What Are You Up To This Summer? Mavericks, Pelicans, Rockets, Grizzlies, Spurs

Let's talk about the Southwest Division

Photo by Tyler Kaufman/Getty Images

Over the last few days, I’ve been going division-by-division through the league and laying out what decisions need to be made and what’s at stake for each NBA team this offseason. We began with the Atlantic Division, then hit the Central, Southeast, Pacific, and Northwest, and today finish things up with the Southwest — just in time for the opening bell of free agency.

Some of these came out before the draft and some of them are coming out after it. That’s just the annoying way the schedule works out this year, with the draft and free agency starting within a few days of each other. Oh well, them’s the breaks.

Without further ado…

Southwest Division

ESPN

Dallas Mavericks

• Draft picks: Melvin Ajinca (51)

• Key Potential FA: Derrick Jones Jr.

• Big Decisions: Jones UFA, Potential sign-and-trades

Dallas is apparently in on the Klay Thompson sweepstakes. How the Mavs plan to pull off signing him is unclear, unless he takes their mid-level exception and they let Jones leave. The other option is a sign-and-trade that would require Golden State to take back at least one of Maxi Kleber and Josh Green, if not both, depending on Klay's new starting salary. (They can get to around $19.9 million in outgoing salary by including Dwight Powell, Olivier Maxence-Prosper, and A.J. Lawson with Kleber, which would enable Klay to take a starting salary in the low-$20 million range. Whether that would be a desirable contract for either him or Dallas is another story.)

I see the vision with Klay playing with Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving, but I don’t think the general consensus has nearly caught up to how much he’s slipped on defense; and if you’re replacing Jones in the lineup with Klay, then a whole bunch of what made Dallas a good defensive team after the trade deadline goes away. Finally dealing away Tim Hardaway Jr. and getting Quentin Grimes in return feels like a “well if we don’t get Klay then at least we got a going-out-of-business-sale version of that type of player” move, but the cost was more than justifiable. The Mavs saved money, got a young player with upside but who had stalled out in New York last year, and opened up the possibility of getting Klay himself.

I’m still of the mind that it would be more important for them to bring Jones back, despite the relative lack of name recognition. He was legitimately excellent defending wings and guards in the playoffs, and their starting lineup needs a low-usage, defense-first kind of guy in it. They do need more shooting because the likelihood of Jones and P.J. Washington going on the kind of shooting runs they had during the Western Conference portion of the playoffs again is kind of low, but they are always going to have more than enough offensive upside with Luka and Kyrie anyway. Shoring up the defense would be my first and last priority.