Trade & Free Agency 2026/2027

[KillerLeft]

1.  Dallas is $2.3mm under the tax.  The absolute smallest salary Mathurin can receive and still legally match Gafford is $19,527,168 (half of that plus $7.5mm has to match $17,263,584).  If that deal were done today it is legal and would leave Dallas $34k under the tax. 

Here's a chunk of Dan's great post from the other day, just as a reference. We don't know if the Mathurin stuff is real, but if it is I think it's safe to say the front office likes his potential quite a bit to pursue him at this number. 

There are probably ways to match a cheaper contract and not include either PJW or Gafford as the outgoing, but I don't think it's worth wasting too much time thinking about those paths. The whole NBA world has been reporting that Dallas offered Gafford for Mathurin at the trade deadline, and LAC seems to need a center, so...it's really just about whether Dallas still wants him, wants him on that level of contract and whether LAC wants to let him go, imo. I doubt they're looking to do a Mathruin for Thompson deal, for example, and it's not like Dallas has draft capital laying around to use on something like this.

What's interesting to me is that the other guy everyone agrees they offered Gafford for at the deadline was Risacher, and now he's here. We knew Risacher was a potential target as a means of offloading AD at the time, but I've seen it out there a lot since the trade that ATL turned down an offer of Gafford at the time, too. It might be coincidence that both the Ricardi/Finley version and the Ujiri/Schmitz version of the front office liked Risacher, but I've been wondering if they (Ujiri, at least) weren't already consulting from afar?

This has been such a crazy summer for the Mavs. I love that it's still going!