Trade & Free Agency 2026/2027

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The Stein Line on Tuesday learned that Chicago is Mathurin's other current suitor. You'll recall that The Stein Line also revealed recently (July 23 to be exact) that New Orleans has been trying to shed Jordan Hawkins' contract via trade to move further away from the first apron. Among the options available to the Pelicans, if they succeed in those efforts, would be opening up the use of a healthy portion of its midlevel exception to assemble an offer sheet to Mathurin.

marcstein.substack.com

The wording that they are looking at using "a healthy portion" of the mid-level to try to obtain Mathurin jumps off the page to me. Our assumptions about what contract Mathurin is worth, and perhaps for the price range for RFAs in general, have apparently been way too high. We are seeing this with Watson as well.

I think this also has relevance to what it is likely to cost the Mavs to re-sign players (especially RFAs) next summer. Big raises that have been assumed to be necessary may turn out to be small ones (or even no raise at all). 

This also may be instructional to not get overburdened cap wise in advance of next summer, because prices next summer for all but the top players may be inviting.

In this context, I would certainly avoid taking on any bloated contract just to solve the roster issues they have at the moment. It looks possible that the same level of player may be gettable next summer at a fraction of the cost, and with the hard cap and softening revenues, payroll efficiency is super vital.