Mavericks trading Tim Hardaway Jr. to Pistons: Sources (2024)

The Los Angeles Lakers drafted Bronny James with the 55th pick in this week's NBA Draft. Now, they hope to retain his father as well.

LeBron James must decide by Saturday whether to opt into a $51.4 player option for next season. He could also opt out and sign a new deal with the team; the max the Lakers could offer him if he elects to become a free agent is three years and $160 million.

James' decision comes on the eve of the free-agency negotiating period. Here are the key dates (and times) to know:

Sunday, 6 p.m. ET: Teams may begin negotiating with free agents from other teams. They are currently only allowed to negotiate with their own impending free agents.

July 6, 12:01 p.m. ET: Teams may officially sign free agents.

James isn't the only big-name free agent. Paul George (player option), James Harden, Klay Thompson and DeMar DeRozan are also unrestricted free agents.

Related reading

• LeBron James, Paul George and the top 25 available players in 2024
• CBA changes, players, dates and terms that matter
• Paul George to the Warriors? Plus, Klay Thompson’s options, more

The Dallas Mavericks have agreed to trade guard Tim Hardaway Jr. and three second-round picks to the Detroit Pistons for guard Quentin Grimes, team sources said.

Hardaway, 32, averaged 14.4 points in 79 appearances for Dallas last season. The Pistons added the veteran shooter on an expiring deal in order to pick up the three second-rounders.

Quentin Grimes has more upside, but the 24-year-old only played in six games last season with Detroit due to a knee issue after being moved by the New York Knicks at the trade deadline.

New Pistons president of basketball operations Trajan Langdon said the team wanted to be a dumping ground for unwanted contracts to get assets. This is that.

The five-year, $175 million deal is more money than I thought Immanuel Quickley would earn in this deal. Instead of starting around $25 million, which is about average starting point guard money, he will start at just below $30 million, assuming the normal structure of a deal.

Again, I caution fans not to get too attached to the overall number. While Quickley's contract will likely rise by 8 percent per year, the salary cap will probably jump by 10 percent per year. Still, the Raptors are now paying Quickley and Scottie Barnes, who agreed to a maximum-level rookie extension last week, at levels beyond their production to date.

That is fine: Quickley and Barnes will be 25 and 23, respectively, on opening night next year. They should improve. But it is going to squeeze them in efforts to keep both Bruce Brown, who has a $23-million team option that must be decided on by the end of the day, and Gary Trent Jr., an unrestricted free agent.

That is just the supporting cast, though. Ultimately, this will be about whether Barnes and Quickley can match and, then, surpass the value of their new deals with their production. If they can do that, the Raptors have a chance to make some noise in the coming years. If not, they could get stuck in Play-In land.

Paul George has until Saturday to decide on his player option for next season ($48.7 million), and league sources say there is no clarity coming from his camp just yet. But should he decide to leave, either by opting out and entering the free-agency market or opting in and demanding a trade to a destination of his choice, the ripple effects of that move would be significant. And the most compelling possibility of them all, it seems, is the notion of him joining Golden State.

League sources say the Warriors, who have a sensitive free agency situation of their own with Klay Thompson, have legitimate interest in making George part of their new core alongside Steph Curry and Draymond Green. This sort of move would be from the same Joe Lacob playbook we saw on display in mid-February, when the Warriors owner led a failed effort to land LeBron James heading into the trade deadline. So long as Curry is still playing at an elite level, that desire to swing big in the name of title contention will remain. And with all signs pointing to Miami’s Jimmy Butler staying put with the Heat, George appears to be the most plausible star player left in play.

As is the case with all of the possible George suitors, there’s an understanding that he wants every year and every dollar available to him by way of the league’s collective bargaining agreement. The Clippers, who hoped that George would be willing to accept a similar deal to the one they landed with Leonard in early January (three years, $153 million), have designs on escaping the league’s “second-apron” luxury tax territory by the 2025-26 season and have decided to hold firm in their talks with George as a result.

But would the Warriors be willing to go all-in for a player who would be in his late 30s at the end of his deal, and what else might they have to give up to make a move like that happen? For them and teams like them, it depends on how the situation might unfold.

