Dallas Mavericks: NBA free agency won’t be what they hoped it would

We all remember when the Dallas Mavericks were a team that saw themselves as a contender for Giannis Antetokounmpo in NBA free agency this year.

That ended up being an unfulfilled fantasy after Antetokounmpo signed an extension with the Milwaukee Bucks, and that was the right move as the Bucks went on to win the NBA championship. The rest of this year’s NBA free agency class swiftly dried up last offseason as pending free agent stars around the league also signed extensions en masse.

The Dallas Mavericks had big plans for this offseason, but at this rate, disappointment is all they have to look forward to from NBA free agency.

So no Giannis Antetokounmpo, no Anthony Davis, or Paul George. The Mavs cleared a massive amount of salary-cap space out in the hopes of luring a big fish to Dallas, and it won’t be going where it was designed to go when their best-laid plans were formulated.

The Mavericks have the third-most available space with an expected $34.3 million available, behind just the New York Knicks at $53.5 million and the San Antonio Spurs at $48.9 million. Generating that space was obviously good practice, and Luka Doncic is a superstar that players are going to want to play with, but neither of these elements seem to be enough this season.

It’s not just the extension class that the Mavs will miss out on. According to a report from SI’s Grant Afseth, the Mavs are set to lose out on potential targets DeMar DeRozan and 2021 NBA free agency darling Kyle Lowry, who appears to be headed to the Miami Heat.

The Mavs may find themselves running it back at best, assuming they’re able to re-sign Tim Hardaway Jr. After all these misses, simply keeping Hardaway has become the top priority for the Mavs in this year’s NBA free agency period.

Now instead of the NBA’s best players, the Mavs find themselves hoping to woo players like Goran Dragic and Dennis Schroder, and maybe even Lonzo Ball if they’re lucky. This isn’t exactly a grim outlook, but it’s a disappointing one after the optimism the Dallas Mavericks have been operating with lately thanks to having cap space and Luka Doncic.

This might be their last crack at cap space in a long time, too. Luka Doncic is poised to sign a max extension worth more than $200 million over five years. It’s good to have your superstar and franchise cornerstone locked up long-term, but the timetable for finding his co-star becomes a lot more complicated as a result.

So maybe the Mavs will come away from this free agency period with some nice pieces, but they won’t be anything like what they were hoping for less than a year ago. The best-case outcome this offseason, whatever that may prove to be, has become nothing more than a relative disappointment.