the job less than six months, we now understand how they plan to ace that test.
Brian Dameris
Brian Dameris