Mavericks fan survey results confirm the 2023 season felt miserable

These are the results of The Athletic’s exit fan survey for the 2022-23 Mavericks season.

We received 1,872 responses, enough to draw conclusions from even if this exercise shouldn’t be mistaken for scientific methodology. The online fans who were engaged enough to participate in this probably have collective biases that affect these results. I’ll acknowledge various shortcomings with this survey as we go through the answers, and I’ll add additional context about how and why I chose to ask these questions when needed. Note that this isn’t our annual fan survey, which will be conducted in August or September with some broader demographic and confidence-related questions.

There were 22 total questions, including three short answers which weren’t required to be answered. I’ll quote select responses to those short answers underneath the questions they were associated with.

GO DEEPER

Luka Doncic, Kyrie Irving and a Mavericks summer that must erase a season of misery

This past season

How disappointing was the 2022-23 Mavericks season?

The grading scale was one (least disappointing) to five (most disappointing), which a couple respondents told me was confusing. They had voted ones and twos for that reason. Especially considering those errant votes, nearly everyone considered this season disappointing. This question was intended to set that as a baseline for what’s to come.

Rank, in order, these factors as reasons for the disappointing season.

This question required you to rank these factors from one (most at fault) to four (least at fault), and I find the results fascinating. A few takeaways:

• There was a fairly equal split among the factors most to blame for this season, with the long-term direction receiving 29.4 percent of the first-place votes while the players received 20.3 percent.
• In a ranked choice voting sense, the individual performances of the players were clearly seen as the least to blame, with 55.1 percent voting them fourth. Certainly, some players had disappointing seasons, but most respondents believed other reasons were much more at fault than them.
• I didn’t set up specific parameters for ranked choice voting, which depends on the weight you assign a first- and last-place vote. The NBA MVP, for example, assigns the weight on a 10-7-5-3-1 scale, with a first-place vote receiving meaningfully more weight than second or third. Let’s just use a 4-3-2-1 scale for ours.
• Under that weighting, the front office (5,098) and coaching (5,061) actually finished first and second over the long-term direction of the ownership (4,907) as reasons for this season’s disappointment.

This one included short answers, and many of them correctly pointed out the interconnectedness of these factors. “Kidd and the front office felt very disconnected,” one respondent said, pointing to Christian Wood’s usage. Another said, “Ownership and front office go hand and hand considering Cuban is the decision maker.” I intended the ownership answer to represent the years leading up to this past offseason, while the front office focused strictly on the past 12 months of transactions, but I understand there’s still some overlap.

I thought this comment summarized the nature of this question:

“I feel like each reason is determined by the other reasons in a hierarchy form. Ownership’s direction has affected the decision of the coach of the team, which did not get the best results from the roster that he could have. The ownership also clouds the ability of the front office to effectively do their jobs.”

For those who most blamed coaching, one of the more nuanced critiques included, “The Mavs lost the most ‘clutch’ games in the NBA this year. That is a coaching failure, plain and simple.” Another: “Kidd grossly mismanaged this roster. At the end of the season, he still couldn’t figure out who his best five players were.” But most admitted that the coaching could only do so much. “What was (Kidd) supposed to do with Maxi (Kleber) as his best defender?” one respondent wrote.

It might not be fair, but one respondent who blamed the individual performances of the players wrote, “Fuimos Luka Dončić básquetbol team” — or, “We were Luka Dončić’s basketball team.”

However you ranked these factors, it’s safe to say that all four deserved blame.

What moment from the 2022-23 season felt best as a fan?

I used editorial judgment to select four moments for these next two questions, but I provided a write-in option because this couldn’t list them all. Other moments that were written in included:

• Josh Green and Jaden Hardy both scoring 29 points to beat the Utah Jazz.
• Luka Dončić’s nuclear scoring stretch during the seven-game win streak.
• Kyrie Irving’s 31-point debut in his first game playing with Doncic, which moved Dallas to 31-26.
• Dončić’s physics-defying pass against the Indiana Pacers.

What moment from the 2022-23 season felt worst as a fan?

Brunson’s departure was the overwhelming winner, but some respondents, in addition to being frustrated with Dallas not retaining him, were also exhausted with the constant coverage of his absence that followed. Many respondents talked about how they missed his personality and off-court presence, and believed that the Mavericks missed it, too. One respondent wrote, “Honestly, I couldn’t decide between all four because they equally sucked in their own way.”

