The Other Disastrous Mavs Trade
I give attention to the Caleb Martin trade that gave the Mavericks their roster predicament. I also look ahead at their next month and how Kyrie Irving’s injury factors into next season.
Yesterday marked exactly 30 days since the Luka Doncic trade was executed. Yesterday also came with the unfortunate news that Kyrie Irving is out for the season with a torn ACL. So much has happened to the Mavericks over the past month that you may have forgotten some details. They have gone 12-19 in their past 31 games and sit at 10th place in the West.
The Mavericks are now limited to 10 active players due to various injuries on their roster. They can’t fill their 15th roster spot because they’re so close to the hard cap. They’re stuck without the ability to make marginal moves, and that’s largely because of the second trade they made ahead of last month’s trade deadline.
The negative effects of the Doncic trade were supposed to be felt in a couple of years since it was intended to maximize their title window this and next season. Instead, we are experiencing the worst case scenario in the short term. The Mavericks front office didn’t consider how this trade could affect their roster’s spirit, or what an unsustainable load this could require from Irving going forward.
While I think the trade is indefensible, I do kinda like what they did from a cap perspective. If you’re going to trade a generational player, at least clean up your cap sheet. They managed to get off Maxi Kleber’s two years, $22 million, and Markieff Morris $2.1 million salary for this season. They also created a $11 million trade exception and most notably, got under the luxury tax.
Then they completely undid that by trading Quentin Grimes for Caleb Martin1. The trade put them back into the luxury tax and closer to the $178.1 million first apron. They are hard capped to that threshold because they signed Naji Marshall with their non-taxpayer mid-level exception2.
The Mavericks were $6.3 million below the first apron after trading Doncic. The prorated minimum salary went from roughly $850,000 at the beginning of February to roughly $500,000 by the end of it. Also, 10-Day contracts count as $119,972. They had plenty of flexibility to fill out the end of their roster after the trade deadline.
Grimes has a $4.3 million salary and Martin has an $8.1 million salary. If you replace Grimes with Martin, that leaves them $2.3 million below the first apron. So that should be plenty of space to make marginal end of roster moves.
Except it’s more complicated than that.
Martin has $1.22 million in unlikely incentives for this season. Incentives count against the apron levels even if the player isn’t expected to achieve them. When you factor those in, that $2.4 million in apron space gets cut in half. $1.2 million is still plenty of room for them to sign a 15th guy and potentially another player later if they wanted to cut someone.
But that’s not all.
Martin has a 15 percent trade bonus negotiated into his contract. The value of the bonus at the time of the trade was $3.1 million. That amount would be distributed evenly over his salaries through 2026-273. This increased his 2024-25 salary by $1.04 million, knocking down their apron space to just $171,120. This meant they couldn’t add a 15h player until March 31.
How could they go into the last two months of the season with such little flexibility considering how many games they had already missed due to injury? Anthony Davis just missed five games with an injury while Dereck Lively was set to miss 2-3 months. The Doncic trade was such a disruptive event that sucked up so much oxygen that we haven’t properly discussed how damaging the Martin was to the Mavericks this season.
Here are other reasons this trade was so unnecessary:
Grimes is younger.
Grimes is cheaper this season.
This trade put them back in the tax.
Grimes is arguably the better player.
Martin has been injury prone this season.
Martin hadn’t played for nearly a month before the trade.
They attached a valuable second-round pick along with Grimes.
They traded their last second-round pick available over the next seven years.
Grimes’ annual salary on his next deal may not be significantly higher than Martin’s.
And keep in mind that the Mavericks could’ve backed out of this trade when Martin’s physical revealed the severity of his hip injury. Instead they amended the terms to get back a future second-round pick from the Sixers.
Is there anything the Mavericks could’ve done to have more apron space? They could’ve made a subsequent cost-cutting move, but that didn’t happen. But in regards to this trade, Martin could’ve agreed to amend his trade bonus to a lower amount.
That is entirely in the player’s discretion, as Davis surrendered his entire $6 million trade bonus upon arriving in Dallas. But given their current circumstances, the Mavericks should’ve walked away from this deal unless Martin agreed to amend his bonus.
The Mavericks are now left with $51,148 in apron space after using up a 10-Day on Moses Brown. They cannot sign a 15th player until April 10, just four days before the end of the regular season. They will soon be down to 9 active players when Kessler Edwards, who has been active in 41 games for the Mavericks, is active for his 50th. Teams are required to have a minimum of 8 active players in a game4.
The Mavericks had enough injuries before Irving’s to qualify for a hardship exception. The Hornets recently received one and used it to give two 10-Day contracts to Elfrid Payton, and one currently for Malachi Flynn. This allows teams to exceed 15 players on the roster.
However, 10-Day hardship exceptions still count against the salary cap and apron. So the Mavericks aren’t allowed to use one since it would take them above the first apron.
