The Dallas Mavericks season is over, and what a strange season it was. It was the season of Luka, shutdowns, and the bubble. Our guest, Nick Angstadt, is talking Mavs, this past season, and what we can look forward to next season. In an unexpected playoff run as Nick says it, “everything that the Mavericks could do in the playoffs was cake compared to the future of this team.”
Enjoy our Mavs discussion with Nick in episode #82, and explore other episodes of Hustle & Pro.
Show Notes
- [01:00] Quick hits with Nick Angstadt
- [3:45] Mavs Season Overall
- [5:25] Luka.
- [11:45] Porzingis
- [15:15] What we were looking to add for next year
- [19:12] Thoughts on the bubble
- [21:53] Lockon Mavs show
Resources within this episode:
- Nick Angstadt & Issaac Harris on Twitter: @NickVanExit | @IsaacLHarris
- Locked On Mavs Podcast: Twitter: @LockedOnMavs | Megaphone
- Dallas Mavericks: mavs.com | Facebook @dallasmavs | Instagram | Twitter @DallasMavs
- Kelly Walker: Instagram: @kelly_walkertexas | Twitter: @kelly_walker_TX
Connect with Lifestyle Frisco:
Transcript: (machine-generated)
Welcome to Hustle and Pro season two, talking sports in Frisco from youth to pro. Now here’s your host Kelly Walker.
Nick:
Welcome to hustle. One pro season two, talking sports and Frisco from youth to pro. Now here’s your host Kelly walk,
Kelly:
Welcome to Hustle and Pro. Today we have fellow podcaster Nick Angstadt here to talk to us about some Mavs. Nick, along with Mavs writer, Isaac Harris, hosts Locked On Mavs podcast, a daily dose of Mavs insight. So thanks for joining us today, Nick, how are you?
Nick:
Absolutely doing okay. Today. Mavs season is over wish it could have lasted just a little bit longer. Maybe even stretched it to a game seven or something, but yeah, man, that Clippers team was an absolute buzzsaw and Hey, it was an awesome season. We’ve been saying on the podcast and everything that the Mavericks are going to do in the playoffs is just cake compared to, you know, the future of this team. So feeling good about the maps going forward and everyone else should too, for sure.
Kelly:
Good. Yeah, it’s tough. We just kind of, you know, we got over the hopefully the quick lull, of being done and now you can look forward to that. So we’ll talk about that. Okay. Before we jump into that though, I do have a few quick hits that I like to ask all my guests just to get a, get a pulse on, on you. So who would you say is your favorite athlete? Just all time favorite
Nick:
Man, my favorite all time athlete. I mean, it seems so cliche to say, but Dirk Nowitzky. I mean, how can you pick somebody else besides him? Just that’s not cliche. That’s awesome. The time that the time that I got to spend covering the Mavericks and being in the locker room and being around him in moments where the cameras weren’t necessarily on him, but, you know, cameras are always on him and in some capacity or another, but just seeing how he interacted with fans that got brought to him after a tough game or after a really bad loss or after even just a late night, the way that he interacted with fans, the way that he does his, you know, Dirk Hero Celebrity, you know, baseball game and things like that, the Dirk Foundation, the tennis tournaments, you know, all the things I saw from Dirk. And then on top of that, just as play the fact that he’s the greatest Maverick of all time, you know, he, he’s definitely my favorite athlete. Um,
Kelly:
It’s not cliche, it’s cliche. If somebody says it that just randomly pulls it out of the air and doesn’t know much about Dirk, but when you have that, you know, off the court Dirk experience, and then you say it, that’s what it means. You know, it means something that you really know who he is on off the court and still appreciate him and say he’s the best. So I love that.
Nick:
Yeah. It took, it just took it to another level. You know, once you, you know, they say never meet your heroes, Dirk is one where you want to meet the hero. Right? Like he is the one where you’re like, man, that guy lived up to everything. I would hope for and more. There’s just, there’s never really a bad day in his world. There’s a man. I’m glad he didn’t take that job in Brooklyn because I think it would be so weird if he, if he was part of the Brooklyn nets organization. I don’t know if you follow that stuff.
