Mavs coach Jared Dudley hypes up rookie OMax Prosper with bold comparison: ‘He has a little Siakam in him’

With less than a month away from the start of the Mavericks training camp to prepare for the upcoming campaign, there is a lot of hype surrounding the team’s two rookies. Both first-round picks from the 2023 NBA Draft, Olivier-Maxence Prosper and Dereck Lively II, are expected to assume important roles in Dallas this season. 

During a this past weekend’s interview with NBA insider Marc Stein, Mavs assistant coach Jared Dudley says he can’t help but compare the young guard with a Toronto star.

“[OMax] goes extremely hard,” Dudley said in the most recent episode of The Saturday Stein Line. “He has a little [Pascal] Siakam in him.”

Mavs rookie OMax Prosper listed Pascal Siakam as a guy he’s tried to model his game after in our recent @StepBackMavs interview.@JaredDudley619 tells @TheSteinLine that he can see glimpses of that in Prosper’s game. https://t.co/LS4ZK2hppJ

— Dalton Trigg (@dalton_trigg) September 4, 2023

Prosper himself went on an interview with “Mavs Step Back Podcast” and talked about his NBA idols ahead of his first rookie season, including the Raptors power foward.

“Model my game after … I try to take bits and pieces from different players,” he said. “A guy that I really like the way he plays is Mikal Bridges. I like the way he plays, a two-way player, you know, can knock down the open shots, push in transition with his length and size … Guys like Pascal [Siakam] growing up too, watching him play for the Raptors, I like that a lot. I’m just trying to take bits and pieces from every player and become the most complete player I can be overall.”

Prosper is well aware he is years away from achieving Pascal’s status in the NBA, but he already has a plan over how he will someday reach the two-time All-Star, All-NBA player and champion.

“I plan on having a significant impact,” the 21-year-old said. “I want to come in and be a guy that’s in the rotation and contributes to winning. That’s my outlook for my season.

“[Be] a guy that’s coming in and asked to guard the best player on the other side. And a guy that’s going to, every game, get better and improve, and get the confidence of his coaches and teammates. And then, end the end, [I’m] going to be a big contributor to this team’s success. That’s the way I look at my season.”

Dallas fans sound the alarm as Luka Doncic has taken ‘a lot of hits’ during his FIBA World Cup appearances with Slovenia

As Mavs superstar Luka Doncic is preparing to lead the Slovenian national team to the FIBA World Cup’s semifinals with tomorrow’s match against Canada, his health has been listed as a top priority.

“Like I always say, he takes a lot of hits during a game,” coach Sekulic said of his point guard.” Teams try to play physical with him and there’s a lot of contact and he needs to deal with a lot of contact and it’s not easy and it hurt him a little bit. Hopefully, we are going to find a way to protect him.”

Check out this Slovenia’s last match against Germany in the video above, where the Dallas star dropped 23 points in his nation’s loss.

Right before the World Cup, the point guard acknowledged he still had a little pain from an old injury.

“It is an old injury, which caused me problems in March in the NBA,” he said a couple of weeks ago. “Therefore, we performed an MRI. Everything is okay. Nothing worse.”