At the start of every NBA season, many teams believe they have an opportunity to win an NBA title. For some, those beliefs are realistic. For others, those beliefs are a little unrealistic.
In terms of the Dallas Mavericks, this is a team that is on the rise. Maybe not ready to win a title, but a team and player in Luka Doncic that are ready to take that next step. Last season, Dallas was the seventh-seed in the Western Conference, and obviously, they want to improve on that this season.
According to Mavericks G Trey Burke, Dallas has enough to compete for a championship.
“It’s always easy to say expectations is a championship,” Burke said on Tuesday. “That is our goal. We believe it. We believe that we have the talent here to compete for a championship. I think we have a lot of short-term goals that we want to accomplish before we can look toward a championship.”
Dallas starts the season against the new-look Suns, who added 10-time All-Star Chris Paul in the offseason and ended the season on a high note after going 8-0 in the Orlando bubble. Burke thinks Phoenix will be a nice early season test for the Mavericks.
“We have a good test tomorrow in Phoenix against a really good team who went undefeated in the bubble with a great addition in Chris Paul,” he said.
Burke is also excited about the chemistry that the Mavericks have at this point of the season, and according to Burke, it’s the best he’s been around.
“Chemistry-wise, this is one of the best teams I’ve been on,” he said. “This early as well as we meshed. It’s crazy, so I think the sky is the limit for this team. Where will it go? I don’t know. It looks good; it looks really good, and tomorrow I think we’re all excited to get out there for our first game and see what we do.”
Look, is Dallas a championship contender? It depends. Suppose Doncic continues to flourish and Kristaps Porzingis can stay healthy. In that case, the Mavericks will be a tough out for any team in the West, and you could argue if Porzingis would have stayed healthy last season against the Clippers in their first-round playoff series, that possibly the Mavericks could have pulled off the upset.
Outside of the Lakers and Clippers, you could argue that Dallas could be just as good as anybody in the Western Conference, so expect the Mavericks to take that next step this season.
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