Kelly:
Yeah. He needs to stick around here. Well, you know, and, and with, um, our buddy Steve Nash being up there. Yeah. It doesn’t hurt with Steve being up there so much, but yeah, it would hurt a little bit if Dirk was gone from here and went to another team after all that time. All right. What about your favorite sports movie?
Nick:
Oh man. My favorite sports movie that is, that’s a tough one. Um, Space Jam is probably up there. Um, I love a crossover with, with Jordan. I love the uh, no, the bill Murray moments in that. Um, yeah, no, I can’t really think of a lot of sports movies I’m super into, but yeah.
Kelly:
Are you ready for space jam 2?
Nick:
Oh, I guess it’s ready. As anyone can be. It’s like, I don’t know. It’s like they went back and they’re trying to add to, you know, something that was perfect to begin with. So I guess I’m, I guess I’m ready for it. They released the jerseys recently and they looked kind of weird. And so I’m just, I’m just expecting of everything to be odd. Right. It’s everything. Everything about that movie is going to be odd. So who knows? I mean, I’ll watch it for sure, but we’ll see how good it is. Yeah.
Kelly:
All those jerseys. It definitely caught me. I will goofy, but that’s kind of, I guess. Yeah. Okay. So let’s talk about this season, this map season. Um, it was obviously unusual. It was interrupted season and then we had the restart this summer and then the 2020 buzzword, the bubble and then the playoffs. Um, so just kind of overall, how do you describe the season overall and um, is it where you expected this team to land? When the beginning of the season started?
Nick:
Man, I was looking back at some of my preseason notes. We do, we do five days a week podcast on Locked on Mavs. So even during the off season, we do five days a week talking about anything. We’re doing a bunch of trade targets right now, free agent stuff. I mean, we are as, as niche and as deep dive as we could possibly get into things. And I think about this Mavericks team all the time and I had followed them. I had been in the locker room with them. I had been so close to them. I saw the trajectory of this Maverick’s team and I still undercut this team. They still exceeded a lot of my expectations. I think I went into the season thinking that man, it’d be awesome if they got to be 500, right. Cause they were, they were like the lottery last year.
Nick:
They were, you know, what do they win? 33, 35 games last season. And so to have the jump that they did this year to go from this team that is in a lottery, that’s not really a playoff team in the really tough Western conference to become the seventh seed. I could pretty convincing seven seed ahead of all those other teams, you know, the warriors, you know, losing a lot of guys to injuries and things like that aside the Mavericks held their own in this conference and they were able to make the playoffs. They won two games against the Clippers. I mean, that is just completely far and above what I expected from them this season. And you have to all just point to Luka, I mean, that guy is, is everything we expected it and more, he just living up to everything that people thought he could be. And that’s probably the only reason why that the Mavs exceeded expectations.
Kelly:
Well, that’s, that’s what I was going to ask you next was there’s actually so much to talk about. I’m sure you guys talk Luka a lot. Doing five days a week on, Locked On Mavs. Um, obviously his performance was off the charts and um, there was a lot of Luka in the last few games, a lot of talk, um, with all the drama with files. And so just kind of give me your thoughts then on Luka as the asset and you know, being the new face of the Mavs since your Dirk has gone.
Nick:
I know. So Dirk has gone and talk about like, like handing off the torch from one guy to another. I mean, good Lord. We just talked glowingly about how great Dirk is as a person. And obviously he was a great player and, you know, won the 2011 title. But as there, there hasn’t been like a Dallas franchise it’s just passed the torch from one guy to another, this seamlessly. Right. I think I can’t even think of one. Uh, and so going from this guy and then there’s a chance Luka could be better than Dirk. I mean, he’s already better than him at this point in his career. So, you know, looking back at where Dirk was in year two.
Kelly:
Yeah. Yeah. It seems like it took Dirk a little longer to develop into what he, you know, what did he claim then? Luka is so young already we’ve already seen.
