Dallas Mavericks: Summer League Preview

This summer will not be one to remember for the Dallas Mavericks.

Two seasons after winning an NBA championship, the Dallas Mavericks find themselves without every key piece of that team, sans an aging Dirk Nowitzki. Their plan was to rebuild this season, starting with Dwight Howard, and in 2014 when Dirk re-signed at a discount they would add one more star.

Seems like a pretty good plan, right?

Problem. The Mavericks didn’t have a plan B.

Now the Mavericks will look to their Summer League team in hopes of finding a few potential diamonds in the rough to surround Dirk, Jose Calderon and Monta Ellis.

The Mavericks recently received more disheartening news when their first-round draft pick, Shane Larkin, broke his ankle during a Summer League practice.

With that, there are a few names that you should watch for this summer.

One of those names is Ricky Ledo.

Ledo was the 43rd pick for the Mavericks in this year’s draft. Although considered to have an immense amount of talent, questions about his character caused Ledo’s value to drop significantly.

On court, Ledo is a scorer, and a good one at that.

How does he stack up against the other talent in this draft? Good question. Ledo never played a single collegiate game, so we have yet to see the level at which he can truly perform. According to Draft Express, at 6’6”, Ledo may be one of the best, most potent scorers in this draft class.

Ledo may pan out to be quite the pick for the Mavericks, but the biggest question that remains unanswered is whether or not this so-called “program killer” will be able to jell with his future teammates and continue to grow.

The next name to watch for this summer is the 6’4” point guard out of Israel, Gal Mekel.

Mekel played two seasons for Wichita State in 2006-07, where he averaged 9.3 points and 3.7 assists in 31 games. After those two seasons, Mekel returned overseas and most recently, playing for Maccabi Haifa, averaged 13.3 points and 5.4 assists while shooting 52.5 percent from the field.

Mekel received a lot of interest from some NBA teams, mainly for his effectiveness in the pick-and-roll and his ability to get to the hole and score. He isn’t a knockdown three-point shooter, but his shot has improved throughout the years.

At 25, Mekel has had several years to grow his game and improve his decision-making on the court. Whether or not he will be able to keep up at the NBA level remains to be seen, but the Mavericks are hoping Mekel could turn out to be a player whose career path was somewhat similar to that of Pablo Prigioni.

Ultimately, due to the Mavericks’ failure to sign Dwight Howard or any other big-name center, this free agency period, they will be looking to surround Dirk, Calderon and Ellis with young talent and Summer League will be their first chance to assess how that talent just might turn out.