The Mavericks don’t need the Clippers to collapse in order to improve their own outlook, but Wednesday’s punishment out of the NBA sure makes Dallas’ road a little less crowded.
LA got hit hard for violating the salary cap circumvention rules tied to Kawhi Leonard. The league stripped the Clippers of five first-round picks, fined owner Steve Ballmer $30 million, and suspended Ballmer, Lawrence Frank, and Gillian Zucker. That kind of ruling doesn’t just sting in the moment - it changes the shape of a franchise’s future.
For Dallas, that matters. The Mavericks are still a long way from being a true Western Conference contender, but their direction is clearly pointed upward.
Cooper Flagg gives them a franchise centerpiece with enormous upside. Morez Johnson Jr. is now in the mix after the draft.
And with all but two players on the roster under 30, the team’s age profile already looks a lot healthier than plenty of its conference rivals.
The front office has leaned into that long view, too. Earlier this summer, Dallas brought in Masai Ujiri to run the team, and the offseason has included trades for Zaccharie Risacher, Marcus Sasser, and Santi Aldama. The message has been pretty clear: build a roster that fits around Flagg, don’t force the timeline, and keep stacking the kind of pieces that can grow together.
That’s where the Clippers’ punishment becomes such a boost for the Mavs. LA no longer owns its own first-round picks in 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032, and 2033, which leaves the franchise boxed in for the next five years.
Without that draft capital, it gets much harder to repair mistakes or pivot into a new era. Even before this ruling, the Clippers’ future looked shaky.
Now it looks bleak.
They’ve been a regular playoff presence - 12 appearances in the last 15 years - but they missed the postseason last season. And with Leonard gone to the Toronto Raptors in a trade this summer, the roster has lost even more of its old footing. Keaton Wagler’s Summer League performance also left something to be desired, and he appears to be the only player on the roster under 25 with real star potential.
If Wagler doesn’t become that kind of player, the Clippers are staring at a thin path forward. Free agency and trades are the only real tools left, and those are a lot tougher to use when you’ve stripped away your own draft assets. Dallas, meanwhile, gets to keep building.
That’s the big takeaway here: the Mavericks are trying to climb, while one of the teams that used to sit in their way just got pushed back years.
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For Dallas, the timing matters as much as the player. The Mavericks have been patient while Biberovic stayed overseas, but his long-awaited arrival also says something about where the organization sees its next layer of depth coming from. In a summer full of teams cashing in on old draft rights, Dallas is clearly signaling that this is the time to turn that planning into a real roster piece, even if the bigger question is how much more comes with it. [Read more 🡒]