Dusty May’s first season in Dallas comes with a built-in opening that most coaches would love: low expectations.
That’s the kind of setup that can turn a decent year into an award-winning one, and it’s why May is already showing up on the Coach of the Year board at DraftKings. He’s listed at +1500, seventh-best odds overall, behind Darko Rajakovic (+800), Will Hardy (+1000), Nick Nurse (+1000), Erik Spoelstra (+1200), Chris Finch (+1200) and Micah Nori (+1400).
Those numbers aren’t shouting favorite. But they do suggest there’s real interest in what May might do with the Mavericks, especially if Dallas ends up being better than the market expects.
The path is simple in theory and brutal in practice: surprise people. Coach of the Year usually goes to the guy who takes a team from forgettable to impossible to ignore, and the award has a clear blueprint for that kind of jump.
Doc Rivers set the standard in 1999-2000, when he won it in his first season with the Orlando Magic after taking over a roster in rebuild mode that had shed most of its talent. Orlando was expected to be one of the league’s worst teams, but Rivers dragged them to a 41-41 finish with four undrafted players in the starting lineup and kept them alive in the playoff chase until the final week.
Rivers is also the only coach in NBA history to win the award without making the playoffs, which says plenty about how far he took a team that nobody believed in.
That’s the lane May is trying to drive into. Dallas won 26 games last season, and Vegas has the Mavericks’ win total at 35.5.
If they fly past that number, the case for May gets a lot louder. If a first-year NBA coach can take a team projected to sit near the bottom of the West and push it into the play-in picture or beyond, that’s exactly the kind of leap voters notice.
The record probably doesn’t have to get all the way to 50 wins, but it does have to look like a real transformation. Over the last 20 Coach of the Year winners, all but one coached a team that played at least a 50-win pace.
Dallas doesn’t have that kind of runway. Still, a finish in the 42-to-45-win range would put the Mavericks among the league’s biggest surprises and give May a credible case.
Health will matter just as much as the win total, and it starts with Kyrie Irving. If Irving comes back from his ACL injury looking sharp and Cooper Flagg makes the expected second-year jump, May will have enough to work with to beat expectations. Coaches also tend to get more credit when they win with a roster that looks thinner on paper, and that only becomes more true if injuries force them to solve problems on the fly or stitch together production from a young, reshaped group.
The Western Conference isn’t going to make anything easy, and Coach of the Year is still one of the league’s most subjective honors. There’s no magic number that guarantees it. In the end, it comes down to a media vote shaped by wins, expectations and the story a team tells over the course of the season.
In Other News...
Klay Thompson Situation Could Put The Mavericks In A Strong Spot
Klay Thompsons future has become a small but meaningful subplot for the Mavericks as they weigh whether to move him via trade or take a different route that would send him into free agency. Around the league, the interest is real, with the Miami Heat and Los Angeles Lakers among the teams keeping close tabs on the situation, and Dallas appears to have a handle on a market that could shift depending on who blinks first.
Miami has been especially persistent in its pursuit of Thompson, though the path it wants is not the only one available if Dallas decides to hold firm. The Mavericks, for their part, seem inclined to work out a trade rather than simply let him go, which leaves the next move hinging less on desire than on which side is willing to compromise enough to get a deal done. [Read more 🡒]
Mavericks Fans Have A New Shawn Marion Hall Of Fame Debate
Amare Stoudemires selection to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fames 2026 class has stirred up a familiar conversation for Mavericks fans, because it puts another one of his former teammates back into the spotlight. Shawn Marion, a central piece of Dallas 2011 championship run, remains one of the names that naturally comes up when people start sorting through that eras legacy and which players ultimately get the Hall nod.
Marions case has plenty going for it beyond one title ring, and ESPN has already flagged him as a player with a strong chance to hear his name called down the road. For Mavs fans, the debate is less about whether he mattered and more about how the Hall will weigh a career that included major stops, a distinctive all-around game and a championship rsum that still carries real weight in Dallas lore. [Read more 🡒]
PJ Washingtons Confidence Puts Pressure On Dallas Roster Crunch
P.J. Washington has given the Mavericks a little early clarity in a summer that still feels crowded. After long conversations with team president Masai Ujiri, Washington said he is confident he will be on the roster when the season opens, a reassuring note for a team trying to sort out its frontcourt picture while carrying 16 players on standard contracts.
The problem for Dallas is that confidence from one player does not solve the arithmetic. The Mavericks have a packed power forward group, and with several players widely viewed as unlikely to move, the front office still has to make a decision before opening night. A few names around the roster bubble are easier to imagine in trade talks than others, which only adds to the sense that the next move may say as much about the team's priorities as the final lineup itself. [Read more 🡒]