Nick:
Right. And there’s different. There’s different reasons for that, right? He’s a ball handler. So he’s the one that gets to control the pace of the game. He’s the one that gets to control, you know, when he shoots and things like that, he’s more of a decision maker. So it’s easier for those guys to come into the league and to put up a bunch of numbers and to affect the game a little bit more than these big guys were, especially when dirk came in the NBA. I, it was so different than it is now where he’s relying on a bunch of point guards and he’s relying on a bunch of guys to get him the ball in spots. He’s not the one setting out for himself. And so there’s a little bit of a difference with that. Dirk was going to come around a little bit slower than, you know, somebody like Luka and he paid dirk paved the way for Luka, for sure. So it’s a, you know, a lot of the, the, you know, the work that dirk did is, you know, guys like Luka are now benefiting from all kinds of European players are benefiting from the work that Dirk did.
Kelly:
Right. Speaking of Luka’s age, do you, as a fan, do you want to see his maturity level change? Like when we saw, like I mentioned the drama and the Clippers series with the foul calls and, um, what we’ve seen from him, do you, do you like that and see it as just the passion? Or do you think he needs to kind of learn to channel some of that a little bit better?
Nick:
It’s hard to ask more of Luka, right? Like looking at this kid and he’s, he’s 21 years old. He just, you know, just recently, I mean, right before they went to the bubble, he was able to drink in the U S I mean, it’s just wild that we’re asking so much of this, this kid already. And I think expectations have just ratcheted up so much for him that you forget that he is 21. You forget that he is, you know, he’s still like kind of a kid, right? Like a lot of people would say that, that guy’s a kid.
Kelly:
Yeah. In real life, you excuse a lot of behavior by 21 year olds, they’re going to grow out of it.
Nick:
Right. For sure. I mean, look at all the colleges across America, there’s, you know, Oh, I did that back when I was in college. Right. Luka would still be in college if he, you know, he graduated and went four years. So I think you can ask a little bit more of him in the sense that with the maturity, you know, for the calls and the rough, the roughness in that series, I think it gets to be a problem when he’s complaining to the ref so much that he doesn’t get back on defense and it interrupts the flow of his game. Right. He doesn’t let it get to him a lot. You can tell that he kind of relishes the fact that he can go back and forth with somebody. He kind of gets energy from that, where a player like Russell Westbrook, he gets, he tries to get energy from those kinds of tough moments. And then he goes out and bricks like five shots in a row, right. He takes that energy. He takes that energy and uses it in a negative way. Whereas Luka seems take it and use it in a positive way. Right. He builds up like all this kinetic energy and he just turns it into production and potential energy. And so I think you can ask a little bit more of him to clean it up as far as letting his frustration affect his play. But that’s just, that’s such a small thing to ask somebody to do that. You’re, you’re now getting to such [inaudible]. The thing with Marcus Morris, I think there’s always going to be guys like that. Right. I mean, I’m sure you saw the last dance documentary about Michael Jordan and you saw that the bad boys pistons, they beat the mess out of that guy. And they did it on purpose. They said it in the documentary that we were going to beat him down. We were going to put him on his butt because he needed to, uh, they knew he needed a tough enough and he, he didn’t have the strength to be able to go through a team like that. And Luka stood up to all that stuff.
Kelly:
It’s like a strategy, like you said, you go out and you, you smell weakness. And you show that these show, that other guy, like what, what you’re here to do. And you make a statement right off the bat. Right.
Nick:
For sure. And I think that part of, you know, what the Mavericks need to add this off season is somebody like that. Somebody that’s an enforcer, that’s what we’ve been calling them. Somebody that’s going to, you know, be a little bit of a bully and be out to be out there. And you know, a guy that you want in your corner, right. If you’re in a dark alley and you’re walking down all of a sudden, like, I want this guy behind me, I want this guy in a, you know, in a fight with me, uh, just somebody like that. And so who knows who that’s going to be, we talk about all the time on the show, but yeah, I think Luca can, he can clean up a little bit of that kind of stuff, but I like a star player with fight in them.