Is there anything the Mavericks can do to open up apron space? I’ll tell you one thing they can’t do: the stretch provision. Teams can waive and stretch a player’s salary, but this year’s salary will be unaffected. Teams can only stretch the current salary between July 1 and August 31.
As far as I know, there are two ways the Mavericks can gain apron space at this point in the season. One is to waive a player in anticipation that he will be claimed. If claimed, that player’s cap hit is wiped off their books. This could require some intel and communication with other teams to make sure whoever they cut doesn’t have their dead money sitting on their cap sheet.
The big question with this strategy is who to waive. They need their bigs like Dwight Powell and their guards like Spencer Dinwiddie and Jaden Hardy. I can’t see any team claiming Dante Exum. And as I look through the league, there isn’t a team with the combination of tax space and a big enough trade exception to claim a player like Naji Marshall. I find this path very unlikely.
The other thing they can do is waive a player who has unlikely incentives. Players can no longer receive incentives if waived, so they’d no longer count against the apron. This would immediately give the Mavericks apron relief regardless of the player getting claimed or not.
The problem with this strategy is that the three players they have with unlikely incentives are Kyrie Irving (not happening), P.J. Washington (also not happening), and Caleb Martin. So while they’d gain $1.22 million in apron space by waiving Martin, he has too much guaranteed money in future seasons for this to be a viable option. I find this approach even more unlikely.
So the Mavericks are essentially stuck with this roster for the rest of the season. And at this point it doesn’t matter how or when they backfill the roster. They have no star power if Davis’ injury proves to be season-ending. And even when their bigs come back, they don’t have the playmaking or scoring to help get through the final 20 games. I think we are looking at the increasingly real possibility of them outright missing the Play-In Tournament5.
Thankfully, the Mavericks did not trade their 2025 first-round pick. In retrospect, not including it in their swap of Tim Hardaway Jr. for Grimes and instead trading three second-round picks to the Pistons may have been the wisest piece of negotiation they’ve made all year. They could be looking at the 12th best lottery odds, which will likely give them the 12th overall selection.
This injury is also unfortunate timing for Irving. He gained a lot of leverage from the Doncic trade since it left him as their sole high-level playmaker. He was playing at an All-Star level and the Mavericks had no way to replace him if he left6. I think he was looking at receiving a three or four-year deal from Dallas at around his current salary range.
Now it feels like he may have to pick up his $43 million player option for next season. Maybe there is a deal both sides could make that keeps him in a Mavericks uniform for several more seasons. If he picks up the option, he will become extension-eligible throughout 2025-26. A strong return to form next season could motivate both sides to agree on an extension.
However, the two-year window they created by trading Doncic is already gone. They aren’t winning a championship this season, and they’ll be at a major disadvantage toward that goal next season with Irving expected to miss a large portion of it. This injury could force the Mavericks to change course sooner than they’d hoped. Keep in mind that they don’t have control of their first-round picks between 2027-2030. It may be wise to act sooner than later and see what they could get for their top players.
The Mavericks also traded the Sixers 2025 second-round pick, projected at 36th overall as of today.
Acquiring Klay Thompson also triggers the hard cap since they sign-and-traded for him as a free agent.
Trade bonuses don’t count toward option years, so it didn’t increase his 2027-28 salary.
According to a league source, if the Mavericks are unable to field at least 8 players in a game, they’ll play whoever they have available but get fined.
The Portland Trail Blazers are four games behind the Mavericks and have the third easiest strength of schedule as of today, per Tankathon.com.
The Mavericks wouldn’t have any cap space if Irving declined his option and left, meaning they’d have to resort to a trade or the non-taxpayer mid-level exception to replace him.
Good article Yossi!
Such a strange move when announced, then kicked over the top when the medical gave them a chance to back out. Is the reporting that they feared the cost of Grimes' RFA contract offers?
Of course if Grimes keeps playing like this in PHI, he likely is going to get a contract higher than what he was on the path for. That's going to delude people into thinking DAL made a good money move. Just doesn't feel like that was really in the books at the time.
I think you're spot on that given his DAL level of playing time, he wasn't likely to get massively over the price Martin will be on the books for. There just aren't teams with Cap space to give him a contract in the high Teens. Some might be able to offer the MLE, but those would also live in fear of the Apron. Even in that case, DAL could squeeze a sign & trade out of it to let Grimes leaving, netting a useful 2nd rounder or two out of it.
I get some of it. They were already impressed by Christie. Exum was coming back. They thought the trio of Christie, Exum & Spencer was relatively enough support for Kyrie. It just spread them thin, and that workload increase for Kyrie (39 MPG!!!) never was going to be good, even if the impact was just wearing Kyrie down rather than the unfortunate catastrophe.
There are going to be books and articles on this DAL season for decades to come. You noting the Grimes aspect is something that folks need to keep in mind as an aspect to include in those pieces.