THE CRUCIFIX: Cato: Wood isn't thrilled w/ his role...Will depart in the summer

[DallasMaverick]

Cato has said that last part (trying to trade him immediately upon acquiring him) from the very beginning.  I can recall him saying Wood might not make it to camp or the season opener.  My interpretation of that was they’d wait until he could be aggregated and then make a move.  Of course that never happened and to be fair, no one else that I know of reported that.  If true, it certainly lends credence to the idea that the deal was all about moving the excess salaries.

If one ascribes to the idea that they would have taken Hardy with #26 and if the Mav’s had the deal for the second used for Hardy lined up in advance (certainly possible), then the price to dump salaries was really the two seconds they gave up to get the Hardy pick.

Perhaps the Mavs simply miscalculated Wood's value.  Their plan was to use him as a trade chip to acquire a better-fitting player.

But nobody wanted him, or was willing to trade back anything the  Mavs could use.  I suppose his lofty salary expectations might also have played a role in his league-wide undesirability.

So they kept him and tried to extract some value from his play as an expiring player.  Thus the reduction in playing time.  They realized he was expiring, and because of his inflated self-evaluation, it was unlikely they could re-sign him at anything approaching a reasonable price.

So they couldn't really try to build anything around him.  His value was simply what they could get the remainder of the season.

And now, the new CBA really penalizes overpays.  A team wishing to assemble a championship roster needs to have players that produce at or above their salaries.

Wood doesn't seem likely to fit that criterion.