Getty Gradey Dick of the Kansas Jayhawks, who was mocked to the Dallas Mavericks.
The most important day of the summer for the Dallas Mavericks occurs this Tuesday, May 16—the NBA Draft Lottery. If the Mavericks’ pick remains in the top 10, then they keep it. But if it falls outside of that range, it goes to the New York Knicks.
That being said, the Mavericks have roughly an 80% chance of keeping the pick, and if they do, they could select a young, impactful player. CBS Sports’ 2023 NBA Mock Draft, penned by Kyle Boone, has Dallas selecting Gradey Dick out of Kansas.
“Tall wings who have the ability to shoot it — and do so successfully in the multitude of ways Dick can shoot it — don’t come around every draft,” Boone wrote. “His game is tailor-made for an NBA role player with room to grow into more.”
Dick is the perfect player for the Mavericks to eye with their potential late-lottery selection. As detailed by Boone, he already has all the tools to be a great role player at the NBA level, and those are the types of players Dallas should be looking at as they attempt to fill things out around Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving.
The 6-foot-8 wing spent one year at Kansas and will turn 20 years old on November 20 of this year. His ability to shoot the ball is the highlight of his game and the primary reason a lot of teams could aim to snag him in the lottery.
In his one year with the Jayhawks, Dick started all 36 games and played 32.7 minutes per contest. He averaged 14.1 points on 44.2% shooting from the field and 40.3% shooting from distance (on 5.7 three-point attempts per game). Dick also put up 5.1 rebounds, 1.7 assists, and 1.4 steals per contest.
Kevin O’Connor of The Ringer compared him to Reggie Miller and Bojan Bogdanovic in his 2023 NBA Draft Guide.
Jason Kidd Speaks Highly of Kyrie Irving’s Future With Mavericks
In other news, Dallas’ offseason checklist has two words at the top of it—Kyrie Irving. The star point guard will be an unrestricted free agent this summer, and the Mavericks will need to decide whether or not they want to bring him back and, if they want to, hope he feels the same.
That being said, head coach Jason Kidd recently told Showtime’s Rachel Nichols that he believes Irving is happy in Dallas.
“I think he truly is happy here. I think he wants to be here,” Kidd said. “But that doesn’t guarantee us that he’s going to stay. He has the option and the opportunity as a professional to look elsewhere, because he is a free agent, and I don’t want to take that away from him, being a player who was in that situation. We’re going to do everything to keep him. At the end of the day it’s his decision, but we believe we’ll see what that is, but we hope that we’ve done everything to make him comfortable, and want to be a Mavs for life.”
Luka Doncic ‘Doesn’t Want to Share’ Mavericks Star Duties With Kyrie Irving: GM
That being said, according to an anonymous GM who spoke with Steve Bulpett of Heavy Sports, Doncic may not want to share the on-court star duties with Irving in Dallas.
“I do think there’s some skepticism going forward for what they’re going to offer him,” an anonymous GM told Bulpett. “Like they’re not completely naïve. But Kyrie’s behavior was excellent. It was more the fact that Luka had to adjust to playing with such a great player. Everyone there has been saying Kyrie is incredible, and that’s in private, too. Luka’s said it and he means it. But I think that he just doesn’t want to share. He just doesn’t know how. He’s out there on the court and the ball has been in his hands; no matter what, it’s his ball. And now there’s actually consideration that I might need to pass the ball to somebody else and let them do the magic, instead of me just waiting for the clock to run down and shoot a step-back 3 from the hash mark.”