The Mavericks organization and many of its fans believe that No. 9 overall draft pick Dennis Smith Jr. will be such an on-court sensation that he could leap-frog the eight players selected before him and win NBA Rookie of the Year honors.
Earlier this month, NBA.com's John Schuhmann surveyed 39 rookies from the 2017 draft class. A little more than one-fourth of them (25.7 percent) tabbed 6-foot-3, 190-pound Smith as most likely to win this season's Kia Rookie of the Year award.
The rookie garnering the next-most votes was Lakers point guard Lonzo Ball, at 20 percent. It's worth noting that players were not permitted to vote for themselves.
The Mavericks have only had one Rookie of the Year in the franchise's 37-year history. In the 1994-95 season, Mavericks point guard Jason Kidd was voted co-Rookie of the Year with Detroit's Grant Hill.
In the NBA.com survey, Smith Jr. also was voted "most athletic," by a wide margin, earning 43.6 percent of the vote to the 12.8 percent of runner-up Terrance Ferguson of Oklahoma City.
And he came in as the second-best "steal" of the draft, behind Utah's Donovan Mitchell, the No. 13 pick.
