Dallas Mavericks: 5 reasons Dennis Smith Jr. was a great pick

3. Dallas can diversify its offense

Due to limited personnel, Dallas’ offense became quite basic last year, as FanSided‘s Ian Levy outlined in his annual “offensive charts.” Dallas tried to create their looks from Dirk at the elbow, but they soon realized this wasn’t an effective strategy, and due to the age of their roster, they also rarely attempted transition buckets.

Dallas ran a playbook system for the most part, because they did not have any players who could make a difference in transition, or at the point guard position. All of their playmakers were in the frontcourt, and this meant that their offense was often turgid and reliant on off-ball motion, which delivered inconsistent results as they finished 23rd in offensive efficiency — compared with 10th in the previous season.

Dennis Smith is a player who is very raw, but he can at least run some of the pick-and-roll concepts that the Mavericks ran with the likes of Jason Kidd and Jose Calderon, so this will make them more effective, and more exciting to watch. At the minimum, Smith is going to generate a lot of fastbreak buckets for a team that was 30th in transition points per game last year.