MAVS NEWS:

[Chicagojk]

Hollinger under the radar moves of the summer. He has Klay Thompson too, but for what the Warriors were able to get for a declining player where both Heild and Anderson are making less than Thompson. He does note that Thompson seems like a good fit in Dallas.


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Mavs’ Tim Hardaway Jr. trade
Dallas’ sign-and-trade for Thompson hogged the spotlight, and early returns are tilting positive after Josh Green’s 0-for-the-Olympics in Paris. (Dallas sent Green to Charlotte as the matching salary in the deal.)

However, the Mavs’ other moves might have been better. The trade of Hardaway’s $16.2 million salary for Quentin Grimes’ $4.3 million salary set the stage for the Thompson trade and the Naji Marshall signing. The deal only cost them two seconds, and it was critical to keeping the Mavs under the first apron and thus making both the Thompson and Marshall additions cap legal.

Yet even if there were no apron component, this deal would be a win. Yes, Grimes’ knee injury from last season looms as a question mark, but at full strength, he’s a better player than Hardaway at this point in their respective careers. Grimes is a volume 3-point shooter who defends his position and can fit in perfectly as a weakside player while Dončić and Kyrie Irving dominate the ball. He’s also only 24 and a restricted free agent after the season (if the Mavs don’t extend him in October, that is).

Meanwhile, don’t forget that $16.2 million trade exception Dallas took away from this deal. The Mavs are more likely to use it in the 2025 offseason given their position just pennies from the first-apron limit (they can’t go over due to acquiring Thompson and Marshall). However, they project to have enough sub-apron space to utilize most or all of it next summer or could potentially roll it into another, longer-lived exception in a future trade.