DALLAS — The Feb. 10 NBA trade deadline is less than a month away and wafts of rumors are in the air, though most actual negotiations won’t begin to percolate until February.
So, Nico Harrison, would you say trade season has been more or less active than usual?
“So how busy is it?” the Mavericks’ first-year president and general manager asked, rhetorically, adding with a smile: “I don’t know because this is my first time, so I have nothing to compare it with.”
Harrison, though, says his two decades as a Nike executive and privy to the NBA rumor mill tell him that what is occurring now is normal: “Most of the stuff is just conversations. That’s it.”
Already, media reports and league sources are linking the Mavericks, in varying degrees, as having interest in Myles Turner, Philadelphia’s Ben Simmons and Atlanta’s John Collins.
And we can be sure that Dallas-Toronto discussions about idle Goran Dragic will intensify, although, logically, the Mavericks’ best option to land Luka Doncic’s friend and mentor would be in the post-trade-deadline buyout market.
Harrison, vice president Michael Finley and Mavericks owner Mark Cuban are a mostly enviable position as the trade deadline nears.
The Mavericks (24-19) have won eight of their last nine games entering Monday night’s game against Oklahoma City.
Dallas finally is showing signs of becoming the team that management and first-year coach Jason Kidd envisioned when, last summer, roster core largely was kept intact, except for the additions of Reggie Bullock, Sterling Brown, Moses Brown and Frank Ntilikina.
As Kidd promised, the Mavericks are forging an identity as a defense-first team, climbing to No. 5 in the NBA in defensive efficiency.
And it’s happened even amid 11 different players getting COVID-19 in December and early January – and with franchise co-stars players Luka Doncic and Kristaps Porzingis missing 15 games and 16 games, respectively.
“The thing that I really appreciate about the team is they’ve just been resilient,” Harrison said. “I think it’ll be interesting to see, now that everybody’s back, ‘How do we how do we gel? How do we play?’
“It’s almost been, I don’t want to say easy, but it’s almost helped us that we haven’t had everybody there. Tons of people have gotten that playing time, they’ve excelled in that playing time. So will be interesting to see now that we have everybody back, ‘How do we gel together?
“Which is exciting. You want to be at strength.”
Will a little more than three weeks give Harrison enough time to evaluate whether to make a trade? It should be enough, provided Dallas doesn’t endure further injury and/or coronavirus volatility.
Complicating matters is that the Mavericks’ most tradeable players, i.e. the players who sources say are generating the most interest around the league, are Jalen Brunson and Dorian Finney-Smith, who are in the final years of their respective contracts.
Since both players are eligible to become unrestricted free agents, they almost certainly would have to agree to a contract extension with any team that acquires them.
Both players’ salaries – Finney-Smith at $4 million and Brunson at $1.8 million – are well below their respective market values, so it will be virtually impossible for Dallas to get fair value in return without attaching a more highly paid rotation player like Tim Hardaway Jr. ($21 million) or Dwight Powell ($11 million) to any prospective deal.
Or Dallas could try to go seismic by trading Porzingis, but with his injury history and salaries of $31.6 million and $33.8 million this season and next, how many potential suitors want to take the considerable risk of acquiring him?
Those are the primary intangibles/obstacles that will come into play in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, all signs as of late are that the Mavericks as currently constructed will continue winning, although the gap between fifth-place Dallas and the teams immediately ahead, Utah and Memphis, will be difficult to close.
“Jason Kidd’s been amazing,” Harrison said, when asked to evaluate his coach. “I think this team has really done well. They’ve they fought through adversity.
“It’s a football term they use, ‘Next man up.’ And I think we’ve really embodied that. And then if you look at our defense over the last six, seven weeks, the stuff that J-Kidd talked about earlier in the year, it’s holding true.”
Deal, or no deal? Is there a trade on the horizon that could transform the Mavericks from a fringe contender in the West to a true contender?
“I think you can always improve,” Harrison said. “But as I look at our team, we haven’t been whole for a while. I’m really excited to see how [good] we are, now that we’re whole.”
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