The Mavericks entered this offseason aiming to get younger, more athletic, and stronger defensively, according to Tim Cato of The Athletic, who notes that swapping out Reggie Bullock for Grant Williams could help achieve a couple of those goals. Dallas pivoted to Williams in free agency after missing out on Bruce Brown and will land the restricted free agent in a sign-and-trade deal with Boston.
As Cato outlines, Williams will essentially be playing the role that players like Dorian Finney-Smith and Bullock had in Dallas last season, guarding opposing perimeter threats on defense and stretching the floor on offense.
However, Cato believes that Williams has more to offer on offense than the players he’s replacing, writing that the Mavs’ newest forward isn’t as “static” and could get an opportunity to be a secondary creator when Luka Doncic and/or Kyrie Irving are double-teamed.
Here’s more on the Mavs:
- Irving’s new three-year contract, originally reported to be worth $126MM, actually has a guaranteed base value of $120MM, tweets ESPN’s Bobby Marks. The remaining $6MM is made up incentives that are tied to games played and team success — Kyrie can earn $1MM per year by playing at least 65 games and $1MM each year the Mavs get to 50 wins (and Irving plays at least 58 games), reports Tim MacMahon of ESPN (Twitter link).
- Richaun Holmes waived his $1.8MM trade kicker as part of the deal that sent him from Sacramento to Dallas, per MacMahon (Twitter link). That gave the Mavericks a little extra flexibility under their hard cap for their offer sheet to Matisse Thybulle, which was matched by Portland. The Mavs’ team salary remains $10.9MM below that hard cap, according to MacMahon and Marks.
- Thybulle will be returning to the Trail Blazers after they matched his offer sheet, but it doesn’t sound like that was his preferred outcome. On the #thisleague UNCUT podcast, Marc Stein said that ending up in Dallas was something Thybulle had “been wanting even before this summer,” and Chris Haynes agreed. “Matisse desperately wanted to be a member of the Dallas Mavericks,” Haynes said (hat tip to Ashish Mathur of Heavy.com).
Mavs still need one more meaningful piece to make playoffs.
Blazers current luxury tax room $2 million
This is a big question:
How to trade Lillard and improve the roster?
Are you kidding about Grant Williams? A secondary creator???? He was awful as a starter. DFS has so much more to offer than Grant ever will. Grant was best defending Giannis and Embiid a few years ago cause hes strong, but those guy have started going around him since he can not keep up with that laterally. To suggest hes a good perimeter defender is laughable.
The “secondary creator” thing was amusing as well.
He averages 1.2 assists in 21 minutes a game over his career.
I’ve never heard the words “Grant Williams” and “more athletic” used in the same sentence before.
If Thybulle desperately wanted to end up in Dallas he should have waited another year to be an unrestricted free agent and he could have gone anywhere he wanted.
Dallas should sign and trade wood for kelly oubre or pj Washington and throw Charlotte some 2nd round picks
I was a Mavs fan until last year. I hope they lose every single game now. I won’t cheer for them until Cuban and every other player in last year’s roster of quitters is gone. that includes Luka and Kyrie. if I was a free agent I wouldn’t sign with Dallas. they’ll probably decide 3 games into the season to lose the rest of the games because that’s all they’re good at. what a joke of a team. it’s a team teaching everyone how to lose. why play the game if you’re not trying to win each game no matter your record? all they want is money and don’t care if they win or not.
You are a clown. I speak for most if not all Mavs fans when I say we are happy to see you go.
Dallas fans would think the NBA title was a lock had their offseason included traded for Kristaps Porzingis and signing Jalen Brunson, and then adding a 3-D guy in Dorian Finley-Smith …. All that and not signed Kyrie. … Oh wait … They already had all those guys. Teams struggle and evaluating talent they have in front of them every single day.
Portland should trade Thybulle to Dallas at the trade deadline. For a premium of course…
I don’t think the Mavs can acquire MT for af least one calendar year due to the fact that he signed an offer sheet with them, even though it was matched by Blazers.