Mavs Truths: Christian Wood Fires Back - 'I'll Tell The Real Story'
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DALLAS — After making two trades in the last year for players using a first-round pick in each deal — including Christian Wood and Kyrie Irving — the Dallas Mavericks face a pivotal offseason. For a team that will likely operate above the luxury tax if they re-sign Irving as planned, losing Wood would leave them potentially limited to the taxpayer mid-level exception for spending power.
The Mavs' outlook to retain Wood this offseason seems to be continually declining. He recently posted what seemingly was a farewell on Twitter.
“I want to thank everyone and Mavs fans, especially for their support this season," Wood tweeted in early April. "Dallas has a special place in my heart, Back to the grind."
After recent reports from The Athletic and the Dallas Morning News suggesting that it's unlikely he will be brought back, Wood made another post on Twitter. This time, he called out the inaccuracy of those reports while mentioning that he would tell the "real story" at a more appropriate time.
"We know the truth. Stop putting out these (cap emoji) articles," Wood included in a since-deleted tweet on Monday. "I’ll tell the real story when the time is right."
A recent episode of "Inside the Mavs" mentioned how the coaching staff "never really wanted him," while framing the trade to acquire Wood as being a "salary dump." A team with depleted assets must be calculated in how they use them. Packaging four non-rotation players on expiring contracts wouldn't even be an effective salary dump, especially when contracts for players like Davis Bertans and Tim Hardaway Jr. were kept.
"You don’t give up a first-round pick just for one run at a playoffs,” Mavs owner Mark Cuban said during his court-side talk with reporters late in the season.
The report from Dallas Morning News featured the use of defensive rating as an individual player statistic. It also cited one anonymous Mavs official who stated that assistant coach Sean Sweeney's easiest stretch of the season came when Wood was sidelined due to a fractured thumb since he didn't have to stand up and call out defensive assignments on every possession.
It should be noted any member of an analytics staff would cringe at the idea of "defensive rating'' being used as a stat characterizing the impact of an individual player. It's a poor use of data, to say the least. Additionally, the judgment of an anonymous team official about one player might not be a fair characterization.
When talking with numerous opponents after facing the Mavs, it was common to hear how a defense anchored by Dwight Powell or Maxi Kleber offered no interior presence. Some from early in the season were surprised at how poor JaVale McGee looked conditioning-wise and in terms of discipline with positioning and assignments.
Armed with this information ... Why is Wood the only big man singled out in this commentary?
Wood's season with the Mavs has been filled with head-scratching outcomes. When the Mavs decided to tank the final two games, they not only were fined $750,000 by the NBA, but it also opened further questions about how influential business decisions were on their season. For instance: How much was Wood's smallish role impacted by the team's outlook to get a contract extension done?
With McGee being promised a starting role in part of the Mavs' free agency recruiting pitch, Wood began the season in a bench role for all but one of his initial 26 performances. During this stretch, he averaged 17.2 points and 7.8 rebounds, shooting 55 percent from the floor and 40.2 percent from deep. He made sacrifices as a newcomer to a team that was coming off a Western Conference Finals run.
"Initially, it was very difficult. I'm going to be honest," Wood said of beginning the season off the bench. "But I stayed levelheaded. I knew I was on a new team, a team that had just gotten to the Western Conference finals. I just wanted to do anything that could impact winning, whether that's coming off the bench or starting."
The Mavs' most successful stretch of the season included a 9-4 record when Wood started next to Luka Doncic - yet the only reason he was even inserted into the starting lineup was due to Maxi Kleber tearing his hamstring. In 17 starts overall, Wood averaged 20.4 points, 9.4 rebounds, and 2.3 blocks. He was a fixture in the team's social media campaigning for All-Star voting, as he was included in more than 20 Twitter and Instagram posts in addition to being included in many American Airlines Center promotions. Among Western Conference front-court players, he finished 10th in player voting and 19th in fan voting.
Wood was eligible to sign a two-year contract extension since being traded to the Mavs but was eligible to sign a four-year deal worth up to $77 million on New Year’s Eve. It was reported in early January by mainstream outlets — including ESPN — that the Mavs were interested in getting a contract extension done with Wood, but were reluctant to do it for longer than two years to preserve 2025 cap space. Despite this, Kleber was signed to a now seemingly upside-down extension that runs through the 2025-26 season, taking up said valuable future spending power.
“He gives us a dynamic that we haven’t had in a long time,” Cuban told NBA.com in January. “He’s somebody who can post up, make a 3, attack, close out, block a shot, and rebound. He’s really helped us."
Cuban also stated: "We'd like to keep him."
Keep in mind Wood would no longer have been eligible to be traded had he signed a contract extension that spanned longer than two years. The Mavs similarly didn't get a deal done with Jalen Brunson last season to maintain his trade eligibility through the midseason deadline.
Despite the success Wood achieved in a starting role, and having earned the right to be one of three Mavs players — Doncic, Wood, and Spencer Dinwiddie — included in the team’s All-Star campaigning across its social media channels, he inexplicably had his playing time sharply reduced with the trade deadline looming. He received under 20 minutes in his first four games back from injury, which included the Feb. 9 trade deadline occurring after the second of these performances.
"Beat y'all trade rumors ... (squinting face emoji)," Wood tweeted after the Feb. 9 trade deadline.
Wood never even touched 28 minutes in a game until March 15 — a double-overtime victory against the San Antonio Spurs with both Doncic and Kyrie Irving sidelined. With dwindling playoff odds, the Mavs needed to win to survive. They ran their offense through him in overtime for reliable offense, he finished with 28 points and 13 rebounds, often being the focus of Horns sets in the half-court.
It became a frequent occurrence for Wood to be the third center to come off the bench during the season’s stretch run. In a league that rarely has teams play three centers, such an approach was perplexing, especially on a team lacking talent.
It would be understandable for Wood to desire a departure from the Mavs in free agency. If so, much of the team's limited outlook to add talent will seemingly rely on the NBA Draft lottery and hoping for a positive outcome. But overall, with a depleted war chest of assets, over a 20-percent chance of losing their 2023 first-round pick, and plenty of bad contracts, the Mavs' outlook isn't favorable.
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