The Dallas Mavericks recently lost the 2024 NBA Finals to the Boston Celtics and are already preparing for the upcoming season. Dallas’s defeat against the Celtics highlighted certain vulnerabilities they aim to address for the next season.
To that end, the Mavs are looking to shop small forward Tim Hardaway Jr., per Marc Stein and NBA Central.
Hardaway has played for Dallas since 2019.
League sources say that the Mavericks will promptly resume their long-running search for a trade partner to take Hardaway on, which is more likely than ever to come to fruition with the 32-year-old now entering the final season of his current contract and with his salary declining from $17.9 million in 2023-24 to $16.2 million in 2024-25,” said Stein.
It is rumored by several in the media that a trade will be a welcome relief for Hardaway and his father.
Tim Hardaway Jr. has played for five NBA teams, including the Mavericks, and has been selected as an All-Star five times. He has also been inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame.
Recently, Hardaway’s father expressed dissatisfaction with how the team was utilizing his son.
During the 2023-24 regular season, Hardaway Jr. was Dallas’s third leading scorer.
However, he didn’t have much of an impact in the playoffs.
Hardaway Jr. entered the NBA as the 24th overall pick of the New York Knicks in the 2013 draft.
After a stint with the Knicks and a couple of years with the Atlanta Hawks, Hardaway played in the NBA’s G-League.
In 2017, he returned to the Knicks and then was traded along with current Celtic, Kristaps Porzingis, to Dallas in January 2019.
