Mavs fans may have unnecessarily hyped Justin Anderson last year when he put together a few decent games and looked okay in the playoffs. Now he’s getting more minutes than expected on a depleted Mavericks team and it hasn’t really been working out for him. At this point he doesn’t look like anything more than possibly a competent rotation player, which is good for where he was drafted (21st overall) but not good for Mavs fans who thought he was part of some mystical “core” of players.
Speaking of “cores”, the Mavericks might be one of the only teams in the NBA that doesn’t have one. If they did have one, who would be in it? Not Dirk? Not Wes Matthews. Not Deron Williams. Not Andrew Bogut. It’s pretty much Harrison Barnes by himself in the core unless you want to throw Justin Anderson in there for giggles. Now, I’m going to state the obvious right now, but that’s not a very good core. At all.
I may have accidentally stumbled upon a basic basketball truth: if your team doesn’t have a core of players to build around in the future, you’re going to lose a lot of games.