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Wayne Ellington has become the third guard to join the Dallas Mavericks in free agency.
Ellington tweeted late Tuesday night that he had agreed to a contract with Dallas. The deal is reportedly for two years and $5 million.
The 6-foot-4 shooting guard split last season between Memphis and Cleveland. He was traded to the Grizzlies last summer and went to the Cavaliers midseason in a four-player deal.
Reported by the Associated Press
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The Dallas Mavericks added more potency to their point guard situation Saturday when they agreed to a three-year contract with Devin Harris worth more than $9 million.
Harris, 30, played for the Mavs from 2004 until they included him in a blockbuster trade with the New Jersey Nets on Feb. 19, 2008, that helped land Jason Kidd in Dallas. Harris also played for the Utah Jazz before last season, when he averaged 9.9 points and 3.4 assists while shooting 43.8 percent from the field in 24.5 minutes per game for the Atlanta Hawks.
While adding Harris to their roster is viewed as a bonus, the Mavs lost one of their own point guards Saturday when Darren Collison agreed to a two-year contract with the Los Angeles Clippers. In his lone season with the Mavs, Collison averaged 12 points and 5.1 assists per game.
Reported by Dwain Price of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram
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After moving on from Dwight Howard’s decision to head to Houston, the Mavericks have started to seriously pursue Andrew Bynum, sources told ESPN.com’s Marc Stein.
However, the Mavs will proceed with caution due to the knee condition that caused the 7-foot, 285-pound Bynum to miss all of his lone season with the Philadelphia 76ers.
According to the sources, the evaluation process of the 25-year-old Bynum’s problematic knees will be “exhaustive.”
The Mavs consider their medical staff, headlined by Team USA athletic trainer Casey Smith and Dr. T.O. Souryal, to be the best in the league.
Reported by Tim MacMahon of ESPN Dallas
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It’s Plan B again for the Dallas Mavericks in free agency.
Mavericks owner Mark Cuban tweeted Friday that it was ”time to get back to work” amid multiple media reports that Dallas was out of the running for free agent center Dwight Howard.
”The Mavs are back open for business,” Cuban wrote on Twitter.
It’s the second straight summer Dallas has missed on a big name in free agency after declining to bring back key pieces of the 2011 championship team in the name of salary cap space.
Reported by the Associated Press
Each NBA free agency period, some local businesses around the country come up with some fun offers to make at players in the hope of luring them to sign with the local team. Whether these offers actually ever get fulfilled, nobody knows. But they’re fun. Here’s the latest example:
A Dallas fried chicken joint is really trying to give Dwight Howard the finger, or in this case, fingers.
Raising Cane’s, a chicken finger chain, is offering a lifetime of free chicken fingers to Howard in exchange for his signature on a contract with the Mavericks.
“These next few days, Dwight Howard will be making arguably the most important career decision of his life,” Adam Reed the marketing manager at Raising Cane’s said in a press release obtained by the Dallas Morning News. “So we thought we’d make Dwight an offer he couldn’t refuse to up the ante for a Dallas-bound decision.”
Reported by Bernie Augustine of the New York Daily News
To hear the Dallas Mavericks say it, Shane Larkin is real close to being the second coming of JJ Barea.
Following a whirlwind day Thursday during the NBA Draft, the Mavs pat themselves on the back after they wound up with Miami Hurricanes point guard Shane Larkin. The same Larkin whose father, Barry, is in the Pro Baseball Hall of Fame.
The same Larkin who averaged 14.5 points and 4.6 assists while collecting ACC Player of the Year honors this past season. Larkin also was the ACC Tournament Most Valuable Player and a second-team All-American while leading the Hurricanes to the NCAA Sweet 16 and staking his claim as being one of the country’s best point guards.
“One of the things that’s really unique about him is from an analytic standpoint he’s one of the best guys we’ve seen coming out of college shooting off the dribble,” coach Rick Carlisle said. “And he can also get to places and get other guys involved, so I just think he’s good and he’s going to get better.”
Reported by Dwain Price of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Blog)
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Houston’s James Harden and Chandler Parsons aren’t the only Texas residents in the NBA who have gotten a head start on recruiting Dwight Howard.
Dirk Nowitzki has also been in touch with Howard, although the Dallas Mavericks star indicated that he hasn’t been too aggressive with his recruiting efforts.
“I reached out to him and told him we’d love to have him,” Nowitzki said Thursday night. “That’s really about it. It’s not like we call each other every day.”
Grinning, Nowitzki added, “I haven’t written him a letter. We’ve just had a little phone contact, and that’s about it.”
Reported by Tim MacMahon of ESPN Dallas
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is funding research into the practice of flopping.
