Dallas Mavericks Receive: F Marvin Bagley III
Sacramento Kings Receive: C Dwight Powell, DAL 2022 1st Round Pick (Top-5 Protected), DAL 2024 2nd Round Pick
Having a $10.87M trade exception stemming from trading Josh Richardson to the Boston Celtics gives the Mavericks the ability to possibly play around with some trade scenarios this season, especially near the trade deadline, however, this trade exception would not be utilized in a trade for Mavin Bagley III since he is making $11.3M for the 2021-22 season.
This means that Dallas would have to send out roughly equal salary to match Bagley’s incoming value, so how can they do this? Well, the Mavericks have a handful of movable contracts, most notably the contract of Dwight Powell.
The 30-year-old center is coming off a season in which he was still recovering from a ruptured Achilles suffered during the 2019-20 season, but Powell is owed $22.1M over the next two seasons and Dallas has a ton of centers on their roster.
If you classify Kristaps Porzingis as a center, Dallas now has five total centers under contract for next season after acquiring Moses Brown this offseason via trade and re-signing Boban Marjanovic. They also have Willie Cauley-Stein, who opted into his $4.1M player option for the season.
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Seeing as the Kings also have a ton of big men under contract it is hard to imagine that they would want to take on Dwight Powell’s salary, but it may be smart for them to do so for a couple of reasons. Prior to his Achilles injury, Powell was averaging double-digit points and roughly 6 rebounds per game, making him a solid back-up and the Kings have nothing to lose really.
They are not going to make the playoffs and they are going to need to continue adding some future value to their roster, so maybe they can do so by getting a first-round pick from Dallas, along with having Powell, making guys like Tristan Thompson and Alex Len possible trade deadline assets.
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Going out and adding Marvin Bagley III definitely gives the Mavs some extra value in their frontcourt and another big body to turn to for production. The only question is whether or not they can convince the Kings to give him up for not as much value as they would probably like.
