Mavericks: Chandler Parsons Worth The Risk

All my dreams have come true! According to multiple sources, the Dallas Mavericks have offered Chandler Parsons a 3-year, $46 million offer sheet. Which. Is. Awesome. I have made no effort to hide that Parsons has been my absolute favorite free agent target for the Mavs, at least since the Tyson Chandler trade created a massive need for perimeter shooting.

Parsons is everything the Mavs could want in a starting small forward.  Parsons is a career 37% three-point shooter who is particularly good from the corners (he shot 45.6% from the right corner last year!). He averaged 16.6 points, 4 assists, and 5.5 rebounds a game last season while shooting 47% overall. His true shooting percentage was 56.5%. For those worried that he is all offense, he is no slouch on defense either. He has a lanky 6-9 frame, plays with effort, and will only get better defensively under Rick Carlisle‘s guidance. And, by most accounts, he has a really good relationship with Dirk already.

Plus he’s so pretty!

However, because Parsons is a restricted free agent, this is by no means a done deal. Technically, NBA free agency has only kind of started. The real show starts tonight at midnight (11pm central time), when free agents are actually allowed to sign contracts instead of just agreeing to them in principle. Parsons is expected to sign the qualifying offer at 11:01pm central time, at which point the Rockets will have 72 hours to match the contract the Mavs are offering or let Parsons leave for Dallas.

So, considering all the awesomeness I discussed above, why would Houston let Parsons walk? The short answer: the probably won’t. The Rockets have maintained all along that they will match any offer on Parsons, no matter the cost. Maybe this is posturing, maybe not. We’ll see in a few days.

The good news is that, at least for now, Houston may be somewhat paralyzed by the bigger free agent fish. While most media types seem convinced that Carmelo Anthony has ruled Houston out, the Rockets are very much in play for Chris Bosh. The Rockets reportedly offered him a max contract of 4 years and approximately $88 million.

Ostensibly, the Rockets’ plan was to sign a big free agent (Melo or Bosh) to a max deal and then, through Daryl Morey cap magic, sign Parsons to a long-term deal on top of that. If Bosh doesn’t make a decision on the Rockets offer during the 72-hour window, this forces Houston’s’ hand. They either have to let Parsons walk in order to keep pursuing Bosh, or match the Mavericks’ offer and give up on the Bosh chase.

So let’s all hope that LeBron keeps dragging his feet, keeping Bosh–and thus the Rockets–in limbo as well. Everyone keep your fingers crossed for the next 3 days.

Now to finish off with a few rumors from the twitter-verse:

And the funniest news of all:

Update: Parsons’s offer sheet reportedly also contains a trade kicker. This means that Parsons’s new contract–whether with Dallas or Houston–will be harder to trade, since the kicker would force any team trading for Parsons to pay him a fairly steep bonus. Often teams won’t trade for a player unless he waives his kicker. Adding the kicker to an offer sheet is is a fairly typical strategy used by savvy teams to make an offer sheet less palatable to the team with the option of matching the offer.