Marvin Bagley III got the call sitting next to his wife at the nail salon. You’re going to Dallas. He wasn’t shocked or surprised. The 2026 NBA trade deadline marked the fourth time in eight seasons that he was traded. He’s gotten used to being on the move.
This wasn’t how his career was supposed to go. Not so long ago, the 27-year-old was an NBA superstar in the making, selected second overall in the noted 2018 draft by the Sacramento Kings—one spot ahead of Luka Doncic. Instead, Bagley didn’t even finish out his rookie contract in Sacramento, getting moved to Detroit before going on to Memphis and a pair of stints with Washington. “A roller coaster,” he calls it.
Now the rollercoaster has carried him to one of the highest points in his NBA career. Bagley is 18 games into his Mavericks career, and so far, he’s made the most of his time in Dallas. In Bagley’s first game for the Mavs, he burst onto the scene with 16 points and 12 rebounds. Since then, he’s averaged 17.6 points and 11.9 rebounds per 36 minutes, numbers that could position him for a longer stay. He wouldn’t mind sticking around a while.
Bagley loves how fast the Mavericks go—Dallas plays at the league’s fifth-highest pace, per Basketball Reference—and he has enjoyed lining up alongside a number of familiar faces, from Khris Middleton (who came over with him at the trade deadline) to fellow Dukies (he’s one of four Blue Devils on the roster) to old foes on the AAU scene. (P.J. Washington, Daniel Gafford, Brandon Williams, and Caleb Martin all overlapped with him on the circuit.) Along the way, he has giving Jason Kidd a different dimension than Dallas’ other big men, particularly from distance. While the sample size is small, Bagley has shot 45 percent from three on 42 attempts. Over his past three seasons combined, he hit just 29 percent of his threes.
Bagley believes that his on-court growth began with a shift in mentality, and in his circumstances. It’s lost on no one that Bagley was drafted by an organization that has seldom encountered success over the last 20 years. The Kings have made it past the play-in round just once since 2007, and fellow lottery picks Tyrese Halliburton and DeAaron Fox also found more success after leaving Sacramento than they did in River City.
“Being drafted by a team is something you can’t control,” Bagley says. “Going into a situation, you can’t control that. Going into the right fit is important for development. … If you go to a situation where you don’t have that, it is definitely hard to take those steps without the right development aspect.”
But ultimately, it was on Bagley to take the necessary steps to transform himself into the sort of player who could find his place in the NBA. He started to do that in Washington, where he leaned into his strengths: rim-running, rebounding, and energy. From there, he says, “I just trusted my work. Control what I can control. That has been my mindset. It has helped me coming into every game and being myself. Not worrying about anything I can’t control or anything not worth my energy worrying about.”
The result is someone who has made peace with who isn’t and who has embraced who he is. Bagley may not be the franchise player he was expected to be, and he won’t be Luka Doncic. But he can be, and has been, someone who can help the Mavericks win games.
“Sometimes we all want to be someone else, and it just doesn’t work out,” Kidd says. “The sooner you can recognize who you are, you can have success, which he is having this year even before he got to us.”
Now the question is whether that success will lead to a longer stay in Dallas. Bagley will be a free agent this offseason, and the Mavericks don’t lack for big men. Dereck Lively II is projected to enter training camp fully healthy after an injury-riddled start to his career. Gafford is under contract, but was reportedly on the trading block heading into the NBA trade deadline. Moussa Cisse has shown glimpses as a two-way player, and Dwight Powell is so entrenched that he may as well have begun his Mavs career in Reunion Arena. Maybe Bagley falls victim to a numbers game and winds up on his fifth NBA team. No one promised the roller coaster was done lurching.
Bagley knows he can’t control that. What he can do is continue to play to his strengths and work to shore up his weak points, like rim protection.
“I want to continue to grow and build on this season,” he says. “Obviously, I don’t know where I’ll be. Being a free agent, anything can happen. I feel like I have a lot to offer to the game and this team. And I’m excited to be here, be myself, and play my game.”
If Bagley does re-sign in Dallas, he’ll remain in an organization that can empathize with his journey. These Mavericks are still trying to reorient themselves in the post-Doncic era and will end this campaign with far fewer wins than they earned a season ago. Co-interim general manager Matt Riccardi summed up the task at hand in February, during the press conference introducing Bagley, Middleton, and A.J. Johnson: “Sometimes, the path isn’t straightforward, and you have to go a roundabout way to get where you want to go.” Maybe the Mavs and Marvin Bagley can walk the next steps of theirs together.