Grade the Trade: Mavericks finally get their guard in mock 3-team Klay Thompson deal

While the NBA offseason is starting to calm down, it still feels like the Dallas Mavericks have another move up their sleeve before the end of the summer, especially given the recent rumors regarding the Miami Heat's interest in Klay Thompson. However, Miami doesn't have many assets the Mavericks would likely want at this point, so here we grade a three-team mock deal where Dallas lands Malik Monk and Thompson still lands in Miami.

This deal checks out financially for all three teams, and every team gets a need met here, especially the Mavericks. The Sacramento Kings get a second-round pick from both the Mavericks and the Heat, and end up taking a flyer on young forward Nikola Jovic, and the Heat get their guy and increased perimeter shooting with Thompson. Of course, Dallas lands Monk, an explosive 28-year-old guard who is a great secondary playmaker and can create at all three levels.

Dallas would need to say yes to this Thompson deal immediately

Many Mavericks fans online have been lauding for Dallas to trade Thompson for Jovic in a one-for-one swap, but regardless of how much Dallas' front office wants to acquire talent and may not care about positional overlap in doing so, a team can only have so many bigs/wings on one roster.

With Santi Aldama already being a supercharged version of what Jovic is, it's in Dallas' best interest to do a three-team deal like this where they get a dynamic guard like Monk in return instead. The Mavericks desperately need relief for Kyrie Irving, as Marcus Sasser and Sergio De Larrea are the only other backup point guards on the team, so there's no doubt Monk would play a critical role and likely start some games as well.

The Mavericks are getting the best player in this deal by a decent margin, yet all they are relinquishing draft capital-wise is a second-round pick. Perhaps the Kings may want a first as well as Jovic to move on from Monk, but with Monk coming off a bit of a down season due to being on an abysmal Kings team, Sacramento definitely doesn't have as much leverage compared to if they tried to deal Monk a season ago.

Mavericks won't find a better Thompson trade than this

If Monk were to play anywhere similar to how he did in his 2024-25 campaign, Dallas would be getting one of the best secondary creators in the league in the middle of his prime. Despite being around 6-foot-2 or 6-foot-3, Monk is an elite athlete, which helps him compensate for his lack of size defensively.

Sure, he may not be the solution to Dallas' woes at the point of attack on defense, but he just shot 39.5 percent from outside on 5.1 attempts per game last season, and is a pure bucket-getter who knows how to wheel-and-deal an NBA offense. All that being said, Dallas adds another shooter in this deal and gets about as good a backup point guard as they could find on the trade market for Irving.

Of course, losing Thompson takes away from Dallas' shooting, but it almost seems like a foregone conclusion that Dallas will move on from Thompson at some point before next season's trade deadline, and they are extracting premium value for him here instead of conceding to a buyout for the 36-year-old marksman. All in all, it's going to be hard to find a better deal for Thompson than this mock three-team deal, so Dallas gets an A+ if they were to do this.

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