Nico Harrison spent part of his offseason re-tooling a Dallas Mavericks roster that recently made it to the NBA Finals. As of August, Dallas is seen by many as one of the Western Conference’s top teams.

What does that mean for their NBA title chances in 2024-25? Could this be the season Luka Doncic is named NBA MVP?

Those topics and few others were discussed in an ESPN survey of 18 NBA coaches, executives and scouts. To start the survey, members of the group broke down who they thought was the league’s best player at the moment.

It might surprise Mavericks fans, but the survey group declared Nikola Jokic the runaway winner of the category with 15 votes. Doncic received two, while Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards received one.

Did that correlate with their MVP predictions? Possibly. The group also placed Doncic in second while voting for the 2024-25′s Most Valuable Player. Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led the category with seven votes, followed by Doncic (five), Edwards (two), Jokic (two) and Boston’s Jayson Tatum (two).

The survey didn’t only focus on the upcoming season, it also asked voters to name the NBA’s best player in five years. Doncic and Gilgeous-Alexander tied for second in the category with two votes, followed by Edwards and Jokic with one. San Antonio star Victor Wembanyama was the top pick with 12 votes.

Finally, that brings us to the group’s picks for conference winners and the next NBA champion. Although they added one of the game’s best 3-point shooters in Klay Thompson, the Mavericks were only picked by two voters to win the Western Conference.

Oklahoma City was favored to win the West with 14 votes.

One voter picked the Mavericks to lift the Larry O’Brien Trophy at season’s end, falling behind the favored Celtics (eight votes) and Thunder (seven).

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