On today's show, Anthony Davis is the number one option for the Dallas Mavericks,

and after what we saw in the first game, I think he's the type of number one option the Mavs can build a playoff team around. I'll tell you why. Today's Locked on Mavs. This is Cooper Flagg, and you're listening to Locked on Nives. No, all of them, all five. Explain you, I'm sorry. All these changes, you know, I still got my dog Dwight Pound. You are Locked on Maps. Great, though. Your daily Dallas Mavericks podcast. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network. Your team every day. I'm going to get a city like that. And welcome. You are Locked on the Dallas Mavericks. Your team every day. My name is Nick Engstead.

Media member covering the map for 10 years. Thanks for being in every day. Making Lockdown Maps. The number one sports podcast network out there, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network. That's what we are. We're out there. We're here. Joining me, as always, the post game prodigy from the great slightly biased YouTube channel with better Wi-Fi on my end this time,

what you got for me?

Slightly biased.

Happy to be here with the good Wi-Fi

happy basketball's back oh so happy we got many comments about why you were not on the post game

yeah some of my stream tape was like did they kick you off post game shows? I was like, yeah. Got too political. We pulled up on the, I was at Dickies. I was literally set up. We were ready to go. And the Wi-Fi was, for those that know, six megabytes per. Oh, yeah. I jumped in the call and knew immediately. It was just not happened. No. And then Nick was like, it'll take me a while to get home. I was like, yeah. I'm not to call it. He went to bed. Isaac and I did the post game show, but today he's back because Isaac is somewhere else. You know, it sucks.

I'm going to have to, my sleep schedule is fantastic right now. Like I'm going to sleep like 10. You're about to ruin it. Yeah, it's about to be destroyed. Like I'll be going to sleep very shortly after we finish this. And now I always have to get it like, you don't have before school started. used to have to be like, all right, this week before school, you got to get into your sleep schedule. I have to mess mine up. You want to go out? You want to go out after this? Yeah, let's go. Let's hit up Lower Greenville. Let's go. Today's episode, I want to talk about the first preseason game, some of the things that we saw, some of the concepts we saw.

Did you come away more impressed with Cooper Flag? Is DeAngel Russell going to be a real leader on this Mavericks team? Are the Mabbs going to allow too many threes? What are the Mavs going to do with that third guard spot with Dens Smith Jr. XM and Brandon Williams? And so we'll answer a bunch of questions like that. But let's start here slightly. what kind of option is Anthony Davis going to be as the number one option for the Dallas Mavericks? Because he is. He's going to be the number one option. He's the one that the Mabbs are going to look to first. And it's going to be different than what the maps have seen in the past. Different than Dirk, obviously, different than, man, Harrison Barnes. was the number one option at one point on the Mavericks, different than Luca, obviously, different than Kyrie, different than the games Luca was out in Borzhenge's was the number one option. He's just going to be different than what Mavericks fans have seen. And to me, what I saw in that first game, and from what I've heard in training camp, what I've heard during this preseason,

kid keeps calling it training camp, by the way. He says training camp ends on October 21st. So I guess this is all training camp. The whole thing, the whole thing is the training camp. What I've heard during all of this training camp is that Anthony Day, they're going to use him as this hub. They're going to use him as the subonis type like in the king's offense where he's the hub at the top of the

key and he's making passes, he's making plays. They obviously want to run faster, so he's going to be a guy that's going to get out in transition. They're going to use everybody that gets a board and can get out and transition and run. They're going to use them out there. And Anthony Davis can do all those things. So to me, when I think about Anthony Davis as the number one option for the Mavericks and from what I saw in that first game, I think he's one that gives the Mavericks a lot of options, right? And you just have so many different options with Anthony Davis as that number one. He can finish in so many different ways, but he can set up guys in so many different ways too. We saw a couple of times here and there. The one that keeps coming back to my mind is the one where DeAngel Russell set a screen for Anthony Davis, the inverted pick and roll where the guard set a screen for the big. And then all of a sudden, he's, you know, Anthony Davis is getting free. He's getting, you know, a double team.

And DeAngel Russell gets a wide open three out of it. And so I just saw a lot of different things that Anthony Davis can do. And I think that I was nervous about the offense. Again, it was just against the third string, the third string thunder. But starting to see some of the things in front of me, I think the maps can build like a competent NBA offense around Anthony Davis.

Yeah, I mean, I think some of this bonus stuff is way overblown. You know, I know that's what has been said. I don't know about verbatim, but it's what's been reported. The similarities have been mentioned, but I think that's overblown. I think it's going to be more of a committee thing. That's kind of how I came away from the first game with, too, where, you know, different guys will bring the ball up the floor. It's not necessarily going to be, you know, give the ball to AD and he's going to do everything and let's, you know, run our entire offense through him. I really didn't get that impression at all, actually. Like I thought, you know, I thought everybody was kind of involved.

I thought they got a lot of offense initiated through D-Live at the top of the key,

which I think will actually get a lot of this upcoming season.

So I think a lot of this stuff's been overblown, you know, but it'll be interesting to see.

I mean, I've seen, there's been numbers

dating back to when they were in LA that, I hope I'm still here because I think froze.

But whenever I was in, when Delo and AD were teammates in LA, that that inverted pick and roll

was one of the most common,

you know, guard screening for a big pick and rolls in the entire NBA and it was very effective. So I think you'll see a lot of that. The Mavs will have to get creative. But yeah, this whole AD is this a bonus thing. I think is being overblown. And I think what they're saying is, yeah, we're just going to use AD, like,

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