After winning the NBA Draft Lottery and acquiring the rights to select former Duke star Cooper Flagg with the No. 1 overall pick in June, the Dallas Mavericks have a head start on the rest of the league when it comes to offseason planning.
They know one player they are guaranteed to bring in and can start exploring how to build the rest of their team around Flagg, Anthony Davis and, eventually, Kyrie Irving. The complicating factor in their offseason quest to quickly rebuild into a playoff contender again is Irving missing the start of next season with a torn ACL, which means their focus has to be on adding guard help this offseason.
On the free agent market, there are a handful of names that could be interesting — Chris Paul, Dennis Schröder, Tyus Jones, etc. — but there are not a lot of options to make a significant upgrade who can both fill in as the starting point guard and take on a secondary role once Irving returns.
To do that, the Mavs may need to explore the trade market, and according to Marc Stein, they will try and make a run at Boston’s Jrue Holiday.
League sources say Dallas is expected to at least explore whether there are any feasible trade pathways to Boston’s Jrue Holiday — complicated as that would likely be given the three years and $104 million still left on Holiday’s contract — while also maintaining an interest in a far more reasonable trade target as we’ve discussed on the DLLS Mavs podcast: Lonzo Ball.
Holiday would be an incredible get for the Mavs and would be about as perfect a fit as you could get for the goal of filling in at starter and then slotting in as a complementary piece next to Irving once he’s healthy. As Stein notes, Holiday’s contract and the Celtics cap situation as a second apron team makes a trade difficult — albeit not impossible. While Boston’s cap situation is a challenge, it also could present the opportunity for Dallas to produce an intriguing offer for a Celtics team that might be looking to shed some long-term money.
What a Jrue Holiday trade to Dallas could look like
While the Celtics can’t aggregate salaries to acquire a player, they can bring in multiple players for a big contract like Holiday. The Mavs could make the money work with a three-player offer that threads the needle on matching Holiday’s $32.4 million salary for next year and can give the Celtics some future salary relief in the form of some shorter-term deals.
Dallas gets: Jrue Holiday
Boston gets: Klay Thompson, Daniel Gafford, Brandon Williams
This works financially, but would of course require Boston being interested in this return package. After a second-round exit and with Jayson Tatum likely out for all of next season after tearing his Achilles in the playoffs, it’s not abundantly clear how the Celtics will proceed this summer. If they put the likes of Holiday or Derrick White on the trade market, they will undoubtedly garner interest from lots of teams, not just Dallas.
This offer does alleviate some financial burden, as Gafford and Williams are expiring deals and Thompson has just two years left on his contract, and could potentially boost their depth in the frontcourt and on the wing by adding another quality center and a shooting threat. That said, there might be another hopeful contender that would be willing to part with something more for Holiday or Boston might be more interested in a package focused on picks.
The Mavs don’t have many picks to offer and would have to be extremely confident the 34-year-old Holiday is the missing piece to go all-in by trading for him. On the other hand, one could say they’re already all-in after trading Luka Dončić for Davis so why bother with half measures like going after Lonzo Ball or someone else?
While the status of Giannis Antetokounmpo in Milwaukee is the No. 1 concern of teams around the league, how Boston navigates this summer is perhaps just as fascinating because of the players they could look to move with Tatum out and second apron penalties looming. Dallas will be one of many teams that tries to get Brad Stevens on the phone to find out exactly who they’re willing to listen on, and what kind of deal it would take to pry someone from last year’s championship core out of Boston.
