Max Christie is the natural choice at shooting guard, but Naji Marshall gives Dusty May another compelling option alongside Kyrie Irving and Cooper Flagg.
DALLAS - The Mavericks have most of their starting lineup figured out. Kyrie Irving returns at point guard, Cooper Flagg anchors the forward spot, and P.J. Washington and Daniel Gafford most likely round out the frontcourt on opening night.
The question is who fills the other backcourt spot.
Max Christie is the popular projection, and for good reason. He is the only true shooting guard on a roster stacked with forwards, which creates a positional need that nobody else naturally fills. He also had the best season of his career, averaging 12.3 points on 44.1% shooting while hitting 40.4% from 3-point range and nearly 90% from the line across 68 starts.
The fit alongside Irving is straightforward. Christie spaces the floor without needing the ball, which suits a backcourt partner who has spent his career creating his own shot. He is also the more natural defensive option on the perimeter, and Dallas will need someone in that lineup willing to take difficult assignments.
Naji Marshall makes a different kind of case.
Marshall is coming off a career year of his own, posting highs of 15.2 points, 4.7 rebounds and 3.3 assists on 51% shooting from the field while starting 47 games. He signed a three-year, $52.2 million extension this summer, which reflects how the organization values him. At 6-foot-6, he could slide into a bigger backcourt alongside Irving, giving Dallas length, physicality and a secondary creator who can attack closeouts.
The counterpoint is his outside shooting. Marshall hit only 29.1% from 3-point range last season, well below the 38.7% he shot in his final year in New Orleans. Starting him next to Irving and Flagg would create spacing problems that Christie simply does not present.
Then there is the wrinkle from the betting market, which is where this gets interesting.
FanDuel lists Christie as a Sixth Man of the Year candidate at roughly +15,000. That is a longshot number and they usually don't mean much. But a player cannot win Sixth Man of the Year while starting, so the existence of the line suggests oddsmakers at least recognize the possibility that Christie comes off the bench. Marshall, notably, does not appear in that market on any major sportsbook, though that does not necessarily indicate anything about the team's plans.
It is worth taking all of that with significant skepticism. Sportsbooks price dozens of players in award markets without any real expectation of them winning, and +15,000 implies an implied probability of less than 1%. The line could reflect nothing more than a market maker covering every scenario.
Still, the logic behind a Christie bench role is not absurd. Dallas has enough depth that someone accomplished ends up in the second unit regardless of how the starting five shakes out, and a shooter of Christie's caliber would give the reserves a genuine offensive weapon.
The honest answer is that nobody knows yet, including probably Dusty May himself. Training camp opens shortly, and first-year head coaches typically experiment through the preseason before settling on anything.
