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What are Mavs fans expecting to see from the team this season?

Photo: Michael Lark/Dallas Sports Fanatic

What are Mavs fans expecting to see from the team this season?

With the NBA season set to officially begin on Tuesday, it seemed like a good time to poll the Mavs fan base about various topics regarding their team this upcoming season. On Saturday morning, I asked six poll questions on the Dallas Sports Fanatic Twitter account and was interested to see if any surprising results would sprout from the questions.

This one is encouraging because it means the fans have reasonable expectations for this season. Last year was about getting back to the postseason and gaining valuable experience on the big stage and they certainly got that in their tough six game series loss to the Clippers. This season should be about taking the next step. The next step after making the playoffs isn’t to win it all. That would look like Buddy the Elf on the escalator. The next step is to win a round… or maybe two? Don’t want to get greedy.

The Josh Richardson hype train is mowing down the tracks here in DFW and rightfully so. He’s played really well on the court in three preseason games and has been about as positive of a presence there is for the team off the court. His interview on The Ticket this week was definitely a fun peek into what he’s really like just as a person, not just a basketball player.

Mavericks fans are understandably a bit tired of their MVP-caliber superstar struggling at the free throw line. After 21 seasons of seeing Dirk Nowitzki shoot 88% from the free throw line, it’s been a tough pill to swallow seeing the uber-talented Luka Doncic shoot just 74% from the charity stripe over his first two seasons. While I don’t necessarily agree with the notion that Luke becoming an 80% or better free throw shooter will suddenly sway all of the MVP votes in his favor, it certainly would help his stat line considering the volume of free throw attempts he gets. If he were to shoot in the 80s from the line it would certainly add a point or a point and a half to his per game scoring average and that would likely push it up and over 30 points per game if he scores like he did last year. 30 points isn’t the be-all end-all, but is certainly a big and sexy round number that people look at for scoring averages.

More Josh Richardson hype. His career-high in points per game was the 16.6 he put up in 2018-2019 while with the Miami Heat. Meanwhile Tim Hardaway Jr. scored 15.8 last season in a career-year when it came to shooting efficiency. I would still vote for Hardaway Jr. to be the overall third leading scorer when all is said and done, but that doesn’t mean either one of them aren’t capable of nights when they’ll be the first or second leading scorer for the team as well.

The only thing beating the hype around Josh Richardson on the Mavs this season is the excitement towards seeing the return of the classic green jerseys. Understandably so, because they are so great. Luckily, we’ll get to see them a lot.

These results seem fair as well. The Mavericks went 43-32 in 75 regular season games last season, so expecting them to do about the same or slightly better in a 72 game regular season that will feature an unpredictable COVID-19 presence seems about right. If they were to win 45 games, that would be the about the same as winning 51 games in an 82 game season.

The Mavericks kick off their regular season on the road Wednesday night at 9:30 against the new-look Phoenix Suns.

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Editor-in-Chief for Dallas Fanatic| Born and raised in Dallas, I received my Bachelor's Degree from the University of North Texas in 2014 after majoring in Radio/TV/Film. I'm a lover of all sports and support every DFW team. For random sports and other thoughts, find me on Twitter: @DylanDuell

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