Mavericks bringing back Tim Hardaway Jr. on 4-year, $74 million deal

Hardaway had a career year last season, and will stay put in Dallas for the time being.

UPDATE: Tim Hardaway Jr. re-signing with the Mavericks has been confirmed. Various reporters have stated the deal will be four years, $74 million, slightly less annually than his previous deal.

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With just minutes to go until free agency opens in earnest, Marc Stein is reporting that Dallas is likely to reach a deal with guard Tim Hardaway Jr quickly.

Initially arriving in Dallas as part of the Porzingis trade, Hardaway Jr quickly created a space for himself on this Dallas roster with his ability to be a microwave scorer both as a starter and off the bench.

To that point, Hardaway had mentioned after the season had ended that he does in fact view himself as a starter in this league. Now, with it looking like he’ll be sticking around in Dallas, the assumption might be that his role, should he return, has already been discussed with new head coach Jason Kidd, and we may be in for more starting minutes from THJ.

Names like Dinwiddie, Fournier, and DeRozan were popular names amongst MFFL twitter, but this move implies that the Dallas front office may have viewed a bird in the hand worth half a dozen missed free agents in the bush. To renounce Tim’s rights to create space to sign another player, Dallas would’ve opened themselves up to potentially walking away from this free agency with no one who could replace the kind of scoring Hardaway Jr has provided. We don’t know what other moves new GM Nico Harrison has planned, but keeping a guy who shoots eight threes a game at 40% is never a bad idea.

Here’s our Monday evening free agency podcast. We recorded around 10:30 pm CST so if more happened, we’ll talk about that tomorrow. Here’s the direct link again. Search Mavs Moneyball Podcast on your favorite app.