Of course, the NBA Finals are still going on and we are waiting to see if a new champion will be crowned on Thursday night or we will have to wait until Sunday. But that doesn’t mean other teams don’t work tirelessly to improve their rosters, acquire assets or start changing the way their core looks. With more than a week to go before the NBA Draft (June 23), we have the first deal for the summer of 2022.
The Dallas Mavericks and Houston Rockets have agreed on an exchange that will send Christian Wood to Dallas in exchange for four players and the 26th pick in the draft next week.
Sources: Mavericks send Boban Maryanovich, Stirling Brown, Trey Burke, Marquis Chris and Rockets’ No. 26 to Christian Wood.
– Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) June 16, 2022
The rockets are powered by Wood after acquiring it in a big sign and trading two off-season. They are gaining a lot of role-playing players to provide flexibility for this off-season, and they grab their third first-round pick in next week’s draft. The Mavericks are trying to add a dynamic player from the front zone, who they hope will connect instantly with Luka Doncic in a way that Kristaps Porzingis could never permanently.
What does this deal mean for both parties? Let’s remove the red ink and make some estimates about it.
Dallas Mavericks acquires Christian Wood
The Dallas Mavericks will be Wood’s seventh team since their NBA debut in the 2015-16 season. But apparently Mavs CEO Nico Harrison respects Wood. Wood is an interesting pickup truck from Mavericks. It took him many stops and years to get into the NBA. He was a bit everywhere and only after his stay in Detroit three seasons ago did he finally start breaking through. His rockets made a big out-of-season gain in November 2020, and he immediately started publishing statistics.
Wood showed a pretty effective 21.0 points per game (59.1 percent real shooting) and 9.6 rebounds in 41 games in his first season with the Rockets. But the team gave up their attempts to win matches in the beginning, as James Harden was moved to Brooklyn. Last season, while the Rockets were trying to play young and learn to work, Wood’s score dropped to 17.9 points per game, but his efficiency (59.5 percent real shooting) remained high and he grabbed 10.1 rebounds. per match.
The tree is a double-double machine. He can give you 20 points every night. But the real question with him is to find out if this comes from the place of winning basketball. The teams he was on were too bad to wear, and asking him to wear a team is probably not so fair. He is not a constant defender and his attack is very much related to him. We have yet to see if he can lift the team with his game for an extended period of time.
Luckily for him in Dallas, he has Doncic to lead. The Mavs are absolutely upgrading their front zone here. Boban Marjanovic is a fan favorite, but not a significant player. No one who is moved here is someone without whom rotation cannot live, or even a player who needs rotation in the first place. Wood can score in the edge and in the middle of the floor and can knock down 3. He is a scorer with 38.0 percent from the city center in over 700 career attempts.
Wood immediately became Dallas’ best player, but he is not an anchor for defense. He has to prove that he can fit into what the Mavericks are doing. If he is their most significant acquisition of a big man, it is easy to see him complement Dwight Powell or Maxi Kleber. We could still see the Mavs trying to swing for fences in exchange for someone like Rudy Robert, but that’s not entirely necessary. This is a great test for Wood and Dallas. Luca can make his life easier, and he gives Doncic a legitimate threat in the game of two that the defense will respect. But Wood has to prove that he fits into the concept of the team and that his previous numbers were not empty calories in a team that wants to lose / recover. The Mavs need him to prove it, too, because he’ll be a free agent next summer.
Rating: B +
The Houston Rockets have acquired Boban Maryanovich, Stirling Brown, Trey Burke, Marquis Chris and the 26th draft pick of 2022.
The Houston Rockets knocked out Wood before his last season on a contract in exchange for essentially the 26th pick in the first round of this draft. This gives the Rockets a third choice, a 17th and a 26th choice. Given how well Rafael Stone did in last year’s draft with a bunch of elections, this should be quite encouraging for the Rockets and their fans. They expect to get another significant building block to Jalen Green, as Paolo Banchero looks like the predicted number 3 in the draft.
From then on, if they manage to create quality prospects, as they did last year with Alperen Sengun, Usman Garuba and Josh Christopher, the recovery process will continue to grow at a great pace. The other players who have acquired do not do much for them here. Marjanovic will probably not be late for this team. They could exchange it or refuse it. Brown is an interesting re-acquisition after spending 2020-21 with the Rockets. It can fit as another wing option. Burke does not move the needle, and Chris returns to Houston after spending a short stay there in the 2018-19 season.
This trade is actually about acquiring more project capital. They have achieved this. Wood would not make them much better next season and they are freeing up some important minutes for development, as Sengun and Garuba need more time on the court. Maybe they could do better for themselves than a late pick in the first round, but this is a very solid trade for Stone and Rockets.
Rating: B
(Photo by Christian Wood shooting Reggie Bullock: Kevin Jiraj / USA Today)
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