The Mavs Finally Traded Tim Hardaway Jr. In A Deal With The Pistons

The Dallas Mavericks, fresh off of an appearance in the NBA Finals, are in a position where they need to tweak their roster to remain competitive in the Western Conference moving forward. One of the players who was widely viewed as available on the trade block was Tim Hardaway Jr., the microwave scorer who fell out of the team’s rotation on their run this postseason and has seemingly been dangled as an option on the trade market for years.

On Friday morning, Hardaway finally got dealt to the Detroit Pistons, which received three future second-round picks — one from Toronto in 2025, two in 2028 — for taking him on. In exchange, the Mavericks received an interesting young player in Quentin Grimes, who Detroit acquired from the New York Knicks last season.

Hardaway is about to enter the final year of his contract, which is worth a little more than $16 million. He’s coming off of a season where he averaged 14.4 points per game, appeared in 79 games for Dallas, and finished in ninth place in Sixth Man of the Year voting, so time will tell if Detroit is able to flip him down the road to a team that wants to take on an expiring contract and add someone who can score.

Grimes, the No. 25 overall pick in the 2021 NBA Draft, is in the final year of his rookie deal before he hits restricted free agency next summer. While he struggled mightily after the Pistons got him last year, the version of him that we saw in 2022-23 with the Knicks was the exact sort of role player you want next to Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving, as he’s a capable shooter (he hit 37.9 percent of his threes in 2.5 years in New York) who competes on the defensive end of the floor. Acquiring also frees up some room for Dallas to try and re-sign Derrick Jones Jr. in free agency.