Rick Carlisle wants the Mavericks to operate out of the “flow” offense instead of set plays the majority of the time.

That means newly acquired point guard Darren Collison will have freedom to direct the team’s offense on the fly.

“My continuing goal, my ongoing goal is to call less or no plays if we can,” Carlisle said. “I think that that’s better. We want our guys to make plays, not call plays.”

Carlisle prefers to call plays only in specific situations, such as coming out of timeouts in crunch time.

“I want our system to be based on simplicity and counters and guys knowing which counters are there are how to react and respond appropriately, not having 75 plays that each have five options,” Carlisle said. “That’s too confusing.”

Chris Kaman suffered a back sprain during the Dallas Mavericks' first preseason practice.

Kaman has missed 69 games over the past two seasons.

“It was a really good practice,” coach Rick Carlisle said. “We had one casualty. Kaman went out with a sprained lower back. It’s not considered serious. So we’ll see how he’s doing for tonight and tomorrow and go from there. It’s not serious, but it was enough to keep him out of about half of what we did [in the morning].”

Elton Brand replaced Kaman at center in drills.

“I don’t know who’s going to start at center,” Carlisle said. “On paper, it looks like Kaman will be the starter, but we got a long way to go before we figure out what’s best for the team. Everything’s on the table.”

The Dallas Mavericks have almost completely remade their roster since winning the 2011 NBA Finals.

This season, the Mavericks have eight new players.

"We have 31 days of training camp and then we're at the Lakers on national TV," Rick Carlisle said. "That 31 days is going to go by very quickly.

"We're not going to try and reinvent these guys. We're going to try to put them together into our system to make this thing work in a big way."

Josh Akognon signed a fully guaranteed contract with Liaoning in China for the 12-13 season.

But the contract contains an out-clause to go to an NBA team, which has been exercised for Akognon to join the Dallas Mavericks on a non-guaranteed contract, a source told RealGM.

Akognon will return to Lianoning if the Mavericks decide not to keep him on their regular season roster.

Akognon is a 5-11 point guard out of Cal State Fullerton, who played in China and the D-League last season.

Mark Cuban questioned whether Dwight Howard and Steve Nash will fit with the Lakers.

“The Lakers have done this before,” Cuban said. “Remember Gary Payton, Karl Malone and Kobe and Shaq were all together, and it didn’t work.

“It takes great chemistry, like coach (Rick Carlisle) alluded to, it takes guys wanting to be there — I don’t know if all their guys want to be there — it’s going to be interesting.”

Cuban referenced the Mavericks’ championship run in 2011.

“Look, (the Lakers are) going to be a great team, but I remember when we made our run,” Cuban said. “We weren’t supposed to win any series. The Lakers were defending champs when we swept them, and they had everybody back. A lot of teams do a great job winning the summer, but I never get so antsy about what happens over the summer.”