Sergio De Larrea and Santi Aldama are back on the court together.
The European Mavs.
That's a moniker you've likely heard before if you've followed the Dallas Mavericks of old, which starred Germany's Dirk Nowitzki and Slovenia's Luka Doncic at some point in every season for the last three decades, until just over a year ago.
Amid the many changes that the Mavs have undergone recently, there remains a hint of international flavor. It comes from the very top.
Masai Ujiri is the team's new president of basketball operations. Born in the UK to Nigerian parents, he is among the most influential voices for basketball's exposure and development in Africa.
His first major hire in Dallas was general manager Mike Schmitz, a renowned scout who has decades of work overseas scouting the next international superstars of the NBA, who likely idolized the likes of Nowitzki and Doncic as they helped pave a way for global stars to reach the best league in the world.
For the Mavericks, the faces are new, but the philosophy is not. Ujiri has spearheaded another kick of international pieces to this Mavs roster. The team is still led, however, by Americans Cooper Flagg and Kyrie Irving, but there is no shortage of global representation again in Dallas.
That's seen most clearly in Dallas' NBA Summer League roster, which kicks off play in Las Vegas next week.
Headlining the group of foreign-born players is Spanish guard Sergio De Larrea, whom Dallas acquired the draft rights to after he was chosen No. 25 overall in the first round of last month's NBA Draft.
De Larrea has signed a rookie contract with the Mavs after developing in Spain's Liga ACB, where his Valencia Basket squad just won a championship. He won't be a modern example of the "draft-and-stash," where he stays in Europe another year. He's ready now.
If all goes to plan in the summer, De Larrea could join the Mavs roster alongside No. 9 pick Morez Johnson Jr. to form a young core for Flagg, a generational talent and budding superstar.
And if he gets there, De Larrea will be reunited with, you guessed it, more international teammates.
Dallas acquired stretch-big Santi Aldama of Spain from the Memphis Grizzlies during the heat of free agency. Aldama, an emerging contributor in his few seasons in the NBA, will be a great veteran asset for De Larrea's development and comfort. The two have previously played together on Spain's national team.
Aldama and De Larrea competed together in FIBA EuroBasket 2025. The 7-footer was the team's leading scorer, averaging 14 points per game to go with a team-high 6.6 rebounds. Across the five contests, De Larrea led the team with 4.4 assists per game, and the pair were the only two players to play more than 20 minutes per game for Spain.
Leading up to the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, De Larrea trained with Spain's senior national team, which Aldama was a part of. That familiarity should translate to the NBA right away.
But wait, there's more.
Also included in the Aldama trade are the draft rights to Tarik Biberovic, a 25-year-old Bosnian wing who was originally selected 56th overall by Memphis in the 2023 NBA Draft. He has spent his entire professional career with Fenerbahce, one of the top clubs in the world.
Biberovic is a long-range sniper, but is not currently listed on Dallas' Summer League roster.
Expectedly, the Mavs aren't short on foreign influence.
The summer squad features the likes of Russia's Vsevolod Ishchenko, who was drafted No. 56 overall this year, and the No. 48 overall pick, Tobi Lawal of England.
De Larrea will be joined by countrymen Guillermo and Jorge Diaz Graham, a pair of 6-foot-11 twins from Valencia, Spain. A 6-10 center from Nigeria, Kaodirichi Akobundu-Ehiogu, is on the team, along with former two-way rookie Ryan Nembhard, who hails from Canada.
This will be one of Dallas' more intriguing Summer League teams in recent memory (outside of watching No. 1 pick Flagg in 2025), and that's partly because of such a vast international mix.
Something tells me that's exactly what Ujiri preferred when he first took over the Mavericks.
