Last week, Dallas Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison publicly expressed his desire to repeat the roster from the team that reached the 2024 NBA Finals. The Mavericks, he said, needed every player to come back “10 to 15 percent better” than last season.
“The core is intact,” Harrison said Friday. “If you look at the top seven or eight players who actually played, I don’t see anything happening with that.”
Harrison was telling the truth, for the most part. Dallas feels comfortable bringing into next season a rotation similar to the one that just reached the third final in franchise history, one that was fully assembled just four months ago. Against the Boston Celtics, the Mavericks were ultimately not competitive. “I don’t throw away everything we did in the postseason (because of that series),” Harrison said. But there is the undeniable fact that Dallas couldn’t reach Boston’s level. The Mavericks may have made it to the black tie event, but sometimes even tuxedos need alterations.
The only player in the top eight of the postseason rotation who is not currently under contract next season is Derrick Jones Jr., and the Mavericks took their first step toward his return on Friday. Tim Hardaway Jr., who interestingly played the ninth-most minutes on the team during the run to the Finals, was traded to the Detroit Pistons along with three second-round picks (a 2025 second-rounder via the Toronto Raptors and two 2028 picks) for 24-year-old guard Quentin Grimes. While Hardaway had some highs in his five and a half seasons for Dallas, he had been offered in consecutive summers and fell out of the team’s postseason rotation amid a late-season slump. More importantly, his contract inhibited the team’s offseason plans. In trading those players, the Mavericks also traded away the more limited mid-level exception they had available to non-taxpayers worth a projected $12.9 million, giving them $7.7 million more to offer free agents.
In this case, the read on the move may be quite simple: Dallas can now be competitive in its desire to retain Jones.
“He’s priority number one: 1A and 1B. I think he fits our team,” Harrison said. “He loves it here and obviously we have to find the dynamic to get him to stay. But that’s a priority and we’ll do whatever it takes to get that done.”
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