Cavs players on Mavs’ Anthony Davis trade mirroring their 2-big look: ‘We’ve built something special here’

The Dallas Mavericks traded for one of the top defensive players in the NBA on Sunday. The Mavericks gave up Luka Doncic and more in a three-team trade with the Los Angeles Lakers and Utah Jazz, but Anthony Davis is now a member of the team.

Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison brought up the NBA-best 40-9 Cleveland Cavaliers and their intimidating big man twosome of Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley when explaining his vision for the new-look Mavs.

“I think if you look at the Cavaliers, that’s what you’re going to see,” Harrison told the Dallas Morning News, singling out the duo of Allen and Mobley. “Anthony’s probably going to finish games at the five, but you’re going to see those guys play together. When the Lakers won, he played the four.”

Mobley spoke on the idea that Dallas’ Davis trade is mirroring the Cavaliers’ two-big look and claimed that plenty of people thought he and Allen wouldn’t mesh well on the floor together at first. He also noted that the NBA is a “copycat league.”

“They said it wouldn’t work,” Mobley explained he learned of Harrison’s comments. “I feel like we figured out a way each year and got better playing with each other. Now it’s clearly working. I feel like, a lot of teams are just — the copycat league and trying to figure out the new wave of how to play basketball.

“That might be the new wave.”

Allen also spoke on the success that Cleveland’s double-big lineup has seen this season and said that the Cavaliers have been proving the doubters wrong by stacking up wins.

“We’ve built something special here,” Allen told Cleveland.com. “We’ve built something that works, that not a lot of people thought would work. We proved them wrong. You don’t prove anything until you’re winning. I think this year is starting to prove that we are becoming what we always thought it would be. Now people are seeing it and starting to copy that success.”

Finally, big man Tristan Thompson seemingly took the notion that the Mavericks are trying to replicate Cleveland’s blueprint for success as a compliment.

“The NBA is such a copycat league,” Thompson said. “When Golden State was 73-9 and running up all those 3s, every team wanted to play Moneyball and shoot 40 3s a game. Then you came with the wave where you had the Giannis [Antetokounmpo] and Brook Lopez where you had the five that could space and shoot 3s. Now you’re in the era right now where you’ve got to have bigs that guard one through five.

“I think for what we’re trying to do, it works because Ev is making 3s, and we interchange them. You kind of do hockey shifts where you have six minutes on, the next guy comes in, you come with different waves.

“We’re doing something right if others are trying to follow suit.”

The Mavericks could form their own two-big lineup using Davis as well as Dereck Lively II. Both players are great interior scorers and rim protectors.

Starting with the defensive side of the ball, Dallas is now fortunate enough to employ two of the better shot-blockers in the league today. Davis sent away 2.1 shots per game with the Lakers this season prior to getting shipped to Dallas and ranks third in the NBA in that metric among all qualified players. As for Lively, he’s blocking 2.5 shots per 36 minutes of action in his second NBA season and a lack of games played is the only thing holding him back from being among the league leaders in blocks per contest.

Additionally, Davis and Lively have been excellent at converting on their opportunities at the rim. Lively is shooting 78.2 percent at the rim on 101 total attempts this season, while Davis is converting 76.3 percent of his looks from that range.

However, it could be a while until Mavericks fans get to see Davis and Lively share the floor for Dallas. Lively has a stress fracture in his right ankle, and Davis hasn’t played since Jan. 28.