Every franchise has a creation myth. For the Dallas Mavericks, it begins on a Tuesday night in October 1980 in a city that was still learning what NBA basketball looked like — and at the center of that moment was a 6-foot-3 point guard from Monessen, Pennsylvania, named Brad Davis. He ran the offense. He set the tone. He was the first Dallas Maverick to play the first Dallas Mavericks game, and he never stopped being exactly that: the Original Maverick.
Davis did not arrive in Dallas with star power or a lottery pedigree. He arrived with a professional's mind, a point guard's vision, and a quiet understanding of what it means to serve a team rather than decorate one. What followed was twelve years of setting screens, making passes, and building the identity of a franchise from the ground up. When the Mavericks retired his number 15 on April 18, 2000, they were not honoring statistics. They were honoring the man who was there before there was anything to honor.
The Road to Dallas
Davis played college basketball at the University of Maryland under Lefty Driesell before being selected in the second round of the 1977 NBA Draft by the Los Angeles Lakers. His early career was a journey through basketball's margins — brief stints in Los Angeles, Indiana, and Utah, and even a season with the Montana Gold of the Western Basketball Association. By 1980, he was a 24-year-old journeyman point guard with a resume that suggested a career on the fringes of professional basketball.
Then the Dallas Mavericks held their expansion draft. They selected Brad Davis among their first players. It was a choice that would define both the player and the franchise. Davis became the starting point guard for the very first Mavericks team, and he would remain in Dallas for twelve of the next thirteen NBA seasons — a run that produced 7,067 points and 5,990 assists and, more importantly, the entire foundational identity of a franchise that had never existed before.
The Art of the Pass
Brad Davis was, at his core, one of the great passing point guards of his era. His 5,990 career assists with Dallas represented a franchise record that would stand for years — and the number understates what made him special, because Davis operated in an era before the modern space-and-pace game opened driving lanes and created kick-out opportunities. He made passes within a more physically congested game, against defenses that were allowed to be far more physical, and he did it with a consistency and unselfishness that coaches universally praised.
His role evolved over twelve seasons. In the early years, he was the floor general of an expansion roster that needed someone to hold everything together. As players like Rolando Blackman and Mark Aguirre arrived and developed, Davis became the conductor — the player whose understanding of his teammates' strengths maximized what they could do. He averaged nearly six assists per game across his Dallas career while keeping his turnovers among the lowest at the position. He did not make highlight plays. He made the right play, every time, in a way that never drew attention to itself.
From Expansion to Contender
The arc of the early Mavericks is inseparable from the arc of Brad Davis. He watched the franchise grow from a 15-win expansion team into a Western Conference Finals participant. He was the point guard who handed the ball to Rolando Blackman when Blackman was becoming the best scorer in franchise history. He was the teammate who shared the backcourt with Derek Harper when Harper was becoming one of the finest defensive guards in the league. He was the orchestrator of the 1987-88 Mavericks team that pushed the Los Angeles Lakers to seven games in the Western Conference Finals — the deepest playoff run in franchise history at the time.
Throughout that journey, Davis was the constant. Coaches came and went. Draft picks arrived and departed. The roster was rebuilt around new stars while Davis remained — a point guard who understood that his job was to make the team work, not to make himself noticed. In a league where individual glory drives almost every career decision, Brad Davis's twelve seasons of selfless service stand as one of the most genuine commitments to team basketball in the history of the sport.
Why the Mavericks Retired #15
The Mavericks retired Brad Davis's number 15 on April 18, 2000 — a ceremony that acknowledged something that box scores and highlight reels never fully captured. Davis was not just a player who wore the number. He was the embodiment of what the franchise asked of its players in its most vulnerable years: show up, put the team first, and make the people around you better than they would be without you.
His nickname — The Original Maverick — is not a marketing slogan. It is a statement of fact and a statement of values. Davis was there on day one. He was there through the losing, through the building, through the growing pains of a franchise learning what it was supposed to be. And when the franchise finally understood what it was supposed to be, it looked a lot like Brad Davis had been all along: professional, selfless, and relentlessly committed to making the team work.
Number 15 hangs in the rafters of American Airlines Center alongside Derek Harper (#12), Rolando Blackman (#22), and Dirk Nowitzki (#41). It is the humblest number in the group — the retirement of a player who never made an All-Star team, who never led the league in any statistical category, who never carried a team to a championship. What it honors is something more foundational: the player without whom none of the others would have had a franchise to join.
