It’s not often that one NBA team roots for another to acquire a two-time All-Star, but a recent report points to the Mavericks’ stepping happily into that role. The desire here for Dallas is to reportedly hop on board in a potential deal and set itself up to land another coveted player in the process.
As longtime NBA reporter Marc Stein revealed in the latest edition of The Stein Line, the Mavericks are both “rooting” for the Hawks to win the Pascal Siakam trade sweepstakes and hoping the deal either includes Clint Capela or sets them up to join as a third team.
The end goal? To acquire a new starting center whom they’ve coveted since at least the 2023 NBA draft.
You can safely presume that the Dallas Mavericks are rooting for Atlanta to win the trade race for Toronto's Siakam ... and that they’re also hoping such a trade features Hawks center Clint Capela as opposed to a strictly De’Andre Hunter-centric deal.
Capela has two seasons left on his current contract valued at nearly $43 million. The Raptors would appear to have little need for a pricey center after re-signing Jakob Poeltl this month to a four-year deal worth $78 million, so a theoretical trade of Siakam to the Hawks that features Capela would open the door for Dallas to join the trade as a third team or pursue a separate deal with Toronto for Capela.
The idea of acquiring Capela seems to be near the top of Dallas’s to-do list. As Stein points out, the Mavericks attempted to get a deal done with Atlanta to acquire Capela just before the draft but reportedly refused to include 22-year-old shooting guard Josh Green in a deal along with the No. 10 pick.
If the Mavericks are able to acquire Capela, it would set up the team to look much more like a legitimate potential contender. At the very least, they’d be a legitimate playoff threat with a lineup featuring Luka Dončić, Kyrie Irving, Grant Williams, Capela and presumably Green, along with second-year guard Jaden Hardy.
