Dusty May Reveals What Encourages Him Most About Mavericks' New Roster

DALLAS - Every new coach arrives with a plan for building something, and the hard part is usually laying the foundation. Dusty May took over a Mavericks team that won 26 games last season, then watched the front office reshape much of the roster around him. He now has a locker room full of players who have never shared the floor, learning a system nobody in the building has run before. That kind of situation can go badly. It can also go well, and May thinks he has identified the reason it might. Speaking on 105.3 The Fan recently, the Mavericks head coach was asked about his new additions and pointed to something they all have in common. It has nothing to do with size or skill. "When you look at Sass coming from the Houston program out of college, the Pistons last year, he's coming from a winning organization," May said of Marcus Sasser. "He's used to winning. And the majority of our roster, especially the newly acquired players, you know, you look at Tarik going to the EuroLeague finals and Morez winning a championship and Sass being a major contributor to the Pistons. Zaccharie with the Atlanta Hawks team that had the Knicks down in the playoffs before the Knicks caught fire and figured some things out." That is a specific and deliberate framing. May did not talk about talent, positional fit or skill sets. He talked about environments. May tied the thread together plainly. "So we have a lot of guys that know what winning requires," he said. "And so that's what's encouraging is we're not having to teach all of these guys how to win and what it takes, and they're already well-versed. And all of that is positive." For a first-year NBA head coach, that matters more than it might seem. Culture is one of the vaguest words in sports, but the practical version is whether players already understand the standard. May does not have to spend training camp explaining why defensive rotations matter or what winning habits look like in October. It also reflects how Masai Ujiri and Mike Schmitz approached the roster build. The front office has talked repeatedly about size, length and skill, but the résumés suggest another filter was applied. Nearly every significant addition came from a program or organization that competed for something meaningful. That does not guarantee results in a loaded Western Conference. Winning backgrounds do not automatically translate to winning together, and Dallas still has legitimate questions about depth, health and how quickly a new system takes hold. But the alternative is far worse. Teams that fill their rosters with players who have never experienced success often spend years learning those lessons the hard way. May has a group that has already learned them elsewhere, and around a young cornerstone in Cooper Flagg, that head start could prove valuable. Training camp opens soon, and the coach will find out quickly whether those backgrounds translate. Best Newest first Oldest first