Continue reading.

For years, every decision the New York Knicks made was part of a grander plan.

They would trade a draft pick today for one tomorrow because they believed a future first-rounder held more value in a trade for a star. They would acquire middling, tradeable contracts, refuse to let go of their picks and obsess over maintaining flexibility for trades.

Knicks minutiae became its little sub-story.

If they acquired Bojan Bogdanović, it wasn’t just to help the current roster but also because a partially guaranteed salary in 2024-25 would be helpful in a mega-trade — as they’ve just proven. If they negotiated a big-time swap for OG Anunoby, talk would follow about their fight not to include a first-rounder, hoping to keep the powder dry for someone else.

Ever since team president Leon Rose took over the front office in 2020, this has been the plan. The Knicks didn’t just want a star. They knew how they would get him, too: In a trade.

Four years later, that trade has finally occurred.

The Knicks acquired former Brooklyn Nets wing Mikal Bridges late Tuesday evening in a deal that almost makes too much sense. Bridges is an ideal fit inside New York’s current core — and not just because he’s now the fourth member of the “Nova Knicks,” the quartet of Villanova alumni that will be all the rave.

Bridges is a knockdown spot-up shooter, can act as a secondary source of offense, can drain catch-and-shoot 3-pointers alongside Jalen Brunson and is a prime-aged, versatile wing who already has an NBA All-Defense appearance on his résumé.

The Knicks have pulled off their blockbuster. And that means, for the first time in more than four years, judging the success of a move requires new context.

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In theory, the free-agent point guard group has some elite talent. In reality, the best guys will likely return to their own teams, and the rest of the market is basically shorn of starting-caliber talent. Teams looking for backups will find a lot more opportunity, however, with several strong candidates seeking landing spots.

I’m breaking down all of the plausible free-agent point guards on the market this summer — key word being plausible. I didn’t include players like Chicago’s Lonzo Ball, who could theoretically opt out of his $21 million, or Indiana’s T.J. McConnell, who has a non-guaranteed deal for $9.3 million that the Indiana Pacers could waive if they lost all sanity.

The top five:

1. Tyrese Maxey, 76ers (restricted)
2. James Harden, Clippers
3. Immanuel Quickley, Raptors (restricted)
4. D'Angelo Russell, Lakers (player option)
5. Chris Paul, Warriors (non-guaranteed contract for 2024-25)

Continue reading.

Immanuel Quickley intends to sign a five-year, $175 million deal to return to the Toronto Raptors, a league source said.

Quickley, 25, is a restricted free agent. He joined the Raptors in December as part of a deal that sent OG Anunoby to the New York Knicks. In 38 games (all starts) with the Raptors, he averaged Quickley averaged 18.6 points, 4.8 rebounds and 6.8 assists per game on 39.5 percent shooting from 3.

Two years ago, the Pacers hit rock bottom, losing 10 straight games to end the 2021-22 season en route to landing a single-digit draft pick for the first time since 1989.

Now, the Pacers are coming off their first Eastern Conference finals appearance in a decade thanks to the standout play of Tyrese Haliburton and Pascal Siakam.

Indiana’s All-NBA duo is under contract together for at least the next four seasons. Haliburton inked a five-year, max contract extension last summer.

Indiana’s remarkable turnaround from the basem*nt of the NBA to the upper echelon of the league was orchestrated by team president Kevin Pritchard and general manager Chad Buchanan, whose seismic trades for Haliburton and Siakam have changed the trajectory of the franchise. The first move, in February 2022, pointed the team in a new direction. The latter move, in January 2024, lifted the team to new heights.

“I’m so grateful and happy that I came in a place where you just feel so supported and you feel like you’re needed, you feel like you matter,” Siakam said at the end of the season. “As a player that’s really all you can ask for. I’m blessed to be able to be here and to have the season that we had.”

Why didn’t the Sixers sign their 23-year-old breakout All-Star to an extension last fall? Because his cap hold counts for a mere $13 million until he puts pen to paper on his next deal, thus allowing the Sixers to spend nearly $60 million cap room on free agents before Tyrese Maxey inevitably signs his max contract as a restricted free agent (though Maxey technically could sign an offer sheet elsewhere and for less money, which the Sixers seem near certain to match).

