NBA Trade Deadline: Why the Mavericks Waived Deron Williams

The Dallas Mavericks are in talks with Deron Williams to reach a buyout agreement or to be waived all together. Why was it so hard for Dallas to move the veteran point guard? Only speculation at this point.

As of right now, it appears the Dallas Mavericks have waived Deron Williams who will enter the waivers immediately. Deron Williams was a hot topic for Mavs trade rumors, but in the end, nothing gained enough traction to move forward.

Now, D-Will is going to have to clear the waivers before he will be able to sign on with a new team as an unrestricted free agent. The Dallas Mavericks were reportedly meeting with Williams in search of a buyout agreement, but clearly those talks got us nowhere as the news broke that Dallas will be waiving him.

David Aldridge gave us a quick overview earlier of the most likely outcome for Deron.

The conversation to get a buyout was apparently irrelevant as the Mavs were happy to let D-Will go search for a championship ring. Marc Stein of ESPN reported that Dallas informed D-Will they would be willing to let him enter waivers instead of reaching a buyout.

No one is really 100% clear as to what happened with Deron Williams, as there were a lot of reports that teams were interested in the league. It is not likely that Dallas chose to take nothing over less than they wanted, so I do have a few theories.

One explanation could be that the Dallas Mavericks are just a very respectful organization. If they did not see a deal out there that they really liked, it is highly possible that we allowed Deron to walk as a UFA so that he could hand-select the team he wants to play with for the remainder of the year.

Undoubtedly, Cleveland did not have the cap space to take on D-Will’s contract, and with the Mavs having little to no interest in Iman Shumpert, it can be assumed that trade talks fizzled out between the two teams.

The one that I am leaning more towards has to do with Williams’ contract. D-Will had a special, little known tweak in his deal that gave him a no-trade clause. This isn’t an agreed upon no-trade like the one’s that Dirk Nowitzki, Carmelo Anthony, and LeBron James have, but actually comes from what is called the “One-Year Bird contract”.

The fine print of these types of contracts talk a lot more in depth of what it means but it really just boils down to these players being able to say whether they agree with the trade or not. In other words, if the Mavs were close to a deal with a team that Williams didn’t want to go to, he could’ve vetoed the trade.

Regardless of how it happened though, Dallas has officially waived Deron Williams and he will clear waivers in approximately 48 hours, when he is expected to strike a deal with the defending champion, Cleveland Cavaliers.

Aldridge followed up his tweet with the announcement that D-Will was officially waived. Waiver period is 48 hours in which any team can scoop him up at his current contract if I’m not mistaken, (which is not expected to happen).

The Mavericks probably did not want to end things with D-Will this way, but when backed into a corner, I think the Dallas front office made the right call in letting him go. Now we get to look forward to seeing Yogi Ferrell run the Mavs offense the rest of the year.

Enjoy Cleveland, Deron. And thanks for the memories.