Cuban is paying Southern Methodist University $100,000 to conduct an 18-month study to investigate whether or not video or other motion capture techniques can differentiate flops from genuine player collisions.
“The research findings could conceivably contribute to video reviews of flopping and the subsequent assignment of fines,” SMU biomechanics expert Peter G. Weyand said in a statement.
Cuban wrote on Twitter: “Is it a flop? Let the scientists figure it out . im paying for the research to find out.”
Meanwhile, NBA commissioner David Stern has requested the league to expand its anti-flopping rules.
Reported by the Sports Xchange
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One of the greatest, most fun-to-watch point guards in this era of professional basketball is saying goodbye and moving on to greener pastures.
New York Knicks Executive Vice President, Basketball Operations and General Manager Glen Grunwald announced today that 10-time NBA All-Star guard Jason Kidd has retired from playing professional basketball.
“Jason’s value to the Knicks and the National Basketball Association cannot be quantified by statistics alone,” Grunwald said. “Everyone here in New York saw firsthand what a tremendous competitor he is and why Jason is considered to be one of the best point guards, and leaders, the game has ever seen.”
“My time in professional basketball has been an incredible journey, but one that must come to an end after 19 years,” Kidd said. “As I reflect on my time with the four teams I represented in the NBA, I look back fondly at every season and thank each every one of my teammates and coaches that joined me on the court.”
“Veteran leadership on and off the court was a huge factor for our team that recorded 54 victories and an Atlantic Division crown,” Head Coach Mike Woodson said. “Jason provided an incredible voice inside our lockerroom and I considered it an honor to say I coached him.”
Kidd, 6-4, 220-pounds, holds averages of 12.6 points, 8.7 assists. 6.3 rebounds and 1.93 steals with Dallas, Phoenix, New Jersey and New York. These Springfield-caliber career numbers have solidified his place among the greatest of the great in NBA history. On the League’s all-time leaders lists he ranks: second in season-appearances (19), sixth in games played (1,391), third in minutes (50,111), second in assists (12,091), second in steals (2,684), third in three-point field goals (1,988), 50th overall in rebounds and first overall amongst guards (8,725), 71st in points scored (17,529) and third in triple-doubles (107).
He appeared in 158 postseason games, averaging 12.9 points, 7.8 assists, 6.7 rebounds and 1.91 steals and led the Dallas Mavericks, along with current Knicks All-Star center Tyson Chandler, to the 2011 NBA Championship. He also is a two-time Olympic Gold Medalist, leading Team USA in 2000 at Sydney and in 2008 in Beijing. As a member of the New Jersey Nets, Kidd appeared in back-to-back NBA Finals in 2002 and 2003.
Kidd is a 10-time NBA All-Star (1996, 1998, 2000-04, 2007-08, 2010), a five-time All-NBA First-Team selection (1999-02, 2004) and earned All-NBA Second Team honors in 2003. He was named to the NBA’s All-Defensive First Team four times (1999, 2001, 2002, 2006) and Second Team five times (2000, 2003-05, 2007) and was the 1995 Co-Rookie of the Year. On Apr. 30, Kidd became the first-ever back-to-back recipient of the Joe Dumars Trophy presented to the 2012-13 NBA Sportsmanship Award winner, an honor voted-on by all current players.
In his first and only season with the Knicks, Kidd provided trademark backcourt leadership and stability both as a starter and off the bench. Recording averages of 6.0 points, 3.3 assists, 4.3 rebounds and 1.64 steals in 76 games, the San Francisco, CA native became just the third Knicks player to celebrate his 40th birthday in the orange and blue (joining Kurt Thomas and Herb Williams).
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InsideHoops.com editor Jeff Lenchiner says: The immediate guess is that J-Kidd, assuming he still wants to earn a paycheck going forward, may dive into coaching. I won’t be surprised if he’s an assistant coach somewhere next season.
Mark Cuban’s goal is to make the Dallas Mavericks a championship team again within a two-year window.
After Dallas missed the playoffs for the first time in 12 years, the owner vowed the Mavs would have a “quick rebuild.” The pending pitch to free agents this summer — including Chris Paul and Dwight Howard — is that the franchise can take a significant step forward next season and then have the salary-cap space available again in 2014 to make more major upgrades.
“We want to be a championship team. We’ve never said we have to be a championship team this year,” Cuban said Saturday on ESPN Dallas 103.3 FM during his first interview since the Mavs’ season ended. “We want to be a better team, a top-seed team. If we get the top free agent, that doesn’t leave us a whole lot of flexibility to add a lot of players, but we have a good nucleus around them. We know we’ll have a good team, but we won’t know if we have a great team.
“If you look at this like a two-year plan, then we think we’re on a track to have a great team by the end of next year.”
Reported by Tim MacMahon of ESPN Dallas