Mavericks' ridiculous trade deadline myth just got brutally exposed

The Dallas Mavericks are showing no signs of changing their trajectory at this point of their regular season with 13 games left, as Dallas will attempt to bring Anthony Davis back and make a run at the playoffs despite currently being the 10th seed. Even though the Phoenix Suns are only one game behind Dallas right now, the Mavericks control their own destiny for the most part with how tough Phoenix's remaining strength of schedule is, and Dallas would likely find themselves in the play-in game at the very least if they can play .500 basketball from here on out.

Getting Davis back gives Dallas a fair chance at retaining the 10th seed as well as a puncher's chance at outing the Sacramento Kings for the ninth seed, but this season is already as disastrous as ever, and even if the Mavericks make the playoffs there's no way they could best the first-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder in a first-round playoff matchup.

Dallas would have to win two straight play-in games to even get to that point based on current projections, so the notion that the Mavericks should pack this season up and set their sights toward this year's loaded draft class is a widely held belief among many fans and analysts. The Luka Doncic trade obviously derailed Dallas' season to the max, but if Nico Harrison also wasn't keen on swapping Quentin Grimes for Caleb Martin, the Mavericks could be in a far more comfortable playoff-seeding arrangement.

Neither Grimes nor his camp asked out of Dallas on their own volition

After scoring 28 points versus Dallas on Sunday, Grimes scored a career-high 46 points in his hometown versus the Houston Rockets in an overtime loss for the Philadelphia 76ers on Monday night. Grimes' breakout recently has been unprecedented and can partially be attributed to assuming a bigger role with all of the Sixers' injuries, though his efficiency on offense has scaled to a higher workload, and he's playing the best basketball of his entire career.

What's worse for the Mavericks here is that they started to witness Grimes' ascension as an elite-level role player or future near All-Star over his past 25 games or so in Dallas, and Grimes' contract isn't egregious and he's only 24 years old. New intel suggests Dallas simply had no reason to trade Grimes outside his inability to get a contract extension signed with Dallas before the end of training camp, as it was recently revealed that Grimes nor his camp asked for a trade out of Dallas.

There were rumors circulating that Grimes wanted out after the team traded for Max Christie, but that does not seem to be the case.

"Best on my best information, he did not formally ask to be traded," said NBA insider Marc Stein in regard to Grimes on the DLLS Mavs Podcast recently. "I don't think that would've even mattered because the Mavericks wanted Caleb Martin."

This anecdote from Stein goes to show how troubling and destructive Harrison's run as President of Basketball Operations for the Mavericks has been this season, as Harrison was locked in on trading for Martin above all else given this quote, and this can be further evidenced by Dallas practically being forced to take a second-round pick back in that deal only because of complications on Martin's physical.

Harrison operated aggressively as ever at this trade deadline, not caring who or what he gave up en route to building his idealistic defensive juggernaut, but his vision hasn't worked out in the slightest for Dallas this season. While Dallas may have slightly needed more wing defense compared to point of attack defense at the time of the trade, they clearly need a player of Grimes' skillset as bad as ever now, and they didn't get a solid enough return considering Grimes is both five years younger and playing better than Martin ever has in his career.

Harrison's blunder continues to look worse and worse by the day, and regardless of how Dallas fares the rest of the season, the Mavericks will go into this offseason with the largest cloud of uncertainty that they've ever entered with during the summer, and Grimes would've eased that uncertainty substantially if he was playing the way he's been for the Sixers in a Mavericks uniform instead.