Trade & FA 2025-26: Free Agency Starts 5pm CST/6pm EST

[F Gump]

I could see them having a little optimism and paying a reasonable tax bill to let that group have a shot. But would they pay $150m in tax for it? That seems crazy to me.

I'm not sure where you are getting your $150M number from that you keep using for the Mavs tax next season with the current contracts, but I think it's way high. I don't have my tax widget on this computer, but if they do nothing at all, the Google AI pegs the tax bill for 2026-27 at about $65M. For me that's a fortune, but for NBA teams choosing to work in the vicinity of A2 like the Mavs have deliberately done, it's not a cause for alarm. It's the general cost of doing business. IIRC Cuban paid way more than that one year about 20-25 years ago in order to try to get extra talent, before the NBA started tightening the rules. 

Getting under A2 isn't a major project either. One avenue is simply getting DAR off the payroll next season. That can be done by him just declining his PO, which he might very well do. This hasn't been a good situation for him, and it's not going to get better. If he can get $6M from someone else as a FA, he's gotta be gone whether you want him to or not. I suspect that will be happening and it all resolves itself. Or if they can simply give him away at the TDL for an expiring contract, which might not be so hard, that's another avenue. And Google says just that one move will lower the tax bill to only about $31M. 

So giving away needed talent, at a time when you really need it, imo would be overkill, needless, and counter-productive to the long run. 

After this season's tank, there's no real benefit for them to having a cheap, young, not-so-talented team that's replaying the 90s. This is certainly a question for an expert GM, but I think the better goal would be talent, rather than stripping the roster of the good players you have found in order to cultivate cap room. And perhaps, once they have added a good draft pick in the summer, they will feel they already have plenty of youngsters to develop (Flagg, Christie, Lively, Williams, Cisse, Nembhard, plus a top 10 pick in 2026 would be almost half the team) and Gaff, PJW, and Marshall are also only a year or two older (mid-20s).