Heading into the 2025-26 season, there's a lot to be excited about for Dallas Mavericks fans. With Cooper Flagg coming in, he could elevate Dallas' ceiling tremendously, and he may even be so good from the get-go that some of Dallas' concerns over their lack of playmaking and shot creation can be alleviated, as Kyrie Irving will obviously miss an indefinite amount of time rehabbing from a torn ACL next season.
There are plenty of good reasons to be cautiously optimistic about Dallas' season next year, even if Irving's absence will prevent the Mavericks from reaching their peak as quickly as they'd hope. However, plenty of skeptics in the national media are still severely underrating how talented Dallas' roster is, and the most recent case of this comes in the form of Bleacher Report ranking Dallas' starting five as only the 18th-best starting unit in the league.
While Bleacher Report was quick to cite that a healthy Irving would've had the Mavericks inside in the top-10 on their list, some of the starting five's that are ranked ahead of the Mavericks are completely ludicrous, even if one is skeptical over Dallas' decision to play big-ball with their frontcourt rotation.
Mavericks' starting five is being seriously underrated
It's completely reasonable that Dallas isn't inside the top 10-12 with Irving out, but they still have a far better starting unit than practically every team through the 13-17 range. For starters, Bleacher Report ranked the Indiana Pacers and Boston Celtics' starting units at spots 16 and 17, respectively, yet both of those teams are missing their best players with torn Achilles'.
Bleacher Report is projecting Dallas will start D'Angelo Russell, Klay Thompson, Flagg, Anthony Davis, and Dereck Lively II, and this five-man group has also been the consensus projected starting five amongst most Mavericks fans heading into next season. While concerns over a lack of point-of-attack defense in this group are certainly valid, this group is far better than Bleacher Report is giving them credit for, especially since Russell is primed more than ever for a bounce-back season offensively.
In all likelihood, Dallas' starting lineup will be fluid game-to-game, especially toward the beginning of the season when Jason Kidd is still figuring out how to best optimize his rotation. But even if Dallas runs with the five-man unit that Bleacher Report and many fans think they will to start next season, they'd be putting a unit together that has far more talent compared to some of the other teams above them.
Optimizing the spacing between Davis and Lively II could prove to be a challenge for the Mavericks offensively, but they have a collection of savvy veteran players surrounding their two youngsters in Flagg and Lively II in this projected starting five, and both Thompson and even Russell are very solid shooters who use off-ball movement well.
So long as spacing concerns don't override the physical dominance Dallas would project to inflict on opposing frontcourt with this starting five, there's no reason for the Mavericks to be ranked this low. Flagg is a workhorse and plays one of the most selfless brands of basketball out of any No.1 pick in NBA history, and he's more than willing to do the dirty work offensively when it comes to being an active screener and cutter. For Bleacher Report to use Flagg's inexperience as a reason he won't impact day-one winning is absurd, and this clearly plays into their poor evaluation of Dallas' starting five.
