The Dallas Mavericks may have failed to enter the Western Conference Playoffs for the third consecutive year but they don’t expect themselves to rot at the bottom of the league for long. Before the February NBA trade deadline, the Mavericks engaged in a blockbuster deal with the New York Knicks to acquire Kristaps Porzingis and traded Harrison Barnes to the Sacramento Kings to open up salary cap space for the 2019 NBA free agency.
In a recent interview with The Dallas Morning News , Mavericks owner Mark Cuban revealed their plans in the 2019 NBA offseason. Of course, the Mavericks’ No. 1 offseason priority is to convince Kristaps Porzingis to sign a massive contract extension. The Latvian center is expected to receive plenty of interest on the market but since he’s a restricted free agent, the only thing that the Mavericks need to do is to match offers from other NBA teams.
After securing Kristaps Porzingis’ future in Dallas, Cuban said that they are planning to bring most of their incoming free agents back, including Dwight Powell, Dorian Finney-Smith, and Maxi Kleber.
“I see the same type of future for this team with Luka [Doncic] and KP [Kristaps Porzingis] and bringing back our other guys, we’ll extend Dwight Powell and keep him around for another three years. We think we’ve got a great core — and probably bring back Maxi [Kleber] and DoDo [Dorian Finney-Smith]. I think we can add a free agent, we’ll keep our guys for the most part, we’ll see what happens in the draft, see what’s available to us and go from there. If Luka and KP are the workers I think they are or know they are, then the future’s really good.”
Kristaps Porzingis reportedly called black woman ‘my slave’ as he beat, raped her https://t.co/KYCALOHcJH pic.twitter.com/ps3Nh1E6XU
— New York Post (@nypost) March 31, 2019
With their goal to contend for the NBA championship title, Mavericks owner Mark Cuban must be aware that they need to surround Kristaps Porzingis and Luka Doncic with quality players, specifically legitimate NBA superstars. The 2019 NBA free agency will be loaded with several big names and in the past months, the Mavericks have been frequently linked to All-Star point guard Kemba Walker, who is expected to leave the Charlotte Hornets in the 2019 NBA offseason.
However, Cuban revealed that they still haven’t decided whether they will go after “big fish” in the free agency market or not. Cuban knows that acquiring one of the incoming free agent superstars will tremendously increase their chance of returning to the Western Conference Playoffs in the 2019-20 NBA season, but he said that they should also consider how they will fill out their entire roster next summer.
