LAS VEGAS -- It's barely been 24 hours since the Mavericks acquired point guard Delon Wright in a sign-and-trade from Memphis -- but plenty of time, turns out, for coach Rick Carlisle to assess Wright as a potential starter.

"He could be," Carlisle told The News at halftime of the Mavericks summer league team's game on Monday against Sacramento at the Thomas & Mack Center. "I envision this team in a way that we're going to have to have flexibility.

"I don't know that we'll have a full-time starting team. But we wouldn't have made this move if we didn't think he was a starting-caliber player. But the way to win now is to have starting-caliber players top-to-bottom. We're trying to get as many as we can."

In games Wright starts, he'll likely share backcourt duties with Luka Doncic, with 6-foot-5 Wright playing shooting guard on offense and point guard on defense. Paired with 6-7 Doncic, that would give Dallas one of the NBA's tallest, best-rebounding backcourts. For their careers, Doncic and Wright average a combined 11.3 rebounds per game.

"We like his versatility," Carlisle said of Wright. "We like his length and ability to play multiple positions.

"We like how he's developed. We feel that this is an opportunity. And we need someone in that position who can guard point guards and play off the ball - and play with the ball."

Wright, 27, was the 20th pick of the 2015 draft, by Toronto. The Mavericks had the 21st pick. Wright and Justin Anderson were the top-ranked players left on the Mavericks' board when Toronto's pick came. The Raptors took Wright, leaving Anderson for the Mavericks.

In Toronto, Wright was coached during his first three NBA seasons by former Mavericks assistant Dwane Casey. Carlisle said he spoke to Casey about restricted-free agent Wright when the Mavericks began targeting him as a potential acquisition.

A source said the Mavericks hoped to land both Danny Green and Wright, with plans to offer Wright a lucrative offer sheet that Memphis would have been forced to match in order to keep him. The Mavericks were secretive about those plans because they didn't want to give Memphis extra time to prepare for an offer.

After nearly a week of waiting for ex-Raptors teammate Kawhi Leonard to make his free-agency decision to sign with the Clippers, Green chose to become a Laker. The Mavericks then turned their full attention to Wright and were able to avoid the offer-sheet process by negotiating the sign-and-trade with Memphis.

Early reaction around the NBA is that the Mavericks got a relative bargain, giving up only two second-round draft picks and agreeing to pay Wright $29 million over three seasons.

After getting traded from Toronto the Memphis last season, Wright averaged 12 points for the Grizzlies. He posted three triple-doubles in Memphis' last four games, two of them coming against Dallas.

"He's a versatile guy, he's a big team guy and I know he's competitive," said Mavericks center Dwight Powell, while courtside Monday for the Dallas-Sacramento game. "Those are things you want, especially with guards."