Dallas picked Ahmad Nivins with the 56th pick in the 2009 NBA Draft. Nivins is a 6’9″ 235lb power forward from St. Joseph’s whose strengths and weaknesses were detailed back in 2006, found at NBADraft.net:

Strengths: Agile forward with excellent speed running the floor … A defensive minded player who takes great pride in his ability to defend Fundamentally sound rebounding technique with a knack for timing the ball off the glass A presence as a shot blocker, his athleticism and good lateral quickness allow him to defend out to the perimeter and be a good on-ball defender . Strong leaper, he can really rise Takes the charge well.Cleans up the offensive glass, as evidenced by the fact that close to 60% of his rebounds this year are on the offensive end Nice back-to-the basket moves down low. At just 19 he has a lot of physical depelopment left. Shows a lot of untapped potential …

Weaknesses: Offensively, he is still very raw Not yet comfortable with the ball in his hands outside of the low post Lacks a midrange game at this point He has bad positioning in the offensive paint when looking for the ball, this really hurts his chances of getting good quality entry passes to work on his low post moves Really needs to add some bulk in order to bang with the big boys and make his low post game more effective, and he is working on it

Let’s take a quick look at some St. Joseph’s footage:

The problem with these college shots is the distance from the action.

According to Philly.com,

Nivins got a call from Dallas coach Rick Carlisle and general manager Donnie Nelson.

“They said they weren’t expecting me to be around at that point,” Nivins said. “They said they’d been keeping an eye on me.”

The chance will begin today. He already got a call from the Mavericks asking what number he wanted. And he has a 7:30 a.m. flight from Newark, N.J., that will take him to Dallas.

Ahmad Nivins is small for an NBA power forward, but he may have the skillset to get some playing time in the league. He’ll have to bulk up and that will largely affect his playing time for the Mavs, who need a rebounding / scoring in the paint physical presence on this team – which I’m not really sure they got with Nivins.

With all is hopefully to come in trades this summer, we’ll have to wait and see if Nivins will remain and possibly replace Brandon Bass after he’s traded or if he goes in some sort of package deal.

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