That deal will pay him $205 million over five years, and the only real drama in his negotiation with the Sixers is whether it will include a fifth-year player option and a 15-percent trade kicker. It will start at $35.25 million in 2024-25 based on current cap guidance, and as you can see from the BORD$ value ($51.6 million), that will still be a bargain for Philly.

Denver and star Jamal Murray are working toward a four-year, $209 million maximum contract extension this offseason, league sources said.

The Nuggets will present the deal to Murray — a 2023 NBA champion and one of the best clutch players — and the sides expect agreement.

Murray's current contract is set to expire after the 2024-25 season.

Six-time NBA All-Star Jimmy Butler decided he would play out next season on his existing contract with the Miami Heat and will not sign an extension with them or any other team ahead of his opt-out clause in 2025, league sources briefed on the matter told The Athletic.

His decision to play out next season commits him to Miami and clears up any notion of a trade demand due to the lack of an extension. Butler has an affinity for Miami and has wanted to stay with the Heat, league sources said.

Meanwhile, the Heat have shown no interest in trading Butler, league sources said. Theoretically, they could still trade him this summer if they found a deal that suited them, but Butler’s unwillingness to immediately sign an extension would likely limit the return they would receive for their best player.

Butler, 34, has two seasons remaining on his current maximum contract — $48.8 million in 2024-25 and a player option for 2025-26 worth $52.4 million — and a handful of NBA teams have been closely monitoring his situation ahead of the draft and free agency.

The decision also gives Butler some flexibility. After averaging 20.8 points, 5.3 rebounds and 5.0 assists for the Heat last season, Butler is determined to have a big season in 2024-25, which would help the Heat bounce back from a first-round playoff loss to Boston and position Butler for a bigger payday next summer in Miami or elsewhere.

If he opts out and becomes a free agent next summer, Butler will be eligible for a four-year maximum extension projected to be worth $243 million with his current team or a maximum three-year, $171 million pact elsewhere.

Continue reading.

In yet another small testament to his greatness, LeBron James turns 40 later this year and still projects as the most valuable free agent in the league by BORD$. He also still rates as valuable enough that a max contract would underpay him in the first season of the deal.

For James to return to the Lakers, he essentially has two options. The first is to opt out and sign a new three-year deal as a free agent in July, which could be for a maximum of three years and $160 million based on current cap guidance. The other option is to opt in to his deal for $51.4 million next season then sign an extension once he is eligible in late August; that could add two additional years for a total of three and make him $162 million over the three seasons.

Why would he take less money with the former option? Because that one can come with a no-trade clause, which would either guarantee he stays a Laker (and presumably retires as one) or controls his next destination. James could also sign with another team for a maximum of three years and an estimated $155 million, but that seems highly unlikely.

NBA free agency is here again, and that’s probably more exciting in theory than it will be in practice.

The recent trend of teams signing their best players to contract extensions long before they hit the market means we see a lot less talent hitting free agency than we used to. And several seem to have their destinations preordained.

Thus, we enter summer with only one or two situations in which a legitimate star player has genuine drama about where he will play next. (We think, anyway…)

Even teams that re-sign their own players, however, need to figure out what those players are worth. That means it’s once again time for my BORD$ tool to make an appearance. For those who are new around here, BORD$ stands for “Big Old Rating Dollars” and provides an estimate of what a player should be worth in the 2024-25 season based on the NBA’s current guidance of a $141 million salary cap. You can find a much longer description of the methodology here.

Today, we’re sharing the BORD$ values for my top 25 free agents, regardless of position.

(Note: Indiana Pacers forward Pascal Siakam was No. 5, but has agreed to a four-year, $189.5 million max contract to remain in Indiana.

The top five:

1. LeBron James, Lakers (player option)
2. Tyrese Maxey, 76ers (restricted)
3. Paul George, Clippers (player option)
4. James Harden, Clippers
5. Immanuel Quickley, Raptors (restricted)