DALLAS — The Mavericks’ first free-agent addition of the offseason is a familiar one.
Center JaVale McGee has agreed to sign with the Mavericks, according to a source, after the team prioritized the 34-year-old veteran as their first post-Jalen Brunson pursuit.
ESPN reported McGee’s contract to be three years for up to $20.1 million, with a player option for the final season.
Under those terms, McGee’s salary will slot into the taxpayer mid-level exception and leave room for the Mavericks to sign second-round rookie Jaden Hardy to a deal longer than the two-year minimum draft slot.
McGee spent last season with the Phoenix Suns, averaging 9.2 points and 6.7 rebounds while shooting 62.9% from the floor in 15.8 minutes through 74 games.
He’s played for eight since 2008, including the 2015-16 season with the Mavericks. In Dallas, McGee appeared in 34 games as a reserve who’d endured significant injury issues, playing just 28 games in the previous two seasons combined.
Since then? McGee’s durability has improved.
And he’s won big-time.
He played a combined 171 games in the Golden State Warriors’ two championship seasons from 2016-18, and then won another NBA Finals with the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2020 Disney World bubble.
That’s when he grew close with several members of the Mavericks’ staff.
Head coach Jason Kidd and assistant Greg St. Jean worked on former coach Frank Vogel’s Lakers staff. Mavericks assistant Jared Dudley was a frontcourt reserve on the team, too.
A source said Kidd was one of Dallas’ leaders who spoke with McGee at the start of free agency, no doubt pitching the 7-foot big man on the chance to join a frontcourt rotation the team wanted to upgrade after rebounding struggles during the playoffs.
McGee saw the opportunity first-hand several times this postseason.
He averaged just 5.2 points and 4.3 rebounds in 11.3 minutes per game during the Mavericks-Suns second-round series, when Phoenix’s bigs struggled to counter the Mavericks’ small-ball lineups with Maxi Kleber and Dorian Finney-Smith at the five.
But he said to ESPN on Thursday: “I saw some opportunities out there where I was like, ‘Oh yeah, if they had a rolling big, they could dominate in a different aspect.”
After the Mavericks’ Game 7 triumph ended the Suns’ season, McGee kept in touch, attending Game 4 of the Western Conference finals in American Airlines Center.
McGee joins center Christian Wood as the Mavericks’ two offseason additions in what general manager Nico Harrison deemed the team’s biggest area for improvement entering next season.
What’s next?
The frontcourt logjam also includes incumbent starter Dwight Powell and forwards Maxi Kleber and Davis Bertans, who will combine to make $26.1 million in 2022-23.
The high concentration of salary down low perhaps foreshadows the potential for the Mavericks to make a trade — their only other luxury-tax-limited roster machination available beyond minimum free-agent deals — to make good on their goals to upgrade their depth on the wing and defense and in Brunson’s starting backcourt absence.
