Offseason dates to know for Dallas Mavericks fans

At the moment, we’re all in that somewhat listless period of the offseason. The playoffs are on, but I’ll bet a fair amount of Dallas fans aren’t interested at the moment. After that, things start to happen in a real hurry. Though certain things aren’t set in stone yet, the majority of the big dates throughout the summer are here.

• June 21-27th, Draft Combine - Though the Mavericks don’t have a pick this year, the combine is one of those events that’s quite fun, particularly if you’re interested in any players on the fringe of the draft.
• June 22nd, Draft Lottery - Again, no pick, but I enjoy the drama a great deal.
• June 29th-July 4th, Olympic Qualifying Tourament for Slovenia - Luka Doncic committed to trying to help get his home country to the Olympics in Japan later in July by trying to win this tournament. We’ll have more information later as the date approaches (or check the comments, where I bet some of our more tuned in commenters have the right info).
• July 8-22nd, Finals - The Finals are fun and it’s a good measuring stick to see just how far Dallas has to go before getting there.
• July 23-August 8th, Olympics - Some of this depends on qualifying tournaments (of which I don’t know enough), but there’s a chance that a number of Dallas Mavericks may find themselves in Japan for the Olympics. Luka Doncic, obviously, but Josh Green stands a chance at making the team for Australia, Boban Majanovic will play for Serbia, Maxi Kleber is health dependent for Germany, heck I’m sure Nicolo Melli plays for Italy too. Oh, and if you like watching the American team, they’re going to be there as well with a roster of unknown composition.
• July 29th, Draft - Though I probably won’t be watching the first round, by mid-evening I’ll be tuning into the second round to see who isn’t drafted and then keep an eye on Twitter to see who Dallas might try to sign or invite to Summer League.
• August 2nd, Free agency opens - At 6 p.m. EST, teams can start talking with free agents and come to agreements. So the usual flurry of Woj bombs and misspelled Shams tweets will hit your Twitter timeline, followed by freakouts here at Mavs Moneyball.
• August 6th, Signing of free agents - At 12 p.m. EST, teams can start signing those free agents they’ve agreed to terms with. This is where Bird Rights and such come into play, as order of agents signed matters for some teams salary cap.
• August 8-17th, Summer League - It seems likely that all four rookies on the Dallas roster from this past season (Josh Green, Tyler Bey, Tyrell Terry, Nate Hinton) should be available to play, along with anyone else Dallas brings in following the draft. I’ll likely write more about this soon, but if you can find a way to go to Summer League, go. It is a hardcore NBA fan’s dream.
• September 28th, Training Camp - Though players usually start coming back into town at some point in September to work out and start playing together, official team activities should start on this date.
• Second week of October, Pre-season games - In 2019, the Dallas Mavericks played five pre-season games. The volume is somewhat tied to what NBA teams want, so this far out my guess would be that the Mavericks play four games.
• October 19th, Regular season starts - Adam Silver’s been very consistent going back to before the start of this season that he wants 2021-22 to resume the normal schedule for NBA basketball.

There’s usually a lull in the action, somewhere after NBA Summer League and before training camp with the latter half of July and all of August being a dead zone. Looking at calendar above, there’s a pretty lengthy list of NBA stuff if you want to stay engaged. We’ll have content all the while Mavs fans, and we’re looking forward to a really fun summer.