Nick:
Right. You’ve seen some of these guys where I use Nikola Jokić It’s just an example. They, you know, they were getting beat down by the Clippers and you just saw no fight in them. And maybe that’s because they were, um, you know, maybe that’s cause they were just tired. They just played two days ago. But it’s just, it doesn’t seem like when it, when it comes down to it, he’s going to be the one to, you know, to, to boost the rest of the team around him. I think Ben Simmons is a similar type player like that, where he’s the one that’s going to, you know, get everybody rallied around him and going to be, um, you know, a leader. I think part of Luka’s energy is, is, is very compelling for people. And I think that’s why this team is so eager to, you know, fall in line behind him. The Mavericks have such a clear hierarchy of who their best players are. It’s Luka, it’s KP, then it’s everyone else. And I think everyone falls behind in that so easily because Luka’s attitude is infectious. And so you get the good and the bad with that. Right? You get the, you know, some of the immaturity
Kelly:
More good than bad. Like you said, you don’t want the opposite. You don’t want the sheepish nature. The somebody that you don’t see, the fight, you it’s hard for the team to get behind somebody like that.
Nick:
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It’s hard to ask more of Luka, but man, he’s a, he’s already so good already.
Kelly:
Yeah. So with Porzingis. So let’s talk about him as an addition when he got here. Of course we all, we all were looking at our chops with the two of them being here. Um, and then in the season, when, when he gets ejected from,
Nick:
They went six games. So Porzingis went out, they, he played like 14 minutes, the first game, and then he got injured and he only played three total games in the series. So he didn’t play in game.
Kelly:
So when, when he leaves the first game and then, you know, we find out he’s not coming back for injury. Um, you kind of immediately the, when he comes out of our sails a little bit, when we realize it’s really up to Luka now, um, and then now we’re hearing, you know, he’s, I don’t know if he’s, what all are we hearing about his recovery that he’s hoping that I’ll have surgery and he’s just doing recovery. Is that right?
Nick:
Yeah. I don’t, I don’t, I haven’t heard anything about surgery. You know, it’s, it’s a lateral meniscus tear and we’re going to have more on our podcast about that. We have a, you know, a sports doctor that we bring on every once in a while for stuff like that, it doesn’t seem to be too serious of a, of a tear with players have come back within the season and have, uh, you know, played with, with something like that. And so we’re not taking it too, too much to heart. It’s also the other knee besides the one that he tore the ACL on. So we’re not too worried about it. However, he did miss a bunch of games during the season with right knee soreness, which is that same knee. He tore that meniscus in. So there’s definitely concerns. He’s seven foot three. He’s a big guy. He’s, you know, tried to put on a lot of weight this off season. And, uh, it doesn’t seem like his body responded to it. Well, Isaac, Isaac Harris, you know, my cohost did a story for mavs.com About the right playing weight for Luka. And I don’t think for a Porzingis and I still don’t think he knows exactly what the right playing weight for him is. It’s just so strange. He’s the unicorn, right?
Kelly:
Regardless, because of the, just his body type, we don’t expect it to ever get great. Right. As far as his health and ability to play more games and every season, right. I mean, and his age, he’s just what, like what do, what’s a good expectation to get out of him next season?
Nick:
Yeah. It’s a good, it’s a good question for fans. I think that, man, if you want to keep your expectations low, yeah. Expect that something’s going to happen like this every once in a while. But I mean, it’s happened in the past where, you know, looking at a guy like Joel, he missed his first three seasons in the NBA with different kinds of injuries. And he’s now been totally fine. He’s missed a couple of games here and there for what they call injury management or load management, but he’s been relatively healthy throughout his career. And I think that a guy like that you can look at and say it is possible for a guy to deal with injuries early in his career, then work with a certain medical staff that’s going to help him. And I think Porzingis going from the Knicks medical staff to the Mavericks medical staff, it’s probably going to be helpful for them. We’ll see if that proves to be true, but I’ve trust in Casey Smith, the Mavs, you know, a head of he’s head of like sports medicine plus something else like, like player wellness. It’s like something else. Now he got a pro he got like a promotion where they created a job for him. Right.
