The Dallas Mavericks were the talk of the league at the end of last season for all the wrong reasons. Just over a year later, they’re one of the league’s most feared teams heading into the playoffs.

Just over a year ago, the Dallas Mavericks wrapped up their 2022-2023 campaign with back-to-back losses that thrust them into the national spotlight despite missing the playoffs for the first time in four seasons. The Mavericks went 38-44 and missed the playoffs for the first time since Luka Dončić’s rookie year and NBA fans let their opinions be known.

Takes ranked from “Luka and Kyrie won’t work” to “the Mavericks need to fire Jason Kidd” to...somehow “the Mavericks’ tanking is ruining the sport.” Whether you believe their tanking was bad for basketball or not, it was the end of a tumultuous year for Dallas that left more questions than answers.

A year later, we don’t have all the answers, but we have one: the Dallas Mavericks will return to the playoffs this year a much different team than they were 365 days ago when they take on the Los Angeles Clippers.

The Dallas Mavericks steamrolled their way into the playoffs, at one point winning 16 of 18 games with the league’s best defensive — yes, defensive — rating in that span. The two losses came by a combined 11 points, and one was to an Oklahoma City team with Dončić not playing.

Dallas has skyrocketed up NBA.com’s Power Rankings, holding the No. 5 spot by season’s end. They finished the season tied for the sixth-best record in the NBA.

So, how did we get here? How did Dallas improve 12 games in one season to go from a team that missed the play-in to one of the league’s most feared teams? Here’s a look at one of the wildest years in franchise history.

April 7, 2023: The Tank Controversy

Last season’s downfall became apparent to most Mavericks fans after Dallas lost back-to-back games to the Charlotte Hornets in late March. Before those games, Dallas was struggling but had managed to stay in the top-six due to the mediocrity of the middle of the Western conference.

Teams weren’t going 8-2 in their last 10 like they were this year. Dallas held the No. 6 seed with a 36-35 record on March 19 last season, but the Hornets losses came amid a 2-7 run that put the Mavericks at 38-42 heading into the final two games of the season.

At that point, the Mavericks made the call: pull their guys in hopes of keeping their 2023 draft pick that would have converted to the Knicks if it were outside the top-10. Dallas pulled Dončić after one quarter in their 115-112 loss to the Chicago Bulls on April 7, a loss that forever changed the direction of the franchise.

Chicago’s record improved to 39-42 with that win, while Dallas’ dropped to 38-43. Chicago went on to receive the 11^th pick in the 2023 draft (which then got converted to Orlando). If Dallas had won that game, they would have lost their pick, which — through trades — turned out to be Dereck Lively II.

Nevertheless, chatter persisted. ESPN’s Kendrick Perkins called the tank-job “embarrassing.” Podcast hosts berated the Mavericks. The NBA even got involved, fining the organization $750,000 for “conduct detrimental to the league.”

Quick sidenote: the Mavericks own two of the four largest fines in NBA history ($600,000 in 2018 and $750,000 in 2023) and they were both for tanking. Those tanks earned the franchise its starting point guard and center for the next decade.

Dallas paid a major price and there was no guarantee that it would work out. That wouldn’t come until nearly a month later.

May 16, 2023: The Draft Lottery

In mid-May, fans watched in anticipation as deputy commissioner Mark Tatum announced the order for the 2023 NBA Draft. Dallas was in prime position to keep their pick but there was still roughly a 1-in-5 chance they would lose it.

Those fears were put to bed when Tatum announced the Mavericks would have the 10th pick, officially validating their rationale behind tanking the last two games of the season and sent Dallas to their draft rooms to study their draft boards for the next month before draft night.

June 22, 2023: The draft

Dallas came into the night with the No. 10 pick, but left Barclays Center in Brooklyn as a changed franchise. A pair of moves cleared cap space and gave the team, and its fans, hope for the first time in over a year.

First, they flipped the No. 10 pick to the Thunder for the No. 12 pick. In return, Oklahoma City took on Davis Bertans’ contract. After the Mavericks drafted Lively at No. 12, they weren’t done. Dallas then traded into the late first round and acquired Richaun Holmes in the process, who they’d later package with a pick to get Daniel Gafford.

So, Dallas essentially traded down two spots and a first rounder for Dereck Lively II and Daniel Gafford.

A small price for salvation, some might say.

June 30, 2023: Mavs re-sign Kyrie Irving

With question marks looming, Dallas’ front office stayed composed and re-signed their in-season blockbuster trade addition to a 3-year contract. Dallas doubled down on a duo that had major question marks after a season that saw mixed success with Dončić and Irving. The duo won just five of 16 games where they both played in the 2022-2023 season.

A year later, the Mavericks went 35-16, a 56-win pace, with both players in the lineup. Their lineup has improved and so has their chemistry. Dončić has thrown lobs to Irving this season and cheered him on as he hits buzzer-beating one-footed floaters against the defending champion Denver Nuggets.

Now, they’re one the league’s most feared duos heading into the postseason against another one of the league’s most feared duos in Paul George and Kawhi Leonard.

Oct. 2023-Jan. 2024: Mavs get off to inconsistent start

Dallas looked dangerous in the first few weeks of the season when they jumped out to an 8-2 start with Dončić leading the way. However, a mix of injuries and inconsistent play saw the Mavericks drop from first in the West on November 13, 2023, to eighth in the West on January 23, 2024.

Their record wasn’t actually that bad over that stretch — Dallas went 16-17 over those two months — but this year’s Western conference was proving to be much tougher than last season’s. So, general manager Nico Harrison got on the phones.

February 8: Trade deadline

Dallas sat in eighth when it entered trade deadline day and were in severe danger of playing in the play-in tournament or worse — missing the playoffs altogether.

Harrison responded by trading for PJ Washington and as previously mentioned, Gafford. In the trades, Harrison managed to undo the Grant Williams signing while improving their wing rotation at the same time.

These trades weren’t free. Dallas sent out a first-round pick and a pick swap to the Hornets and Thunder respectively, but the trades happened and Dallas went on a run.

The Mavericks won 22 of their next 29 games to catapult themselves out of the play-in spot and into contention for a top-4 seed. Though they fell just short of the latter, Dallas had successfully jumped out of the play-in behind solid team defense and an offensive chemistry that has left teams frustrated.

April 10: Mavs clinch the 5 Seed, Hit 50 Wins

Dallas won its third-to-last game of the season — a wire-to-wire thumping of the Miami Heat — en route to its first 50-win season since the 2021-2022 season when the Mavericks advanced to the Western Conference Finals.

The game was symbolic of the team’s dominance over the last six weeks of the season. Dallas rarely looked out of sorts while Miami looked flustered. A brief run in the early fourth quarter gave Mavericks fans painful flashbacks to games the team had blown just like this throughout the last two seasons.

But this Dallas team has shown us time and time again they are not last year’s team. They take care of business against the bad teams — Dallas is 25-5 against teams under .500 — and they dominate in the game’s clutch moments.

When the game hits its most anxious moments, the Mavericks are calm. Dallas is 23-9 in clutch games this season and has the 13th-highest pace in clutch situations. They’re not rushing, they’re not panicking, and most importantly, they aren’t settling for Luka heaves.

Multiple Mavericks have hit clutch shots this season. Dante Exum hit a gigantic three-pointer to seal a win over the Sacramento Kings, Washington has had two go-ahead baskets in the game’s final seconds, and of course, who could forget Irving’s heroics against Denver.

This team is deep, they trust each other, and they’re very, very good. Round 3 between the Mavericks and Clippers should look very different than the first two iterations.

I can’t wait.