Nebraska Basketball: Isaiah Roby has chance to excel with Mavericks

When all dust finally settled at Thursday night’s NBA Draft, Nebraska basketball’s Isaiah Roby learned his ultimate destination: the Dallas Mavericks.

The Mavericks were without their first round pick as a result of last year’s draft-day trade in which they acquired the presumptive Rookie of the Year Luka Doncic from the Atlanta Hawks. They ended up making a deal with the Detroit Pistons to acquire Roby, who spent three years with the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

In this deal, Roby, officially selected by the Pistons in the second round with pick number 45, heads to Dallas in return for Deividas Sirvydis of Lithuania, selected by the Mavericks with pick 37, and two future second-round picks.

This trade was just one of at least a mind-boggling 34 trades involving draft picks, some of which have been made official and some of which cannot yet be made official.

Roby becomes the first Nebraska Cornhusker selected in the NBA Draft since Venson Hamilton was selected by the Houston Rockets in 1999. Further, Roby becomes just the eighth ever Cornhusker drafted in the ABA or NBA since 1970. Oddly enough, Roby is the first player from Nebraska to ever be drafted in the second round.

Roby finishes his three-year collegiate career averaging 8.1 points, 5.5 rebounds, 1.5 assists, 0.8 steals, and 1.6 blocks per game over 97 games, 52 of them starts. He made strides every season under recently-fired head coach Tim Miles.

Roby’s time in Lincoln culminated in a stout junior season in which he started all of the 35 games in which he appeared, finishing third on the team in scoring. While his field-goal and three-point percentages dropped, that’s due, in part, to taking more shots and threes per game. Plus, his rebounding, blocking, assisting, and stealing numbers all increased.

Now, Roby goes from a Big Ten program that went 19-17 (6-14) to a Western Conference squad that last year said goodbye to a legend while (hopefully) welcoming a new one.

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In 2018-2019, the Dallas Mavericks missed the playoffs for the third straight season after making the postseason for 15 of the previous 16 seasons.

Despite that, the team increased its win total by nine, finishing 33-49. Roby joins an organization with an aggressive owner in Mark Cuban and a potential future Hall-of-Fame head coach in Rick Carlisle, who’s been in Dallas since the 2008-2009 season and led the team to a championship in 2010-2011.

Perhaps most importantly, Roby joins a team that includes European stars Doncic, 20, drafted with the third overall pick last draft by the Hawks, and former fourth overall pick Kristaps Porzingis, 24, acquired during the season from the New York Knicks. Other young players on the team include Tim Haraway Jr. (29) and Jalen Brunson (23).

Also critical: the Mavs will have some money with which to play around this offseason as Cuban chases a free agent or two.

According to Bleacher Report, Roby sounds like he’ll fit on the Mavericks as a “3-and-D” guy with BR projecting his role in Dallas to be a “[r]eserve stretch big.”

Thankfully for Roby, he lands with a team that, while on the rise, finished 15 games back of the Western Conference’s last playoff spot in 2018-2019. He’ll have time to grow with the rest of the team as Dallas continues to make its steady climb back to respectability.

And for the Cornhuskers?

Roby getting drafted should only help recruiting for new head coach Fred Hoiberg. Young guys should like to see someone from a potential program make it to The League. The Mayor, though he didn’t coach Roby, should harp on the fact that even a guy who averaged just under 12 points per game his senior season for a bottom-ranked Big Ten team can get drafted.

With the experienced and successful Hoiberg now at the helm, and with Roby setting some groundwork, it may not be all that long until the Cornhuskers land a commit from a truly talented player.