NBA Rumors: Mavs Execs Worried About Luka Dončić's Trust in Team After 2023 Collapse

Even though the vibes for the Dallas Mavericks are good right now, there was a great deal of uncertainty facing the franchise with Luka Dončić as its centerpiece at the end of the 2022-23 season.

According to The Athletic's Tim Cato, Mavs executives were concerned about Dončić's long-term trust in the organization after their late-season collapse last year kept them out of the playoffs.

At this time last year, it was unclear what the direction was for the Mavericks. They took a big swing by acquiring Kyrie Irving from the Brooklyn Nets prior to the trade deadline in February 2023.

Prior to Irving's debut, the Mavs were 29-26 and tied for fifth in the Western Conference. They proceeded to go 9-18 over the final 27 games to finish 38-44 and 11th in the West to miss the playoffs for the first time since Dončić's rookie season in 2018-19.

Some of those losses were by design because when the Mavericks saw their season was going down the drain, they did a poor of job of hiding the fact they weren't trying to win games in an attempt to keep their 2023 first-round draft pick.

The tanking was so blatant that the NBA fined the Mavs $750,000 for conduct detrimental to the league for sitting Kyrie Irving, Tim Hardaway Jr., Maxi Kleber, Josh Green, and Christian Wood in an April 7 game against the Chicago Bulls. Dončić played in the first quarter of that game because it was "I Feel Slovenia Night" and fans from the star's home country were in attendance at American Airlines Center.

There were rumblings last offseason that Mavericks officials were concerned Dončić could request a trade as soon as the summer of 2024 if the organization didn't make significant progress.

The first-round pick, which was top-10 protected, they were tanking to keep was the final piece of the 2019 trade with the New York Knicks for Kristaps Porziņģis.

Irving, who was a free agent last summer, wound up staying in Dallas on a three-year, $120 million contract. The tanking paid off because the Mavs earned the No. 10 pick in the draft lottery. They used it to select Cason Wallace, but traded his draft rights to the Oklahoma City Thunder for the draft rights for No. 12 pick Dereck Lively II.

A full season of Irving, combined with Lively's breakout performance and shrewd in-season additions of P.J. Washington and Daniel Gafford turned out to be exactly what Dončić and the Mavericks needed.

The Mavs finished the regular season 24-9 over their final 33 games to earn the No. 5 seed in the Western Conference. They eliminated three 50-win teams, including two of the top three seeds, to reach the NBA Finals for the first time since the 2010-11 season.

Dončić finished a career-best third in MVP voting during the regular season after leading the league in scoring average (33.9) and averaged a career-high in assists per game (9.8). His six triple-doubles so far in the playoffs are tied for the third-most in a single postseason in NBA history.