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The Dallas Mavericks? Gone till November.
We’ve defended just about each and every one of Mark Cuban and the Dallas’ Mavericks’ personnel moves since Dec. 2011, but with his team five months removed from a championship and staring down exactly zero Conference semifinals played in the years since, it’s getting harder and harder.
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Cuban and general manager Donnie Nelson surveyed the landscape following the 2011 lockout and understandably decided that bringing the whole gang back would eventually contribute to a commitment in mediocrity. Without meaning to, due to the team’s insistence (again, understandable at the time) at honing in on a series of mercurial acquisitions and potential pickups, the franchise has been decidedly mediocre in the five seasons since. Even if Lamar Odom played to potential or Deron Williams and/or Dwight Howard swung on by during the offseasons that followed, it’s hard to see any resulting outfit approximating the power of the 2011-12 championship squad.
Outside of the trip to the lottery that hit in 2013, this season had to be the toughest.
The 2015 free agency period began with the infamous DeAndre Jordan back and forth, with Jordan committing to the Mavs on July 3, followed by a skulk back to his incumbent Los Angeles Clippers (and, we should point out, a few more million bucks along the way) once the Clipper cornerstones got to him. The Mavs did well to acquire Zaza Pachulia in a Milwaukee salary dump following the breakup and Pachulia played expertly for the first half of the season, but the lasting impact Jordan would have had just wasn’t there.
Dallas took some of the cash that Jordan walked away from and signed Wesley Matthews to a four-year, $70 million deal. That acquisition would seem to be right in place for the Matthews we adored prior to his 2015 Achilles tear, but though Wesley worked his tail off and played in 78 regular season games, his efficiency tailed off considerably, and sadly on offense he contributed little outside of taking a lot of threes and making the league average from outside.
Texas-raised Deron Williams finally did join the Mavs after Brooklyn bought him out, and while he declined slightly D-Will didn’t fall off as badly as he did from year to year with the Nets. Like Dallas, Deron was merely average.
Well, like almost all of the Mavs.
Dirk Nowitzki turned in yet another stellar year, playing 75 games and averaging a team-high 18.3 a night in just 31 minutes a contest. Dirk sustained his numbers across the board in just about every realm despite turning 37 four months before 2015-16 started, and he paced the Mavericks with 20 a game in the team’s five-game playoff loss to Oklahoma City.
Nowitzki, who is signed for one more season at the bargain rate of $8.6 million, shooed away any talk of retirement following his team’s season-capping loss on Monday night:
“I signed on for three years a couple years ago. My intention was always to finish this contract. I always said I wanted to retire [with] the Mavs, especially after we won the championship a few years ago. There's no reason to go anywhere unless the Mavs are rebuilding. I always said that the last couple of years, I'd never want to be a part of rebuilding. Next season, I'll be 38. As long as we go for it and every summer we add guys and keep competing, then I'll be a Mav for the rest of my career."
Any intrigue about Dirk not working in Dallas next year, as slightly alluded to in that last sentence, would only come after Cuban and Co. make life absolutely untenable for him via a series of fire sale roster moves or purposeful inactivity. Nowitzki’s final year of his contract is a player option, so technically it would be feasible for him to turn his nose at the Dallas roster and sign on with a team that isn’t the only one he’s ever known (save for the 90 minutes Nowitzki spent as a Milwaukee Buck in June, 1998).
That would be quite the stretch, but it’s not out of the realm of the possible. Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle has already stated that he plans to just about plead Dirk to return next season, and if Nowitzki retired full stop he’d technically be walking away from $8.6 million (though I’m sure Mark Cuban will insist on coming up with some sort of financial send-off agreement after a dozen 50-win seasons and one championship).
The issue is that Cuban’s largesse, though he can be creative, doesn’t do a whole lot in the face of the NBA’s salary cap.
It will rise to $92 million next season, and Dirk is on that bargain contract, but there aren’t a whole lot of easy answers in this limited free agent market. Especially if hybrid forward Chandler Parsons, who began the year with a minutes restriction following knee surgery and ended it with his second right knee surgery in 11 months, decides to utilize his player option and shoot for a massive contract with Dallas (a deal that may have already been wink-winked).
Deron Williams could even leave the Mavs high and dry and opt out of the last year of his deal in the face of what will be a players’ market (unless some sort of league-wide collusion hits). This would force the acquisition of yet another in the long list of starting point guards that followed up Jason Kidd’s turn with the team: Derek Fisher, Mike James, Darren Collison, Jose Calderon, J.J. Barea, Jameer Nelson, and Rajon Rondo all got a chance as long-term answers (we’re not including injury replacements).
If the Dirk, Parsons and D-Will situations are sussed out straightaway (with Deron and Dirk hitting for the as-scheduled $14.3 million combined and Parsons adding a few more millions to his ledger), Dallas will still have nearly enough to lure a max-level free agent. Adding just one boffo addition would leave the Mavs with just eight players under contract, though, with veteran hold outs Devin Harris and J.J. Barea still around, and the squad likely picking up the $892,000 team option on impressive (but 29-year old) center Salah Mejri.
That still leaves the Mavs plenty of space under the luxury tax to dink and dab, but hardly any championship guarantees – and that’s just assuming Dirk keeps up his astonishing play in his age 38 year, Parsons approximates his healthy contributions, and Williams only falls off slightly again. More room for Mejri and hopefully more consistent minutes from the clearly talented swingman Justin Anderson will help, but this will be yet another dicey offseason.
Especially when one considers the options.
The Mavs don’t seem to be the sort of team that would want to throw a max deal at Dwight Howard, who is on the decline and turns 31 a month and a half into 2016-17. They can challenge Miami’s commitment to Hassan Whiteside, but does he put them back into the 50-win strata? Would adding Mike Conley or Nicolas Batum, on the off chance that they left their teams in Memphis or Charlotte, do a whole heck of a lot?
This, since 2011, has been the never-ending problem.
No Chris Paul, and then Lamar Odom doesn’t work out. No Deron Williams, so you have to hope that Darren Collison and O.J. Mayo could do something special. No Howard, but here’s Monta Ellis! In 2014 you welcome back Tyson Chandler and in 2015 you re-introduce yourself to Deron Williams, but only after his game had been chewed up and spat out by the mess in Brooklyn, and Chandler faced the ignominy of being told he wasn’t worth a long-term deal from Dallas in 2011.
In that perverse way, the formerly Mavs-spurning Dwight Howard would seem straight out of central casting, and the Mavericks love to take it to the Houston Rockets. The Rockets dumping The Dwight Howard Problem off on Dallas, even with no compensation to show for it, might be Houston’s sly move in this instance, though. Even if Howard is playing alongside one of his best buds in Chandler Parsons: Dwight swore up and down that he was also best buds with the 2012-13 Orlando Magic, prior to demanding a trade as soon as that season packed up.
With that hellscape in place, one would think the Mavs would want to take a pass on 2016 free agency, and keep things clean for 2017 and beyond. The looming presence of what could be either Dirk’s Last Great Year or (shock horror) Dirk’s Last Year changes everything, though. Especially with Nowitzki’s ability to opt out of that contract and chase one last ring, presuming Cuban goes into tank mode for the first time since purchasing the team 16 years ago.
You can’t help but trust Carlisle, Donnie Nelson, and even with all his silly statements, Mark Cuban. As it’s been since 2011, though, will the market do them any favors?
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is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