Other write-in moments included:

• Jason Kidd’s press conference quotes.
• The inexplicable early losses and blown leads, especially against the Phoenix Suns, Oklahoma City Thunder and Los Angeles Lakers.
• Losing the first eight games that Dončić didn’t play in.
• Dallas not making any further trades or moves for defenders after the Irving trade.
• “Watching Luka continue to spiral and not mature.”

One person wrote, “All of the games since January can go in the worst moment section.” Another said, “Not at liberty to elaborate what the worst moment was,” which, hey, hit me up! You know I keep my sources anonymous.

Grading the players

A quick note on the methodology: I asked for your grades on rotation players based on your expectations. I wanted to frame the question around your feelings as a fan rather than objective analysis. This survey was intended to give you a voice for what you felt, rationally or irrationally, rather than ask you to do my job for me.

But because everyone has different expectations, that does impact the results. The fan base had vastly different expectations coming into the season for Christian Wood or Dwight Powell, for example, which is why it’s perfectly reasonable one voter might give an A while another grades as an F. There’s no perfect way to do this, and some people might have ignored the “expectations” clause entirely. What I’ll do with these answers, mostly, is provide reasonable explanations for why players might fall under one grade or another that received majority shares.

Grade Luka Dončić’s season based on the expectations you had for him.

This was Dončić’s best statistical season, and yet only one-fourth of the voters gave him an A. In a year where he continued his trends of subpar conditioning, defensive effort and on-court body language, the Bs and Cs are understandable. Nobody, certainly not Maverick fans, denies Dončić’s sheer brilliance on the court. He’s set that as an expectation. It’s everything else that contributes to him receiving mostly imperfect grades.

(Yes, 13 people voted his season an F — either treating this survey as an exercise of pure frustration or hijacking an internet survey for all the reasons people troll online. But 13 votes are 0.7 percent of the survey. If you want to assume a one-percent margin for error to account for bad faith voting such as those, feel free.)

Grade Kyrie Irving’s season based on the expectations you had for him.

Irving finished with a slightly higher share of As and Bs than Dončić in a shortened Mavericks tenure that was hampered with recurring foot problems. Either grade seems fair. If he didn’t live up to his expectations, I’d imagine it was the expectations that this team would finish strong after trading for him.

Grade Christian Wood’s season based on the expectations you had for him.

The majority of votes being C feels right. If your grade depended on your expectations for him, it seems fair to say that most fans were disappointed with him despite his inconsistent role.

Grade Tim Hardaway Jr.’s season based on the expectations you had for him.

Hardaway was essential this season — he finished tied for the third-most minutes per game and had the team’s second-best plus-minus after Irving — even as he declined from his statistical bests in Dallas. His 2-point shooting plummeted, which made his streaky 3-point composure stand out even more. The majority of votes being Bs and Cs feels fair.

Grade Reggie Bullock’s season based on the expectations you had for him.

I find it interesting that nearly 11 percent of the ballots assigned Bullock a B-grade for his season. I’d imagine the thinking went something like this: Dallas played a 32-year-old veteran the second-most minutes on the team and relied on him as the team’s primary wing stopper after the Irving trade, so what else can one expect from him given the circumstances?

That said, Cs and Ds feel equally justified after Bullock failed to replicate his superb 2022 postseason.

Grade Maxi Kleber’s season based on the expectations you had for him.

I could have offered an incomplete grade, which might have taken up a larger voting share for this answer. That said, Kleber was signed to a three-year, $33 million extension before this season that runs through the 2025-26 season with the understanding that he has injury tendencies. As valuable as he can be at his best, it does feel somewhat fair to incorporate his midseason injury into the overall evaluation of his grade.

Even before his injury, Kleber hadn’t played his best basketball. The Cs and Ds reflect that.

Grade Dwight Powell’s season based on the expectations you had for him.

The 34.4 percent of voters who selected C make up the lowest majority answer of these player grades. Truly, it’s hard to grade Powell’s season even before considering expectations. Him starting most of this season represented this roster’s stagnant nature, but you also can’t deny his hard-working determination when he’s on the court. It sucks that a player who might have been a beloved, sparsely-used role player in a more limited capacity has been cast with such a toxic online opinion due to the team asking too much of him.

Based on my own expectations, I might even give Powell an A. I didn’t think he’d play much at all — as was the plan — and I can’t even imagine how much worse this season would’ve gone without having his consistent, slightly-below-replacement-level performances on a nightly basis. But any grade has some merit depending on how you feel about him and his role.

Grade Josh Green’s season based on the expectations you had for him.

