MAVS NEWS:

[KillerLeft]

Klay has had his moments, but they've been few and far between. It's why GS let him walk. The Butler situation is very similar. Aging star that wants an extension, that the team is unwilling to give him.

The Butler situation couldn't be farther from the Thompson situation. Night and day. Butler is wanting a multi-year extension at MAX money. Even if he doesn't get one, he has a player option for next season at $52 million. The motivation behind Butler's unrest puts his situation in a totally different stratosphere than Thompson's. He chose the Mavs because he wanted to play here and signed for the freaking MLE. 

You (and a couple of others) keep pointing to the fact that Thompson is past his prime as some sort of "told you so" smoking gun, but the reality is that no one, not one single person, thought otherwise over the summer. No one from this board thought they were getting a player in his prime. No one from the national media thought that. No one in the Mavericks organization thought that. Klay, himself, knew better, even, which is why he signed right away for the MLE. 

I think people's expectations of his time here will be properly calibrated when they start thinking of him as an MLE player, which is what he is. In my opinion, it has already been one of the better uses of the MLE the Mavs have found during my fandom, and it really seems likely to look even better by season's end. I have zero complaints with Thompson, the signing, and I haven't felt at all like Kidd is playing him too much to stroke his ego. He actually seems pretty far down on the pecking order in terms of closing games, sitting in favor of Grimes, Marshall and even Dinwiddie at times down the stretch.