BRUNSON BURNER: to NYK for 4yrs/$104M (no SnT) | NYK docked 2025 2nd for tampering

[F Gump]

NBA Base: The Jalen Brunson camp reportedly "laughed" at the Mavericks when Dallas tried to offer him a 4-year, $55M extension near the 2022 trade deadline, per @TheSteinLine. "The Brunson camp basically laughed at them and said, 'Uh, we'll take our chances in free agency now, you guys had your chance.' ... The Mavs still had the option at that point of picking up the phone and saying, 'Jalen, we completely screwed this up, we are deeply sorry, we've disrespected you, we want to make this right, we're going to offer you 150 over five.' They could have even gone to 175 over five... They had the wherewithal to give Jalen Brunson a blow-away offer, and they didn't do it." "If they re-signed him, they either could have kept him with Luka or their phone would have been ringing off the hook with trade offers and they would have had so much better optionality... losing Jalen Brunson for nothing when you combine that with how the Luka trade turned out, like I said, where I live there is a lot of pain when the Knicks are on television."

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The Mavs did NOT have the ability to offer JB a bigger deal at the TDL than the 4/55M deal they offered. 

Yes, they COULD HAVE outbid NY once they got to free agency, but whether they could have swayed a player who held all the cards and wanted his own team is something we have no way of knowing. As I recall, at that point as they headed into free agency, Cuban smugly thought Brunson was going nowhere, and that the Mavs offer was more than enough (and that JB would be eager to get it and stay) -- when the Mavs didn't even get a real meeting and had no clue how much it would take to sign him.

Personally I wanted the Mavs to keep JB, and to pay more if they needed to. I saw huge value in JB. His play in those playoffs showed a killer instinct, his game reminded me of Nash, and he worked well with Luka.

At the same time, if your negotiating team is incompetent, and the owner doesn't see a real need to hire an expert, bad outcomes like that are basically inevitable. We knew this from all the way back in the days of the Nash fiasco, and it was never fixed.