Mavs eye draft reset
After the Luka trade, Dallas has pivoted into future planning — reports say the Mavericks are focusing on the NBA Draft Lottery and one mock projects them landing the No. 2 pick. (poundingtherock.com) That mock pairs the No. 2 projection with a 6‑foot‑6 NCAA scorer who averaged 20.2 PPG as the kind of talent Dallas could add alongside Cooper Flagg. (sportingnews.com)
Dallas went from trading a 25-year-old Luka Dončić for Anthony Davis on February 2, 2025 to sitting at 25-55 and sixth in the 2026 draft lottery standings by April 9, 2026. The same franchise that made the 2024 National Basketball Association Finals is now being discussed more for ping-pong balls than playoff matchups. (nba.com) (sportingnews.com) That shift is not just outside speculation. A San Antonio Spurs game preview published April 10 said Dallas had “both eyes set on the National Basketball Association Draft Lottery” as the regular season closed. (poundingtherock.com) The lottery is the National Basketball Association’s system for the 14 non-playoff teams, and record only buys you odds, not a draft slot. Dallas entered April 10 with an 8.3 percent chance at the No. 1 pick and a 34.8 percent chance at a top-four pick, which is good enough to dream but nowhere near a guarantee. (sportingnews.com) This is why one mock draft can show Dallas at No. 2 even while the standings show the Mavericks at No. 6 in lottery position. Mock drafts are really two guesses stacked together: first a simulated lottery order, then a prediction about which player each team would take. (tankathon.com) (sportingnews.com) One of those projections now has Dallas jumping to No. 2 and taking Kansas guard Darryn Peterson. Sporting News, citing a Bleacher Report mock by Zach Buckley, said Peterson is a 6-foot-6 scorer who averaged 20.2 points, 4.2 rebounds, 1.6 assists, and 1.4 steals in 29 minutes per game. (sportingnews.com) Another live mock, Tankathon’s simulator, also shows why Peterson keeps coming up near the top of this class. As of April 11, Tankathon listed him at No. 2 overall behind Brigham Young University wing AJ Dybantsa, with Peterson at 25.0 points per 36 minutes. (tankathon.com) The Dallas angle gets bigger because the Mavericks already used a shock lottery jump once. Sporting News noted that Dallas had only a 1.8 percent chance at the top pick last year and still won it, then used that pick on Cooper Flagg. (sportingnews.com) So the front-office question has changed from “How do we build around Luka Dončić?” to “How fast can we build a new core?” In the most optimistic version, Dallas would add another teenage perimeter scorer to Flagg, keep Kyrie Irving as the veteran organizer, and try to turn two straight lottery hauls into a reset that looks less like a collapse and more like a detour. (nba.com) (sportingnews.com) The catch is that Dallas has not landed anything yet. On April 11, the hard facts are a 25-55 record, sixth-best lottery odds, and a handful of mocks imagining the Mavericks two spots higher than they currently sit. (sportingnews.com) (tankathon.com) That is why this story feels strange around the league. A franchise that traded away one of basketball’s safest superstars is now depending on the least controllable part of roster building: a lottery machine and the hope that the next 6-foot-6 scorer becomes the player who makes the Luka Dončić era feel survivable. (nba.com) (sportingnews.com)