My best explanation to these votes is that Green reset his own expectations midseason and ever so slightly underperformed them in the season’s final two months. I came into this campaign still having some doubts about Green, and he largely blew them away with his efficiency and consistent impact. The stretch he had prior to the Irving trade, for me, set his ceiling higher than I had imagined it.

But when the team desperately needed him to be the team’s best role player after the Irving trade — unfair to him, but true nevertheless — he couldn’t do it. That led to him receiving more Bs than As.

Grade Jaden Hardy’s season based on the expectations you had for him.

Some of y’all must have had way larger expectations than me. I’m not sure how Hardy’s season can be anything other than an A.

Grade Jason Kidd and his coaching staff’s performance this season.

While most fans didn’t view Kidd’s coaching as the primary reason for this season’s failure, he received a failing grade (D or F) from more than four-fifths of respondents.

I’ve always believed coaching can be difficult to gauge from the outside looking in. We can’t know what really goes on behind the scenes. But in all the visible ways coaches are measured — late game situations, substitution patterns, press conference quotes, overall success — Kidd’s coaching this season was deemed insufficient. It’s hard to argue. We saw a similar team coached by him exceed the sum of its parts just last year. This year’s version clearly didn’t.

Grade Nico Harrison and his front office’s performance this season.

I asked voters to consider Harrison and the front office’s totality of moves since this past June. I suspect most fans don’t blame him for Brunson’s departure as much as they blame Mark Cuban and the past front office, and Jaden Hardy’s selection in June was clearly successful. That still leaves the Christian Wood trade, the JaVale McGee signing and the belief Facundo Campazzo would be enough of a backup point guard for the team to skate by. On the other hand, it’s totally reasonable — even if you have concerns — to believe the trade for Irving improves Dallas’ path to needed roster improvement.

The thing about grading front offices, of course, is that it doesn’t work well for single seasons. The success or failure of front offices, for the most part, happen over multiple years. Viewing just this past year of transactions, I think there’s a case for just about any grade.

The Offseason

If the Mavericks retain the 10th overall pick, would you prefer the team keep or trade it?

Underneath this question, I posited that the trade would be for a veteran role player who filled a position of need, nothing exceptional. Basically, the question asked if fans would prioritize adding another young player to the team’s core or trying to win now? That’s why I set this up as a two-outcome question, and while the win-now camp has slightly more votes, it’s pretty split overall.

Ultimately, the judgment of the Mavericks’ decision will probably depend on which players are available and what the hypothetical trade ultimately is — assuming the Mavericks do, in fact, retain their pick.

Which veteran players, if any, would you enjoy seeing on next season’s roster?

Almost 12 percent of you who voted want a clean refresh, while only one player, Kleber, received more than half of the votes. You guys are tired of this roster. I think that has been stated loud and clear.

There are two things worth noting about the way this question was framed: I asked which players would you enjoy seeing, and I let you imagine different roles for these players. Bullock and Hardaway, for example, could be great bench players if this team actually had enough starter-level talent to allow that. Likewise, I’m sure more than four percent of you all have enjoyed Davis Bertans in the very limited role he played last season — but you wouldn’t enjoy seeing him on the roster due to his contract, and the way it might inhibit the team’s ability to actually refresh the locker room.

What’s your confidence level in the team re-signing Kyrie Irving?

Most indications for Irving’s future point to him returning to Dallas, which this poll reflects. But less than eight percent of you feel certain about it — and that’s wise, given Irving’s unknowability.

What’s your confidence level in the Mavericks having an offseason you consider successful?

And finally, there’s this.

First, multiple respondents told me that their levels could change after the lottery — that they would definitely feel more confident if they knew Dallas was keeping its pick or even moving up. Another person told me their high confidence in Irving being re-signed was directly related to their low confidence in an offseason they didn’t believe would be successful.

As for the short answers, I’ll just let you read the first eight as they appear chronologically on my responses:

The answers were almost exclusively some iterations of these sentiments: “Fool me once”; “Feels like Groundhog Day”; “History repeats.” In fact, “history” was said 59 times in the 696 responses I received for this short answer. Fans expressed more faith in Harrison than Cuban, although doubts were expressed about both.

But, if there’s reason for optimism, it’s in this response given from a fan who voted fives for both of the questions about confidence: “I’m a delusional MFFL. They’ll figure it out.”

And that’s what this survey was meant to be. Rational or not, what’s important was knowing what you felt about this team.

(Top photo: Kevin Jairaj / USA Today)