How the combination of Dereck Lively and Daniel Gafford makes the Dallas center position elite
With the 2024 NBA regular season quickly closing in upon us, basketball fans and statistical addicts, alike, are anxiously assessing their team’s strengths and weaknesses, dexterously calibrating their own personal homeostasis somewhere between confidence and nihilism with the clinical scrutiny of an inverted jet pilot maneuvering above the still ocean on a cloudless day. As I sit here typing, the Blue Angels are executing a practice sequence in the air above my home, much to the chagrin of every house pet within a 10-mile radius. I’m reminded that showmanship and exhibition of vigor invites the viewer to become lost in disport, more than anything else. Even the most impotent of souls – those unfairly ill-equipped to feel joy – must, at least, be subject to the awe-inducing effects of a truly sublime experience, like how it must feel to be stuck outdoors just at the occurrence of the brief, silent vacuum produced during an imminent tornadic event.
Fortunately for the Dallas Mavericks, they have one of the league’s premier offensive aces in young guard Luka Doncic, not to mention veteran virtuoso, Kyrie Irving. Feats of greatness have become something of a routine occurrence within the American Airlines Center. Having added an all-time great sharpshooter in Klay Thompson during the off-season provides yet another element of elite theater to this squad. When I think back to some of the most sensational moments of the Mav’s 2023-24 season, though, my head is consistently crowded by replays of Dereck Lively and Daniel Gafford executing monster pick and roll slams, along with ensuing, obligatory sky-howls. With great frequency, these two were awarded with the chance to consummate an instinctual basketball play originating from the fingertips of either Doncic or Irving, and it was rare that they fumbled the opportunity.
With all professional teams there is this exhausting focus in the media on the importance of who will start. Last season, Gafford’s acquisition and immediate production led to his replacement of Lively in the starting lineup, an event that the rookie endured with a staggering amount of poise. As he’s now added substantial NBA Finals experience and a full summer of additional growth to his young resume, he seems every bit as qualified for the starting role as Gafford. But the insistence on the inherent value offered in a binary approach to viewing our particular starting center spot obscures the fact that these two teammates willingly operate as a unit, and they’ve done so with marked success. What one brings in the first 6 minutes of game time, the other capitalizes on in the next 8, and so on and so forth. It’s rare that both players have outright bad performances in any given game, and it’s typical that their deployment as a tandem eventually serves to overtax the opposing team’s 5. Dallas has what you call “a good problem” at the core of its center rotation. Who do you start?
And, yet, instead of utilizing such a narrow-minded viewpoint to construct (or deconstruct) the team’s ongoing narrative, it seems that their combined force as a proverbial “one-two punch” is the more useful, tactical way of appraising the value that they bring to this squad. This way of looking at things might not be possible in an alternate realty, or even on another team where intense egos preclude such a fortuitous arrangement. As camp turns into preseason, though, and the characters from last season come back into focus, it’s easy to see that Gafford and Lively understand the value they bring as an aggregate. And that would be a difficult concept to appreciate without understanding that to hope for the other’s success is to concurrently foster their own. It’s not missed on anybody that they both have a team-first mentality, and being able to infuse the center rotation with such a technically sound juxtaposition of big man talent is a big part of what made this team successful last season. Their continued cooperation makes them one of the better aerial shows currently in business.