Getty Image / Albert Pena
Looking back on the 2020 NBA Draft, there are probably quite a few teams that regret passing on
Tyrese Haliburton.
.
Despite a standout sophomore season at Iowa State that seemingly established him as the 2nd best point guard in his draft class, Haliburton didn’t end up getting selected until the 12th pick in the draft.
Along the way, he was passed on for a bunch of guys who haven’t had the expected impact in the NBA, with a couple of them having already been traded.
It turns out, there was actually one team drafting outside of the top 12 that really wanted to land the point guard.
On the “Pat Bev Pod”, Mark Cuban revealed that the Dallas Mavericks did everything they could to trade up and draft Haliburton.
Mark Cuban: “We did everything we could to trade up for Tyrese Haliburton… Rick [Carlisle] was our coach at the time. He goes to Indiana, what’s the first deal he does?”
Pat Beverley: “Him and Luka together would’ve been different!”
(via @PatBevPod)pic.twitter.com/iryXyvPDhz
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) August 30, 2023
The Mavericks ended up drafting Arizona guard Josh Green at 18 and he has spent the last 3 years with the team.
He has turned into a solid role player for the Mavs over the past few years and scored 9.1 points per game for the team last season in 25.7 minutes per game.
However, the Mavs managing to land Tyrese Haliburton is an interesting “what if”.
If the Mavs had drafted Haliburton, they may have ended up trading Jalen Brunson before he left for free last offseason.
Their roster would also have some very notable differences right now.
The most obvious one is that they wouldn’t have made the trade for Kyrie Irving at last season’s deadline.
That would mean they would still have Dorian Finney-Smith and Spencer Dinwiddie on their roster.
Not making that deal may have also avoided their collapse at the end of last year.
The fit for the two guards would have been interesting.
Both are point guards with a talent for distributing the ball. Haliburton is the better shooter, but Doncic is one of the league’s best scorers.
While putting two players like this together might not work in many instances, they may hav been able to coexist.
Haliburton has shown that he doesn’t need to be a ball-dominant player to succeed. His career high usage rate is only 23.8% while Luka’s was over 35% last season.
Both players would likely have benefited from having another creator on the floor while also not having to battle each other for the ball.
Unfortunately for the Dallas Mavericks, we’ll never know for sure how the Doncic-Haliburton pairing would have worked out, but it could have been a fun pairing to watch.