D’Angelo Russell is back on the market, and that latest turn only makes the Mavericks look sharper for cutting bait when they did.
Memphis waived the 2025 Dallas free-agent signing Friday morning, choosing instead to clear room for undrafted rookie Brendan Hausen. For Russell, it’s another stop in a nomadic stretch that has now put him on track to join his seventh team since the 2022-23 season.
His Dallas stint never really got off the ground. The Mavericks gave him a two-year, $13 million deal in the offseason with Kyrie Irving recovering from an ACL tear, hoping Russell could steady the backcourt in Irving’s absence and potentially share the floor with him later. Instead, Russell appeared in just 26 of 51 possible games and made only three starts before getting moved ahead of the deadline.
Coach Kidd never seemed to settle on a real role for him. Russell finished his Mavericks run with almost as many DNPs as games played, which says plenty about how quickly things went sideways.
He was shipped to Washington with Anthony Davis, Jaden Hardy and Dante Exum. In that deal, Russell, Hardy and Exum were mostly footnotes compared with Davis, whose arrival had already reshaped the franchise after he came over the previous deadline in the Luka Doncic trade.
Russell didn’t suit up for the Wizards, either. On July 8, he was included in another move - a six-team deal that also involved Dallas.
The Mavericks sent Khris Middleton, who had come back in the original Russell trade, to Washington and sent A.J. Johnson, another player acquired in that same deal, to Memphis.
In return, Dallas landed Santi Aldama, Marcus Sasser and the rights to Tarik Biberovic.
So even though Russell hasn’t been part of the Mavericks’ rotation for a while, his brief stay still helped shape where the roster stands now. Aldama, Sasser and Biberovic give Dallas some interesting pieces as it looks ahead to the 2026-27 season and beyond.
Russell’s next opportunity may not be far off. He’s an 11-year NBA veteran, and when he’s rolling, he’s a dangerous passer who can run an offense. He still looks capable of leading a second unit for a team that needs guard help, especially in a league where even struggling clubs have to keep pace deep into the season.
Dallas still has its own point guard questions to answer, particularly if Irving isn’t fully ready to start the year. A reunion with Russell doesn’t look likely, though, even with Jason Kidd gone, and the split appears to have left Russell with hard feelings about his time in Dallas.
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Sergio De Larrea, taken No. 25, has taken a different path so far. The guard has been leaning on veteran Santi Aldama and assistant coach Willie Green as he learns how NBA defenses are treating him and works to sharpen the finer points of his game, all while adjusting to a tempo that fits with his EuroLeague background. The two rookies are facing very different early tests, but both are part of the same larger question for Dallas: how quickly can this class start looking ready? [Read more 🡒]