{"id":114019,"date":"2025-06-21T08:32:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-21T08:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/114019\/"},"modified":"2025-06-21T08:32:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-21T08:32:12","slug":"mavericks-vet-makes-major-free-agency-decision-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/114019\/","title":{"rendered":"Mavericks Vet Makes Major Free Agency Decision: Report"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mavericks Vet Makes Major Free Agency Decision: Report<\/a> originally appeared on Athlon Sports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Following a 2024 playoff run that led them back to the NBA Finals for the first time in 13 years, the Dallas Mavericks’ future looked pretty bright in 2024-25.<\/p>\n

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But Dallas general manager Nico Harrison shocked the world when he traded franchise centerpiece Luka Donic, already a five-time All-NBA First Teamer with the club at age 25, to the Los Angeles Lakers for a relatively muted return.<\/p>\n

Doncic and big men Maxi Kleber and Markieff Morris were shipped off to L.A. in exchange for oft-hurt 10-time All-Star Anthony Davis, who was 31 at the time, plus shooting guard Max Christie and a single future first round draft pick. The Lakers and Mavericks both rerouted 2025 second round selections to the Utah Jazz, as L.A. needed to include a third team to take on the contract of little-used second-year guard Jalen Hood-Schifino.<\/p>\n

Bringing in Davis, still a terrific two-way player, for the much younger Doncic wasn’t a terrible All-Star-for-All-Star haul if Harrison was truly unconvinced that Doncic was capable of repeating his 2024 success \u2014 the big issue was the returning draft equity.<\/p>\n

For comparison’s sake, the Orlando Magic just had to surrender four first round picks, plus one first round pick swap, to acquire shooting guard Desmond Bane \u2014 who has never been an All-Star and gets hurt with frustrating frequency \u2014 from the Memphis Grizzlies.<\/p>\n

\"Jerome<\/p>\n

Jerome Miron-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

Harrison’s asset management came under harsh scrutiny… for a time.<\/p>\n

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But when the Mavericks fell out of the playoff hunt and lucked into the No. 1 pick in this month’s upcoming 2025 NBA Draft (sure to be Duke superstar forward Cooper Flagg), all was (almost) forgiven.<\/p>\n

Now, another key roster piece has made a decision on his future in Dallas.<\/p>\n

Sources inform Marc Stein of The Stein Line (via Substack) that reserve big man Dwight Powell has picked up his $4 million player option for 2025-26. His deadline to do so was Tuesday, a day before the start of the draft.<\/p>\n

Last year, the 6-foot-10 Stanford product played sparingly last season, and likely predicted that he wasn’t going to be able to surpass that $4 million (a notch above what he’d fetch with a veteran’s minimum contract) on the open market. In 55 contests, the\u00a033-year-old averaged 2.1 points on .689\/.400\/.651 shooting splits and 2.1 rebounds.<\/p>\n

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Related: Fresh Intel Reveals Mavericks’ Strong Stance on Cooper Flagg<\/a><\/p>\n

This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports<\/a> on Jun 21, 2025, where it first appeared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mavericks Vet Makes Major Free Agency Decision: Report originally appeared on Athlon Sports. Following a 2024 playoff run…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3793],"tags":[495,7,225,686,149,4057,497,5991,11054,150,508,2546,7549,166,7139,3000,177,6,591,76,490,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-114019","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas-mavericks","8":"tag-anthony-davis","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-cooper-flagg","11":"tag-dallas","12":"tag-dallas-mavericks","13":"tag-dallasmavericks","14":"tag-desmond-bane","15":"tag-dwight-powell","16":"tag-jalen-hood-schifino","17":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","18":"tag-luka","19":"tag-marc-stein","20":"tag-markieff-morris","21":"tag-mavericks","22":"tag-max-christie","23":"tag-maxi-kleber","24":"tag-memphis-grizzlies","25":"tag-nba","26":"tag-nico-harrison","27":"tag-orlando-magic","28":"tag-the-mavericks","29":"tag-utah-jazz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114720430095508772","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}