Pistons interested in Tim Hardaway Jr.

On his Instagram page, in a since-deleted comment, Hardaway Sr. responded to a suggestion that the Mavericks are looking to trade his son with considerable candor, posting: “Yes they are. And we want to have a new opportunity to shine. We didn’t like what happen[ed]. We are ready to go.” -via marcstein.substack.com / June 23, 2024

League sources say that the Mavericks will promptly resume their long-running search for a trade partner to take Tim Hardaway Jr on, which is more likely than ever to come to fruition with the 32-year-old now entering the final season of his current contract and with his salary declining from $17.9 million in 2023-24 to $16.2 million in 2024-25 . Finding a new home for Hardaway is a key element of Dallas’ strategy to re-sign Derrick Jones Jr., whose return next season after excelling on a minimum contract this season was labeled by Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison as “priority 1A and 1B” for Dallas this offseason. -via marcstein.substack.com / June 22, 2024

The Mavericks will only have four free agents this summer, two of whom (Greg Brown and Brandon Williams) are two-way contract players. Of their playing rotation, only Derrick Jones Jr is hitting the market, along with Markieff Morris at the end of the veteran bench. The upshot of all this is that, with so little salary expiring, the incumbent payroll is expensive. Doncic ($43,031,940) and Irving ($41,000,000) take up $84 million between them, or almost 60 percent of the salary cap, and once the five other eight-figure annual salaries owed to Tim Hardaway Jr ($16.193.183), PJ Washington ($15,500,000), Daniel Gafford ($13,394,160), Josh Green ($12,654,321) and Maxi Kleber ($11,000,000) are included, that is all the salary cap gone. -via HoopsHype / June 19, 2024