Reports: Mavs to sit down with free agent Howard Tuesday
DALLAS — Let the recruiting begin!
With the start of free agency now underway, the Dallas Mavericks and owner Mark Cuban will attempt to land one of this summer’s highly-coveted players while pairing 11-time All-Star Dirk Nowitzki with another superstar. And if the Mavericks’ brass has its way, now that it appears Los Angeles Clippers point guard Chris Paul is off the table, that will mean bringing seven-time All-Star and three-time Defensive Player of the Year Dwight Howard to Big D.
“Getting ready to make some phone calls ! Lets go Mavs ! #MFFL !” Cuban tweeted just before the midnight ET break for free-agent discussions with other teams to begin late Sunday night.
According to reports, the Mavericks will be one of just a handful of teams granted a face-to-face meeting with Howard as suitors line up to make their sales pitches to the big man in L.A. this week. ESPNLosAngeles.com also reports that the Mavs have already scheduled a Tuesday sit-down with Howard, hoping to reel in this offseason’s biggest fish while still needing to clear another $2.73 million in salary cap space to offer him an $88 million max-level contract over four seasons.
Howard averaged 17.1 points, 12.4 rebounds and 2.4 blocked shots in his lone season in L.A. with the Lakers after playing his first eight years in Orlando, recovering from back surgery last summer to recapture his All-Star form. Now, with Dallas, Houston, Golden State and Atlanta all hoping to convince Howard to walk away from a $118 million deal over five seasons that only the Lakers can offer while owning his Bird rights, the Mavs will try to prove that they offer the 27-year-old the best chance to claim his elusive first NBA title before the league’s moratorium period ends and he can actually sign a contract on July 10.
“We want to get better. It’s a big summer. We’ve been saying it all year long and the time is here to make some moves,” Nowitzki said Thursday before the draft when asked about playing a vital role in the recruitment process this summer. “We’ve got a lot of work to do. There’s a lot of options, a lot of possibilities, some guys that are out there that are interesting, and we’ll wait and see what happens.
“I reached out to him,” Nowitzki added while specifically talking about the possibility of teaming with Howard. “That’s probably as far as I would go, but yeah, I reached out to him. I told him that we’d love to have him and that’s really about it. It’s not like we call each other every day. I didn’t write him a letter. We just had a little phone contact and that was about it. ... He's just weighing out his options, and I'm sure he's got a couple of meetings set up for whenever that might be -- early July. And hopefully the Mavs are one of those teams and then we'll go from there.”