Kelly:
Magic to make all these players get up.
Nick:
Exactly, exactly. Head of, uh, you know, Dirk, contingency plan. So yeah.
Kelly:
Yeah. Those guys have been busy lately.
Nick:
Yeah. So, but I have trust in him and I think that, you know, they’ll, they’ll figure out the best way to keep pushing us on the court. And I think going forward, we should expect for him to play. I think the Mavericks, you know, they made a huge investment in him last summer with that extension. And so I don’t think they would have done that if they had grave concerns that this guy would be like the next Greg Oden.
Kelly:
We’re coming up on the finals. And then the draft is a couple of days after that. Right. And then free agency starts two or three more days after that. So we think, um, what are you guys saying then is what are we looking for? You mentioned some, some muscle, uh, earlier, but what, what are we wanting to add to the Mavs roster to see for next year?
Nick:
Yeah. So I think in the draft, this is what we’ve been saying. And we’ve been putting off and putting off our draft research. So I’m not going to give you names because we just keep putting it off, not knowing when, when it’s going to happen. And we also think that I don’t think the Mavericks bring it to rookies into training camp next year. I think that, you know, they have two picks. They have the 18th pick and then they have the 31st pick, which is the Warrior’s pick that they got it’s the first pick in the second round. And so I think that they maybe choose two players, but then I think they trade one of them or both of them for a veteran player. So as far as the draft, I think that they’ll maybe take somebody, but I could see them packaging those assets for something else.
Nick:
I think that the type of players, the Mavericks one, they definitely need wing defenders. I mean, you saw it in the clipper series, you saw that they just didn’t have an answer for Kawhi Leonard or Paul George, you know, Paul, George, the answer for him was let him get in his head, right? Let him turn into, play off and not hit shots. That was pretty much the answer football George. And then there’s no answer for Kawhi. I mean, the nuggets have better wing defenders in the Mavericks do, and they didn’t defend them well in game one at all, either. So they need, but they definitely need a couple more players like that, that can defend on the wing. They need probably a secondary ball handler. That would be something that would take this team to the next level. You saw how well Trey Burke did in the bubble. And I think a guy like that on a, you know, more talented guy than Trey Burke could come in and really thrive in a role like that. So I think that wing defenders and secondary ball handlers and creators, um, you know, maybe like a point guard or like a, you know, another guard I think would be huge for this team if they want to take another step.
Kelly:
So that sounds like confidence in that next year. You want veteran players that can make a difference quicker instead of developing younger guys.
Nick:
I think that the maps timeline has been pushed up. Right. You talked about expectations at the beginning. I mean, so let me ask you, did you think, what did you think this Maverick’s team was going to be like, how good did you expect this team to be going into the season?
Kelly:
From what I hear, you know, from what I listened to? No, I wasn’t expecting huge things. Um, so I think, I think what I thought of going in was playoffs would be a really high, great goal, but not an expectation. Right?
Nick:
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I think that the now, you know, that was kinda the expectation for a lot of fans is said, Oh, it’d be cool to make the playoffs. Some, some fans are all gonna say the one that title every year, right? No, it’s some fans are, but yeah, I think that now the timeline has been moved up. This team is ready to compete. Now they won two games against the Clippers. And if they can compete with that team, with the players, they have now imagine what they can do if they upgrade a couple of spots here and there. So it may happen this year where they upgrade a spot, but the summer of 2021, they’re going to have cap space for a max player. So they can bring in Kawhi is going to be a free agent. Paul George is going to be a free agent. And Giannis Antetokounmpo is going to be a free agent. Victor Oladipo is going to be a free, I mean, there’s a bunch of names. And so we’re really looking forward to that 2021 off season where, you know, whenever that happens, maybe it doesn’t happen until 2021 all the time. Lots of sketches have been pushed back, but that’s what you’re really looking for.
