LAS VEGAS – When you have a championship-caliber NBA team, the less news generated in training camp, the better.
The Mavericks don’t have a ton of mystery connected to their preseason, which is good. But coach Jason Kidd did supply a little newsy tidbit early in camp when he said that Dereck Lively II is the first-team center, at least for now.
Last season, the tag team of Lively and Daniel Gafford – with Gafford usually in the starting lineup – worked like a charm. But Lively, at the ripe old age of 20, was tabbed as the starter going into training camp.
“Both of them are going to have opportunities to start at some point in the season, not just because of injury,” Kidd said. “But we’ll see how one is playing. It’s open. But we’re going to probably start D-Live with the first group and see how that goes.”
And after the first two days of camp running with the starters?
“He’s done great,” Kidd said of Lively. “His energy has been incredible. He’s worked on his game, you can tell. His energy and his spirit, he’s shooting the three well. His post-up game is really (good). He’s just doing everything at a high level with that starting group.”
Kidd quickly added: “We’ll look at Gaff starting with that starting group (in the evening part of two-a-days Wednesday) just to see how that looks, too.”
Lively’s rookie season was remarkable, to say the least. He was on the all-rookie second team. He averaged 8.8 points and 6.9 rebounds. He also lost his mom after she battled cancer for years.
And he ended up in the NBA Finals as a rookie, something that just doesn’t happen to everybody.
It all set up Lively to rely on his perspective going into his second season. Players who get to the Finals in their first season sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that’s a regular occurrence.
“You got to stack the days, rely on the times that you’re in the gym, rely on your work whenever times get tough,” Lively said. “The amount of hours you’ve put in the gym, that’s what you rely on.
“There might be times when it gets a little bumpy, but that’s life. We got to keep moving forward and we got to be able to get to that goal, and that’s the championship.”
Lively knows about moving forward. He was so close to his mother that going on without her was beyond difficult.
“I’ve gone through a lot of mental turmoil throughout this summer, just going through grief and figuring out who I am,” he said. “My mother was the main reason I was playing basketball for many years. Now it’s just finding a new reason and putting one foot in front of the other. My team is my family. I’ve really embraced that.”
To help with the process, Lively has dived even deeper into one of his favorite hobbies – building extravagant Lego designs. He just recently finished the Star Wars’ Millennium Falcon. He’s ready to start on an Eiffel Tower replica soon, he said.
But it’s on the court where Lively gets to forget about life’s twists and turns.
He’s already been a hit with some of the newest Mavericks.
“It’s been great, he’s one of the first guys that hit me up once I got traded,” said Quentin Grimes. “We were out in Vegas working out for three or four days, then in LA. It seems like I’ve been with these guys for two or three years.”
And defensively, which is a strength of Grimes’, he’s found out that Lively is a particularly strong ally.
“Just in case I get blown by, you got to go through two of us to try to get a bucket,” he said. “If you beat me, you’re going to have a hell of a time trying to go past D-Live and Gaff, too.”
It’s hard not to get grand ideas about Lively’s future based on the way he played in his rookie season. The Mavericks realized early that Lively is a terrific weapon on the pick-and-roll lob passes. And, by the end of the playoff run, Lively and the coaching staff didn’t hide the fact that his three-point shooting was something they were going to embrace.
Not bad for a 7-1 center.
“I’m not going to be out there searching for threes, because I have many teammates that I’d rather shoot the ball more than me,” Lively said. “But of course I’m going to take the threes that come to me in my open spots. I can just feel the way the game’s going.
“It’s not a green light. It’s more of a feel of what’s going on in the game. It’s not going out there and chucking every shot that comes to me because that’s just not my style.”
But stretching his game out beyond the paint is part of the growth process for Lively. It’s another reason why the excitement level about his future is so high.
X: @ESefko
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