Trade & FA 2025-26: Free Agency Starts 5pm CST/6pm EST

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All Things Mavs (@All_Things_Mavs)
The Dallas Mavericks just jumped to +200 odds to sign Russell Westbrook on @BetUS_NBA.

I doubt there's anything to this, for the reasons FGump mentions and others, but it's a pretty interesting thought experiment. I'd guess that the apparent need for ball-handling (and guards in general) has some people spooked enough to wonder whether Westbrook could help here, both locally and nationally. Thinking through it, however, I can't escape the thought that he'd be a disaster. 

He'd instantly be the best ball-handler on the team until Kyrie comes back, that's plain enough. He'd also bring an element of solo dribble-penetration that might be completely lacking on the current roster. He defends at least as well as DLo, Williams and Kyrie, and probably a bit better than most of them. Like Flagg, he'd make the team even more lethal in offensive transition, with or without the ball. That's all good. 

The problem, and it's an insurmountable one, is that he's garbage in half-court offense unless he's dominating the ball. He just can't function in an offense like the Mavs seem to want to run, wherein the ball moves and everyone has to find ways to threaten the defense without the ball in their hands. My sense (without checking the numbers because I'm lazy) is that he has improved his catch and shoot game a little in recent seasons, but not nearly enough to claim he's dangerous in that way, and the Mavs already have tons and tons of "almost dangerous" shooters. Westbrook's clearest path to contribution is to serve as the almost exclusively on-ball guard, and while I still think he'll have stretches of games and even entire games when he's effective at that, he's no longer good enough to justify building an offense around him in that role (if he ever was). It would be like Luka-ball, only with a far lesser offensive player. 

I doubt that's the kind of help the Mavs are looking to find.