Dallas Mavericks Bet on Zaccharie Risacher as the Ujiri Rebuild Picks Up Speed

The Dallas Mavericks spent the past week doing what a front office does once it has decided the previous era is finished: taking swings on 21-year-olds and quietly clearing the veterans out of their way. On July 19 Dallas landed Zaccharie Risacher, the No. 1 pick of the 2024 draft, in a three-team deal with Atlanta and Oklahoma City. Two days later the Mavericks waived Tyler Smith and handed the open two-way slot to Jett Howard, another former lottery pick. Neither move moves a betting line on its own. Together they tell you how Masai Ujiri, Mike Schmitz and new head coach Dusty May intend to run this thing: collect young talent with draft pedigree, pay almost nothing for it, and let the roster sort itself out in camp.

Dallas Mavericks news: the week that was

Risacher cost Dallas guard Ryan Nembhard and a 2027 second-round pick originally acquired from Chicago. The Mavericks absorbed his salary using the trade exception generated by February's Anthony Davis deal with Washington, which is the kind of housekeeping that makes a swing like this close to free. Risacher averaged 11 points, four rebounds and an assist across 142 games in two Atlanta seasons, shooting 35 percent from three and a shaky 69 percent from the line, and his minutes shrank last year. Dallas holds a team option decision on him next summer, so the downside is a second-rounder and one season of roster space.

Tyler Smith, the 33rd pick in 2024 who signed in Dallas last February, was the salary casualty. Dallas Hoops Journal framed the cut as a numbers problem more than a performance one: Smith and Risacher are both 21-year-old wings, and only one of them was a No. 1 overall pick. Jett Howard took the two-way deal. He went 11th in 2023 out of Michigan, spent three seasons in Orlando, and put up 5.5 points on 41.8 percent shooting and 37.2 percent from three across 133 career games. He also played his college ball at Michigan, which is now a recurring theme in Dallas.

The other item from the week: on July 22 the club released its preseason slate, and it starts a long way from American Airlines Center. Dallas plays Houston twice at The Venetian Arena in Macao, on October 9 and October 11, before home exhibitions against New Orleans on October 14 and Atlanta on October 16. The tipoffs in Macao land in the early morning Central time, so anyone planning to watch Cooper Flagg's second-year debut should set an alarm.

A four-man draft class that actually showed up in Vegas

Dallas walked out of June with four picks and used all of them. Morez Johnson Jr. went ninth out of Michigan. The Mavericks then traded up from 30 to 25 for Spanish guard Sergio de Larrea, sending New York two second-rounders, took forward Tobi Lawal at 48, and bought the 56th pick from the Lakers to grab Russian forward Vsevolod Ishchenko. Johnson and de Larrea signed rookie-scale contracts on July 2 and July 3; Lawal got a two-way deal the same week.

Summer League gave all four real minutes. Johnson opened with 27 points against Golden State and finished with averages of 18.5 points, 6.5 rebounds, 2.5 steals and three blocks on 64 percent shooting before calf soreness limited him to two games. De Larrea was the strange one: 8.8 assists per game across four appearances, including a franchise Summer League record 14 in a single game, on 27.3 percent shooting. The passing is clearly NBA-caliber. The jumper is a project. Lawal averaged 5.8 points and 3.8 rebounds in five games and looked exactly like what he is, an elite athlete who cannot yet shoot. Ishchenko was the surprise, putting up 9.6 points and three assists on 40 percent from three across five games as the 56th pick.

The reset that produced all of this

Context matters here. Dallas finished 26-56 last season, 12th in the Western Conference, mathematically eliminated by March 23 and 40-77 overall since trading Luka Doncic. General manager Nico Harrison was dismissed in November 2025. Ujiri was named president of basketball operations and alternate governor on May 4, hired Schmitz away from Portland days later, and parted ways with Jason Kidd on May 19 after five seasons and with four years still on Kidd's contract.

The coaching hire was the loud one. May left Michigan months after winning the 2026 national title, having won 64 games in two seasons there, tied for the most by any head coach in his first two years at a school in roughly a century. He is the second coach ever, after Larry Brown, to jump straight from an NCAA championship to an NBA bench the following season. He inherits the reigning Rookie of the Year: Flagg averaged 21.0 points, 6.7 rebounds and 4.5 assists, became the first rookie since Michael Jordan in 1984-85 to lead his team in points, rebounds, assists and steals, and scored 51 against Orlando to become the first teenager to hit 50 in an NBA game. He edged Charlotte's Kon Knueppel by 26 points in one of the closest ROY votes on record.

What the Dallas Mavericks roster looks like now

Beyond Risacher, Dallas restocked the frontcourt in early July. Santi Aldama arrived from Memphis, reported July 1 and completed July 8 inside a six-team transaction, with Dallas sending out AJ Johnson, a protected 2030 Golden State first-rounder and two future seconds. Aldama averaged 14 points, 6.7 rebounds and 2.9 assists in 43 games for the Grizzlies last season and is a genuine rotation piece at 25. The same six-team deal brought guard Marcus Sasser from Detroit and the draft rights to wing Tarik Biberovic, who signed a reported two-year deal with a team option.

The subtraction side is the part still hanging. A July 21 report relayed by Yahoo listed three veterans as available: Klay Thompson, entering the final year of his deal at $17.4 million after averaging 11.7 points on 38.3 percent from three; P.J. Washington, whose four-year, $88.7 million extension starts this season after he put up 14.2 points and seven rebounds; and Daniel Gafford, whose three-year, $54.3 million extension also kicks in after a season of 9.5 points on 65.5 percent shooting. Thompson has publicly mused about finishing his career in Golden State. Dallas is carrying 16 standard players with 15 guaranteed, sits near the luxury tax line, and has spent essentially all of its tradable second-round capital, so any real consolidation has to come out of that veteran group.

Injury and rehab watch

• Kyrie Irving: torn ACL in March 2025, missed all of 2025-26. ESPN's Shams Charania reported on July 27 that Irving is fully recovered and has been involved in the Mavericks' offseason planning. He is 34 and has averaged 25.5 points and 5.1 assists across parts of three Dallas seasons.
• Morez Johnson Jr.: calf soreness cut his Summer League to two games. Nothing has been described as serious, but it is worth tracking into camp.

Irving's health is the swing factor for how the season is framed. It is also why his name keeps surfacing in rumors; reporting this month suggested LeBron James pushed for a trade that would have brought Irving to Philadelphia before James signed there himself. Dallas has given no public indication it is moving him.

What's next on the calendar

• Mid-August: the NBA's full 2026-27 schedule release, with opening night and Christmas Day matchups typically teased a week earlier.
• Late September: training camp opens, followed by media day.
• October 9 and 11: preseason vs. Houston in Macao.
• October 14 and 16: preseason at home vs. New Orleans and Atlanta.
• Roughly October 20-22: the 2026-27 regular season opener.

The honest read on Dallas Mavericks news right now is that the roster is not finished. There are 16 standard contracts for 15 spots, three tradable veterans on extensions that just started, a rookie point guard who cannot shoot yet, and a coach who has never run an NBA huddle. What Dallas does have is Flagg entering year two, Irving cleared, four draft picks who all looked like they belong, and a president with a track record of turning exactly this kind of inventory into something. Camp opens in about eight weeks, and the depth chart behind Flagg is genuinely up for grabs.