Dallas Fills the Thompson Hole With a Bet on Youth

The Mavericks bought out Klay Thompson's $17 million contract Thursday, ending his two-year stint in Dallas after the front office couldn't find a trading partner. Thompson, who shot 39.1% last season, is expected to sign with Miami. The move was coming — I noted the limbo situation back on August 10 — but the formal resolution still clarifies something important about what Dusty May's first roster actually is.

It's young. Deliberately, irreversibly young. The perimeter minutes Thompson was holding get redistributed to Jett Howard and the wave of summer acquisitions — Zaccharie Risacher, Marcus Sasser, Tarik Biberovic — none of whom have proven they can fill the shooting void a four-time champion leaves, even a diminished version of one. That's the honest part of this. Thompson at 39.1% is a real number; the guys replacing him are question marks.

What Dallas is banking on is that system fit matters more than veteran familiarity at this stage of the rebuild. May's framework, as he's described it, is built on execution and discipline — the exact things last season's close-game record exposed as missing. A roster that buys in cleanly may outperform a roster that's half-committed, and Thompson at $17 million was always going to be an awkward fit in a youth installation. The math on that argument is reasonable. Whether Howard and Risacher actually deliver is a different question entirely, and one we won't answer until November.