Anthony Davis’ left hand injury should mean the Dallas Mavericks are open for business at the trade deadline. It also, however, leaves them light on centers. That’s unwelcome news for anyone who wants the New York Knicks to make a run at Daniel Gafford.
Consistent defense remains hard to come by in The Mecca these days. A large swathe of the focus has fallen onto the Knicks’ performance at the point of attack. While that’s fair game, more emphasis is starting to be placed on the center spot.
Karl-Anthony Towns is intensely flawed on the defensive end, and New York doesn’t switch enough to help cover up for him. Ariel Hukporti remains too green. Guerschon Yabusele isn’t the answer even on his best day. And though Mitchell Robinson can be a defensive dynamo, the Knicks can’t count on him to be available, or to log a ton of minutes when he’s active.
Add it all up, and New York has plenty of reasons to chase another big. Gafford’s name has even popped up as people speculate on centers who can help, and are gettable.
The “he can help the Knicks” part hasn’t changed. Gafford’s availability is a different story.
Daniel Gafford may not be part of a Mavs fire sale
Shams Charania of ESPN reported back in December that Dallas was prepared to gauge the market for Gafford’s services. Since then, the Mavs have lost Dereck Lively II to season-ending foot surgery. Now, Davis has ligament damage in his left hand that could end up sidelining him for “several months.”
Gafford is effectively the only healthy center on Dallas’ depth chart. Dwight Powell may one day get a statue outside American Airlines Center, but he’s a break-in-case-of-emergency big. Moussa Cisse has shown some flashes, but he’s currently out of the rotation, and the Mavs may need to fiddle around with their finances before feeling comfortable converting his two-way contract into a standard deal.
Granted, Dallas needn’t get too bogged down by the available personnel if it’s waiving the towel on this season. But even deliberately bad teams need actual centers to, ya know, play center. Defaulting to P.J. Washington-at-the-5 minutes only gets you so far—and impossible to do if his current ankle injury lingers.
The Knicks are better off without Gafford in their sights
Fortunately for the Knicks, the Mavs potentially holding onto Gafford doesn’t change much about how they approach the deadline. His $14.4 million can only be matched by shipping out Mitchell Robinson, or cobbling together a bunch of smaller contracts headlined by Deuce McBride and Yabusele.
If New York has no desire to bankroll Robinson’s next contract, the prospect of flipping him for Gafford has tons of appeal. The latter is on the books for another three years, and an ultra-reasonable $54.4 million after this season. That averages out to 10.4 percent of the salary cap.
Still, Robinson continues to impact the game in ways Gafford and many others do not. Plus, if the Knicks are dead set on trotting out dual-big lineups, Robinson is more equipped to handle defensive assignments that pull him out to the perimeter.
In many ways, then, the Davis injury could be doing New York a favor by removing an imperfect, if inconvenient, option from its trade-deadline board. And hey, if the Mavs really are open for business, it could increase the gettability of Naji Marshall—who’s a much better fit for the salary that the Knicks can offer.