5:27pm: The deal is official, as the Mavs announced in a team release.
3:50pm: Nelson has completed the paperwork on his deal, tweets Shams Charania of RealGM, so presumably all that’s left is for the Mavs to receive it and make an official announcement.
THURSDAY, 2:05pm: The deal will run two years and include a player option for the final season, tweets Marc Stein of ESPN.com.
TUESDAY, 11:04pm: Jameer Nelson will sign with the Mavericks on Thurday, sources tell Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports. As expected, Dallas will use their $2.732MM room exception on the veteran point guard, who has spent all 10 of his seasons in the NBA with the Magic before being waived by the team in June. While all signs have pointed towards the sides nearing a deal for a few days now, there were some conflicting reports that Nelson’s camp was speaking with other teams earlier today. The Pelicans, Nets and Pistons were also reported to have interest in the Saint Joseph’s product.
Nelson, a Steve Mountain client, averaged 12.1 points and 7 assists in 32 minutes per game last season on a rebuilding Magic team. As Spears notes, he is expected to compete with Raymond Felton and Devin Harris for the starting point guard position in Dallas, who has now added Nelson, Felton, Al-Farouq Aminu, Tyson Chandler and Chandler Parsons to a team that won 49 games last year. The team also expressed interest in free agent point guard Mo Williams, though this agreement makes that an unlikely possibility.
Now 32, Nelson will be joining a veteran-laden team in Dallas that might just have title aspirations next season despite striking out on all the big-time free agents they’ve reportedly coveted over the past few offseasons. After a handful of losing seasons in Orlando, joining a contender could inject life into Nelson, who earned his lone All-Star nod in 2009 for a Magic team en route to the NBA Finals. As Eddie Sefko of The Dallas Morning News points out, the additions of Nelson and Aminu leave the Mavs with one roster spot remaining and only a minimum salary deal to offer for it.
So the depth chart will look something like this:
Nelson-Felton-Mekel
Ellis-Harris-Ledo
Parsons-Jefferson-Crowder-Griffin
Dirk-Aminu-Smith
Chandler-Wright
It looks like they have their 15 if Griffin makes the roster on his non-guaranteed deal. This roster is MUCH better than last year’s, I’d still put Spurs-Thunder up top but after them it should be wide open.