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It was an offseason full of emojis for the Mavericks. There were, of course, the planes, helicopters and automobiles from The Great Emoji War of 2015 , when DeAndre Jordain reneged on his max contract agreement and rejoined the Clippers on the eve of the NBA’s moratorium. That sent Mark Cuban & Co. scrambling to “replace” a First Team All-Defensive center, acquiring Zaza Pachulia, Samuel Dalembert and JaVale McGee while embodying a gritted teeth emoji. [ Yahoo Fantasy Basketball: Sign up for a league today ] There was an astonished face emoji after the Mavs signed Wes Matthews to a four-year, $70 million deal four months after he underwent surgery on his torn left Achilles tendon. There was a shoulder shrug once Cuban replaced recently acquired and quickly renounced Rajon Rondo with currently injured Deron Williams at half the price — a reasonable swap in both a theoretical 2010 and the reality of 2015 for vastly different reasons. That leaves coach Rick Carlisle with a starting lineup that should operate just fine offensively, with Williams and Chandler Parsons creating in space spread by capable shooters Matthews, Dirk Nowitzki and Pachulia. Straight fire emojis, right? Well … Mark Cuban on Mavs: "I never make predictions, but I think we can be better than we were last year of we're healthy." — Tim MacMahon (@espn_macmahon) October 16, 2015 Is there a half-cry, half-laugh emoji? That would sum up Cuban’s assumption that his team can win more than 50 games “if we’re healthy,” since the Mavericks began the preseason with much-maligned point guard Raymond Felton, off-and-on D-League guard John Jenkins, rookie wing Justin Anderson and journeyman forward Charlie Villanueva filling out a starting lineup in place of the hobbled Williams (calf), Matthews (Achilles), Parsons ( microfracture surgery ) and Nowitzki (37 years old). Where once the Mavs traded in a one-time Defensive Player of the Year (Tyson Chandler) for a potential future DPOY (Jordan) and upgraded from Monta Ellis’ streaky production to Matthews’ efficient two-way contribution, they’re now patching a defense that ranked 18th in points allowed per 100 possessions with aging former All-Stars and a rehabbed supporting cast. There’s an emoji for that, too . 2014-15 season in 140 characters or less : Did the summer help at all? In theory, Matthews remains an upgrade over Ellis “if we’re healthy”; the bizarre three-headed center monster of Pachulia ( for a second-round pick ), Dalembert ( for the veteran minimum ) and McGee ( on a non-guaranteed deal ) isn’t the worst way to salvage the Jordan situation, so long as they don’t respectively miss 20-plus games for the fourth time in five years, warrant another outright release and Shaqt a fool ; and a motivated Williams at $5.4 million is just as good as a frustrated Rondo at $10 million. In theory . [ Follow Dunks Don't Lie on Tumblr: The best slams from all of basketball] In reality, the Mavs were a .500 team after the All-Star break and were lucky to avoid a first-round sweep by the Houston Rockets in the playoffs. They haven’t done much to immediately upgrade the starting lineup, and they lost arguably their most effective bench player (Al-Farouq Aminu) to free agency, replacing him with Jeremy Evans, who couldn’t crack the rotation in Utah after five seasons with the Jazz.
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