Just letting Kristaps Porzingis know, if he’s planning to come into next season and start taking minutes from Dwight Powell, he’d be well served to stop those plans and instead plan to take minutes from other players. Because no one messes with Powell’s minutes on my watch and gets away with it. They’re already too low as it is; Powell doesn’t need some cocky Latvian coming in and preening and strutting around with his own rightfully-earned playing time.
Here’s the deal with Powell: this is the third consecutive year he has led the Mavericks in winshares (tied with Harrison Barnes and Seth Curry two years ago). Debate me all you want about the quality of winshares as a tool for judging players, but you cannot deny that Powell has been one of the best Mavericks players these last few years. Besides Dirk, he’s basically the face of the franchise at this point. An exaggeration, yes, but wouldn’t you want your face of the franchise to be the guy who is always making the funniest faces?
I’m worried that Powell will get marginalized next year. Very worried. He’s adding a high-volume three-point shot to his game to try and make himself more “viable” (like he isn’t already viable due to his ability to dunk any lob thrown to him) for Dallas next year, but I still don’t think Carlisle or Cuban really know what they have in Powell.