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After stabilizing somewhat following a dire start to the 2025-26 NBA season, the Dallas Mavericks find themselves facing a number of decisions ahead of February’s trade deadline. One of them reportedly includes the future of sharpshooting swingman Klay Thompson, who has one more guaranteed season left on the contract he signed with the Mavericks in the summer of 2024 — and who would like to spend the balance of that pact on a team committed to competing for championships.
From Tim MacMahon and Anthony Slater of ESPN:
Dallas’ new front office is expected to explore his trade market near the deadline. Thompson’s desire is to play for a contender, league sources said, but the $17 million owed to him next season could make him challenging to move.
“The circumstances have changed since I signed here — I mean, obviously the personnel,” Thompson said. “But we still have a very talented team, and at the end of the day, I’m playing to win and nothing’s changed. My goals remain the same.”
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When Thompson says “obviously the personnel,” he is of course referring to the fact that when he agreed to a three-year, $50 million deal to leave the Golden State Warriors after 13 seasons and relocate to Dallas, he was doing so in large part for the purpose of playing alongside Luka Dončić — the kind of prime-aged offensive engine who, when healthy, all but guarantees a top-five offense, a playoff berth, a chance for a deep postseason run … and a steady diet of the most wide-open looks a 3-point shooter could ever ask for.
Thompson got all of 21 games alongside Dončić before then-Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison shockingly dealt the five-time All-NBA First Team selection to the Los Angeles Lakers — widely reported as the other team Thompson might angle his way toward in free agency, only to decide instead to head to Dallas — in exchange for star big man Anthony Davis. The deal, as you’ve probably heard mentioned once or twice, hasn’t worked out so hot for Dallas.
Luka’s playing at an MVP level for a Lakers team that sits third in the West. His erstwhile running buddy and expected successor as Dallas’ primary ball-handler, Kyrie Irving, tore his left ACL a month after the trade, missed the remainder of the 2024-25 season and has yet to make his 2025-26 debut. (Promising young center Dereck Lively II has missed the bulk of that time, too, and is out for the rest of this season after undergoing foot surgery.)
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Davis, for his part, suffered an injury midway through his first game in Dallas, suited up for just eight more Mavericks games last season, and suffered a calf strain a week into the ’25-26 campaign that cost him nearly a month. He has appeared in 22 of the Mavericks’ 62 games since the trade — a span in which the Mavs have gone 24-38.
This, to put it mildly, is not what Thompson had in mind when he signed up to spend his ages 34, 35 and 36 seasons with a Mavericks team that was fresh off an NBA Finals appearance but has plunged precipitously over the past 18 months. (Just ask Nico.)
You’d understand why a player like Thompson — a five-time All-Star, four-time NBA champion, two-time All-NBA selection, Olympic gold medalist and 15-year veteran who missed two full seasons in his prime due to devastating leg injuries — would want to prioritize trying to land in a winning environment during the latter years of his eventual Hall of Fame career. What kind of value he’d return on the trade market, though, remains unclear.
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For the season, Thompson’s averaging 11.1 points, 2.6 rebounds and 1.3 assists in 21.8 minutes per game, shooting just 39.7% on 2-pointers and 36.1% on 3-pointers — all at or near career lows. After he opened the season in the starting lineup, Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd moved the struggling Thompson to the bench; his play has ticked up a bit over the last month as his formerly frigid jumper has thawed, with Klay knocking down 40.3% of his triples over the last 15 games, a span in which Dallas has outscored opponents by 1.9 points per 100 possessions in his minutes.
(It’s worth noting here the Mavericks have gone 5-3 since Davis’ return, they’ve scored like a top-10 offense over the past few weeks, and Davis is averaging 20 points, 10.5 rebounds, 3.2 assists and three stocks in just 29.5 minutes per game this season. You can squint and envision a version of the Mavericks that has AD playing like this, Klay scorching the nets, Cooper Flagg continuing his evolution into an all-around game-wrecker and Irving returning to the fold developing into an absolute beast to deal with come springtime. You can also, of course, envision one injury — or, more likely, a slew of them — turning all those good vibes to another helping of ash in Mavs fans’ mouths … which is why it’s easy to understand ESPN’s Shams Charania reporting last week that Dallas is “open to exploring the trade markets” for Davis, Thompson, center Daniel Gafford and guard D’Angelo Russell, among others.)
Thompson virtually never gets to the rim anymore and is shooting a career-worst 40% when he does, but if his reversion to longstanding norms as one of the league’s most accurate high-volume shooters holds — he could still provide added perimeter firepower for a team looking to bolster its offense for a hoped-for playoff push.
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Like … maybe … for example … the one he left?
The Warriors sit an underwhelming 13-14 with the NBA’s 21st-ranked offense, despite Thompson’s longtime Splash Brother Stephen Curry averaging nearly 30 points per game on shooting splits just as pristine as ever. Asked by ESPN about the prospect of a reunion at some point in the future, Thompson demurred: “I don’t know. That’s a long ways away, man. That’s a lot of basketball to be had. I don’t know what the future holds.”
Curry, though, sure sounds like he’d be open to it.
“I wish he was still here,” Curry told ESPN. “… It would be unbelievable. If that time comes and that conversation is had, of course I’m calling him and saying, ‘We want you back.’ And hopefully that would be a welcome message to him. But as we stand right now, that does seem like a far distant reality. But so did him leaving.”