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Oct 15, 2025; Las Vegas, Nevada, USA; Dallas Mavericks forward Anthony Davis (3) looks outward during the first half against the Los Angeles Lakers at T-Mobile Arena. Mandatory Credit: Lucas Peltier-Imagn Images Lucas Peltier-Imagn Images

Jason Kidd, Anthony Davis not worried about Mavericks offense, but they should be

Originally posted on Dallas Mavericks on SI
By Austin Veazey | Last updated Oct 23, 2025 10:30 AM ET

The Dallas Mavericks looked awful in their season opener on Wednesday night against the San Antonio Spurs, falling 125-92. Dallas' 92 points were the fewest by any NBA team in their first game this season, with the next closest being the LA Clippers at 108 (if you want to be technical, the Rockets and Thunder each had 104 points entering overtime, but that's still 12 points more than the Mavs had).

There were a lot of concerns about this offense entering the season. People still trying to rationalize the decision to trade Luka Doncic last season thought having an offense that didn't rely on one person would be more beneficial overall.

That's not the case when the Mavs only score 92 points in their opener, only shooting 37.3% from the floor, and only making 9 threes. Take out Max Christie's 3/4 performance from deep off the bench, and the team was only 6/17 from deep.

As of now, Mavericks star Anthony Davis isn't concerned. “We were playing a lot of isolation basketball, we’re not gonna win games like that. We got guys that are capable of doing it, but we don’t want to play like that…We gotta be able to move the basketball from side to side and get good looks."

Davis ended his press conference by saying, "It’s not doomsday ladies and gentlemen," while stressing that it's only one game.

Jason Kidd believes there's a simple fix for this, too: move the basketball. "We didn’t have trouble [on offense], we just didn’t pass the ball. That’s easy to fix. Just make a play for a teammate.”

If only there was a way to track that...

Mavericks Should Be Concerned About This Offense

Passes weren't an issue. The Mavericks made 293 passes on Wednesday night, per NBA.com, which was about middle of the league. The bigger issue is that few of them led to assist opportunities because no one was getting open.

Dallas ended up with 20 assists on 31 made shots, which is a good assist rate, but a horrific pass-to-potential-assist rate, which was ghastly 6.8%. They only had an opportunity for 50 assists on nearly 300 passes. That's borderline insane.

And even those 20 assists are misleading. The starting lineup of Cooper Flagg, Klay Thompson, P.J. Washington, Anthony Davis, and Dereck Lively II combined for just six assists, and three of those came from Lively, who played just 10 minutes due to foul trouble.

5 assists were from undrafted free agent Ryan Nembhard, who is on a two-way contract, while D'Angelo Russell had another three.

It doesn't help that they're putting Cooper Flagg at point guard, something he's never played in his life. He's a good playmaker; his strengths in college included secondary playmaking, but relying on him to set up the offense just is not going to work.

Part of it is also that they were going against Victor Wembanyama, who was otherwordly on both ends of the floor on Wednesday. They won't go against anyone else with that kind of impact, but these concerns are stemming over from the end of last season and the preseason.

So, the simple fix for this offense? How about actually starting a point guard, or acquiring one via trade? The roster is odd, almost like trading Doncic for Anthony Davis threw everything out of whack. Having Doncic on this team would help everything make sense, but that's not going to happen. That means this offense is likely going to be one of the NBA's worst all season.

This article first appeared on Dallas Mavericks on SI and was syndicated with permission.

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