With the 2023-2024 NBA offseason currently underway, the Dallas Mavericks are one among many teams that have made significant upgrades and changes to their roster in order to achieve the ultimate goal of winning an NBA title. Fans will remember that the Mavs came painfully close to winning a championship last season. Unfortunately, they ended up losing to the Boston Celtics in 5 games.
As a result, the Mavs decided to make some inclusions to their roster and brought on Klay Thompson. Dallas signed a 3-year contract worth $50 million with Thompson. While one might assume that this was a good move that will help the Mavericks become significantly better, there is no way to know that the addition of Klay Thompson is going to help the team greatly.
The Mavericks added Klay Thompson to maintain their dominance in the Western Conference
Many NBA experts agree that the era of dynasties has come to an end. Most championship teams over the past half a decade have won and then never managed to establish themselves as defending champions. The same can be said about the teams that make it to the Finals but end up losing.
BREAKING: Free agent Klay Thompson plans to join the Dallas Mavericks on a three-year, $50M deal with a player option, sources tell ESPN. Thompson ends his historic Warriors run as part of a multi-team sign-and-trade that’ll also send Josh Green to Charlotte. pic.twitter.com/4GJ5hR3H5o
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) July 1, 2024
In order to prevent their team from dropping in terms of performance next season, the Mavericks decided that bringing on a three-point specialist like Klay Thompson could help the Mavs’ offense to a great extent. After all, Klay does not have a high ball usage rate. He could contribute to the scoring without disputing the flow of offense that the Mavs have become used to.
Since Luka Doncic is quite good at driving the ball and kicking it out to open teammates, the opposition needs to guard the Mavericks with more attention to detail. While the majority of fans would think that adding Thompson makes the Mavs better, one should wonder if that is truly the case.
Klay Thompson is at the backend of his career and could be a defensive liability
Until this trade occurred, Kyrie Irving was the oldest player on the Mavericks at 32. Now, 34-year-old Klay Thompson will be added to the team with the hopes of tapping into whatever he may have remaining at this point in his career.
While adding Thompson should be an upgrade, one should wonder if the Mavs will be able to have Thompson, Doncic, and Irving on the court at the same time. While the team’s offense may do well, their defense is expected to take a big hit. Although Klay was a good defender during the earlier stages of his career, his competence in that domain has reduced over the past few years.
There is no point in adding Klay to the Mavs unless plan to outscore every opponent and ignore playing defense. It might make more sense to ask Thompson to command the second unit for stretches of games. Only time will tell if Klay will be the addition that helped the Dallas Mavericks win a championship.