On July 3, 2014, the Mavericks were a Dirk Nowitzki retirement away from becoming a lottery team.
The season prior, they had started four players over 30 plus Monta Ellis, a then-27-year-old guard, talented but moody and undersized. Only two players under 28 had even cracked the rotation, Brandan Wright and Jae Crowder, and both were operating very near their potential ceiling. Nothing on the roster suggested a soft landing when the post-Dirk era began; in fact, it was going to play out no better than if an airplane's engines announced their retirement 30,000 feet in the air.