The Mavericks seem to have but one plan for the offseason: Plan Powder. Get Dwight or CP3. Get one at all costs. It's not a plan I'm particularly fond of, but it's the plan we're stuck with, like it or not.
Regardless of whether Plan Po...
The Mavericks seem to have but one plan for the offseason: Plan Powder. Get Dwight or CP3. Get one at all costs. It's not a plan I'm particularly fond of, but it's the plan we're stuck with, like it or not.
Regardless of whether Plan Powder is a massive success or a massive failure (because it can only be massive, one way or another), the Mavericks need one important thing: max money. They NEED max money, either for Dwight, for CP3, or for picking up high enough quality role players to fill out a decent roster. Max money is an absolute necessity.
The Mavs have dug themselves in a hole. They're wildly mediocre, and it's really hard to get good again without getting really bad first. It may not even be possible without scoring the wildly unlikely D12 or CP3 in free agency. It'll take a lot of smarts, a lot of work from development, and...a lot of money.
We here at Mavs Moneyball have consistently been of the mind that the Mavericks can't keep trying to manage by buying a good team. It takes development, the draft, trust, good scouting, and smarts. But if the Mavs are gonna get good without getting bad first, it's going to take all of that, plus the funds necessary to pick up a new cast.
It turns out, regardless of how you play it, it takes a lot of funds when you have over $31 million committed between two players (Dirk and Marion).
Without any of the disposable assets (expiring contracts, etc.), the Mavs have $19 million in cap space. That's $19 million to spend on a player for every position other than wings and power forwards and a bench. That's not max money, and it's not enough to build the team that everyone wants.
Dirk has already said that he'll come back at a discount in 2014 to make the financial side of free agency easier, but there's nothing really the Mavs can do with his contract for the time being.
More: Kirk on the Hole the Mavs Have Dug Chart of Mavs' Assets
But there is one other thing the Mavs can do: address the Shawn Marion issue.
If you don't love the Matrix, then...I dunno, I guess you're just wrong. He's the defensive anchor to a team that's hanging onto -- at best -- a passable defense; he keeps the defense from flying wildly off the cliff to "worst-in-the-league," at about 120 points allowed per 100 possessions.
He has the weird ability to do absolutely whatever necessary at any point in time. He's the jack-of-all-trades who does just enough to make sure that every necessity for the Mavs is covered. He's a wildly underrated player who is probably the second most important foundation of this Mavericks team.
The Mavericks shouldn't trade him. He's very good, he's not as valuable on the trade market as he is on the court, and he's integral to the team's scheme as it is typically laid out.
These are per 48 minutes stats, above average in almost every category for his position, and this isn't even taking his foundational defense into account:
Similarly, his shot chart for the last year is shockingly good, minus some dead-zone horror:
But he is also being payed $9,316,796 next season, almost half of the Maverick's max available cap space. That's too much for the Mavericks to pay if they're going to try and pull something like Plan Powder. Paying Marion that much and getting Max money for a superstar (or, hopefully, for just really good role-players) are mutually exclusive goals.
Luckily, there is a way to get that money off the books without trading him.
Marion has an Early Termination Option on his contract for this next coming season, meaning that Marion can choose to terminate his contract now and enter free agency. In doing so, he opens up the ability to have the Mavs resign him at a discount, much in the same way as Dirk.
Ultimately, whether the Mavericks have the kind of money and freedom in free agency that they want hinges on whether or not Shawn Marion will agree to keep playing NBA basketball for way less money.
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