Kelly:
Big marquee names that could really change the landscape of what we’re looking at and what we’re used to with the maps too. If one of those names ends up here,
Nick:
It’d be wild. Remember that, that Miami team, the Mavericks played in the finals in 2011, everyone was against that team because they compile compiled all these stars. Mavericks could be that team in 2021, who knows,
Kelly:
Hey, I would love it. I mean, embrace it. Then you don’t love it when they’re on the other teams, but when it’s you guys getting it, then Hey,
Nick:
For sure. We’ll take that. Yeah, that’d be fun.
Kelly:
Well, fantastic. I guess one last thing when you mentioned summer of 2021, um, when we talk about the bubble, um, do you, did you like as a fan or as a person covering actually, um, what were your general thoughts about, about how they handled the bubble?
Nick:
I mean, you have to take your hat off to them. I mean, the way that they were able to just pull it off, right? We’re seeing all these different kinds of sports. We saw MLS really struggle with it at the beginning and not be able to keep FC Dallas in like FV Dallas just completely fell out of the bubble for a little bit. They’re like day one. We’ve we’ve seen teams like the Miami Marlins just completely, you know, have to fall out of games here and there with their, no, they’re kind of bubbles. I’m really interested to see what the Cowboys are going to do. Jerry Jones holds onto the fact that fans are gonna be able to watch their Cowboys in the stadium. And I don’t know about that, but the NBA was able to pull off however they did. And I think it went really well. I think so far, you know, they haven’t had any problems. They’ve been starting to introduce, you know, like players, families, and kids and stuff like that. I think that’s when you know, this is the next big step for them as far as how they can keep people safe and keep COVID out of their bubble basically.
Kelly:
So that’ll be a big deal if they can pull off that. I mean, they’ve obviously figured out how to get kids, get kids, get players in safely and keep them contained. And so now it’s like that next step. Can you get some outsiders in and keep everybody safe? And then that can make a big difference as to what happens going forward. If they ever have to do this, hopefully this is it. I mean, my gosh.
Nick:
So, but I think that the NBA games, I think they’ve been fun to watch. Did you enjoy the fan experience watching some of these games? I mean, you don’t really notice except for there’s certain moments where there’s something crazy happens and the fan level just doesn’t reach the moment. Right. That’s when you can definitely tell it’s artificial noise, but
Kelly:
No, or you see a delay or something in the background, but yeah. I mean, I do, I think they did a good job. I, you know, I watched on social sort of the building process and thought, Oh my gosh, to bring in courts to these like hotel ballroom, how are this going to look normal? But it, once it was all said and done you, I quickly forgot that they’re in a hotel somewhere. I mean, you, it, I just think they did a great job of, of the product that they put out there.
Nick:
Yeah. And it was in a place in Disney where they have the, you know, the resources and they have the courts to do that. And it just, it worked with the video boards and it’s wild, it’s wild. They were able to pull off and next season, I don’t know, I don’t know how they’re going to do, they do the same thing with all 30 teams. Like that’s what they really have to answer
Kelly:
Next season is going to be a hundred percent normal and we’re back to normal play.
Nick:
I sure hope so. Oh my gosh.
Kelly:
I do too. Awesome. Well, thank you Nick for your time. Um, so I will put it in the show notes, but your podcasts, you can give us a quick plug again and tell us real quick what that is.
Nick:
Yeah, absolutely. So I host the Locked On Mavericks podcast. It’s a daily Mavericks podcasts, me and Isaac Harris. We host it five days a week and we do every single post game as well. Now those are over, but you can go back and listen to those old ones. If you really want to hear what our thoughts were right after the game, we’re going to do all kinds of trade stuff, all kinds of free agent stuff, this off season, we’re going to continue with it. So 30 minutes every single day, make us part of your commute. You know, if, if people still are commuting out there, I know that a lot of people had to stop doing that, but yeah, you can subscribe on Apple podcasts, Google, Stitcher, Spotify, anywhere you get a podcast. So make us part of your day and talk some Mavs.
Kelly:
Yeah. Go check them out. Locked On Mavs. And thank you for listening to this episode of hustle and pro we’ll see you guys next week.
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