Nico Harrison had a plan when he traded Luka Doncic to the Lakers last February. It happened to be a terrible one. The now-former general manager yanked the Mavericks in a win-at-all-costs direction, one that ignored what the Mavericks were sans-Doncic: an aging, injury-prone, shooting-deficient, expensive team. When Kyrie Irving tore his ACL a month after the trade, that deeply flawed roster became a hopeless one.
While Cooper Flagg’s miraculous arrival last summer gave Dallas some reason to believe in the future, it also muddied the waters in the short term. It’s very hard to win in the NBA when a rookie is counted on as one of your top players, yet Dallas entered this season with contending aspirations, mostly because Harrison staked his basketball career on that outcome. Time and again, teams have failed to blend the present with the future, and the Mavericks turned out to be no different, as Dallas never came close to threatening the West’s upper or middle classes. Once Harrison was deservedly fired in November, the pressure to jam two timelines together was off, but there was still the matter of doing something about it. The front office needed to firmly align the Mavericks on Flagg’s developmental timeline, away from any misguided hope that they could compete in the here and now.
Jettisoning Anthony Davis to the Washington Wizards accomplished that. Finally, the post-Doncic Mavericks have clarity, and the last real vestige of Harrison’s vision is dead and buried. “We had to take an honest look at ourselves in the mirror and realize where we were and where we wanted to be,” co-interim general manager Matt Riccardi told reporters Thursday. “Sometimes the path is not straightforward. You gotta go a little roundabout to get where we want to go.”
So, that’s all well and good, but how do the Mavericks get there? For the most part, through patience and flexibility.
We can start with what Dallas actually got in terms of players for Davis (and D’Angelo Russell, Jaden Hardy, and Dante Exum): former second-overall pick Marvin Bagley, veteran Khris Middleton, raw prospect AJ Johnson, and steady point guard in Tyus Jones.
Bagley is easily the most intriguing name, and not only because the Kings took him ahead of Doncic in the 2018 draft. When Bagley was coming out of Duke, scouts envisioned a prime-time scoring forward with top-tier athleticism. He hasn’t come close to that; Dallas will be his fifth NBA team before his 27th birthday. But Bagley has stabilized his career by embracing the role-player life. He’s fun as the roll man in the pick and roll, or hanging out in the dunker’s spot waiting for drop-offs when the defense collapses. Bagley still isn’t much of a defender, and his rebounding is so-so for a player who checks in at 6-foot-10 and 235 pounds. But he can still get off the floor quickly, as Mavericks fans saw in his debut against the San Antonio Spurs on Saturday night, when he posted an impressive double-double with 16 points, 12 rebounds, and a team-high four blocks. With Flagg leading the charge, the Mavericks have become a high-pace team this season, and Bagley is another horse who can run when Flagg grabs a rebound and wants to get down the floor quickly. He’ll be interesting to watch to close the season.
Jones is the other player with a real chance at sticking around. NBA insider Jake Fischer reported last week that Jones was the point guard at the top of Dallas’ list last summer before he got a contract from Orlando that the Mavericks couldn’t match, leaving Dallas to settle for Russell instead. Jones is small, can’t defend, and his shot comes and goes, but he almost never turns the ball over and sets up his teammates well. While he was having a brutal season with the Magic, Orlando seems to be the place players go to watch their offense die. Like Bagley, Jones impressed in his Mavs debut on Saturday, with seven assists and zero turnovers in just 17 minutes, fitting for a guard who has one of the best assist-to-turnover ratios of all time. Given Brandon Williams’ and Ryan Nembhard’s inconsistency, Jones should get plenty of chances to help shore up the Mavericks’ weak guard rotation while simultaneously not being a big enough needle mover to damage Dallas’ draft lottery odds.
Johnson and Middleton are the least likely to be around going forward. Johnson is 160 pounds sopping wet, a raw scoring prospect who was supposed to be a second-round talent in 2024 but instead was chosen toward the end of the first by a Milwaukee Bucks team that hasn’t drafted well in years. He’s basically a dart throw. Middleton, on the other hand, is the ultimate known commodity: a steady veteran with championship pedigree who, at age 34, is well past his All-Star peak. Even if Middleton isn’t bought out, his role in the trade was strictly being a big piece of expiring salary to help give the Mavericks financial flexibility.
And that flexibility is the main event of the trade. It’s not fun to root for saving salary, but unfortunately the NBA did this to itself via a collective bargaining agreement that enforces strict penalties for being a certain amount over the salary cap. Prior to the deal, Dallas was far enough above it to be on pace to hit the dreaded second apron, which comes with the following restrictions:
First-round picks seven years out cannot be traded.
Loss of access to the taxpayer mid-level exception (a handy tool for capped-out teams to add quality role players).
Outgoing salaries cannot be aggregated or combined in trades. In other words, the Mavs would not have been able to do 2-for-1 or 3-for-1 trades.
Cash cannot be used in trades (so, no more buying of second-round draft picks, for example).
Teams cannot use trade exceptions created in a prior year.
There’s a reason, in other words, that ESPN’s Tim MacMahon reported last week that some within the Mavericks organization were pushing to trade Davis strictly for expiring salaries. The constraints Dallas was staring down would have damaged the rebuilding effort far more than the loss of Davis’ talent.
Ultimately, Dallas got to have its cake and eat it, too, by enticing Washington to take Davis’ deal and send back five draft picks of admittedly dubious quality. This summer alone, Dallas has its own first-round pick, the first rounder from the Thunder acquired in the Davis trade, the non-tax mid-level exception, and two trade exceptions ($20 million from Davis, $6 million from Hardy) to maneuver with. (Hat tip to the wonderful @CBAMavs.) No, trade exceptions don’t put on jerseys, and, yes, the Mavericks have an awful history of managing their cap in the years following the 2011 championship. Skepticism is healthy in this case. But I wouldn’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Davis hadn’t played more than five consecutive games with the Mavericks; the volume and variety of his injuries were startling. Waiting any longer would just be delaying the inevitable. While these trade exceptions and draft picks aren’t guarantees the Mavericks will be better, they represent a chance to be something more than the bad, injured, and expensive team they had been since last February, and were likely to remain for the next three to four years.
As for how those resources should be used, start by dangling the two trade exceptions to try to take on a team’s unwanted salary to acquire more draft picks. For instance, Toronto’s Jakob Poeltl earns $19.5 million this season and has an extension that kicks in next season for the next three years that averages around $28 million a year. If the Raptors have cold feet about that deal, they could slot that salary into Dallas’ trade exception this June at the draft, toss Dallas a pick or two for its troubles, and then have his extension off the books before the league calendar flips over in July.
If Dallas can’t find a team willing to part with draft picks in exchange for cap relief, then the Mavericks can leverage that space in pursuit of its major on-court need: guard help, even with the pending return of Irving. The 2026 draft is loaded in the backcourt, so Dallas could presumably target a guard with its own early pick while maybe also packaging their newly acquired picks with a veteran or two and target an established name to slot alongside Irving.
Regardless of what happens, Dallas can now move into this summer unified around one core truth: Cooper Flagg is a certified badass, and every move should be made with him in mind. That doesn’t mean the Mavericks are fixed—far from it. But there’s now a chance for something new, and for now, that’s about all Mavericks fans can ask for after the last 12 months.
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Josh Bowe
Josh Bowe
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Josh Bowe covers the Mavericks for StrongSide. A former full-time journalist, Josh has covered the Mavericks as a writer and editor for Mavs Moneyball since 2011. He is also a co-host on the Pod Maverick podcast. A lifelong fan of basketball, Josh enjoys discussing the nuances of the game and shining a light on them.