Rudy Fernandez doing his best Jay Gatsby However, the Mavericks are far from empty handed.
The Mavericks actually drafted The University of Texas forward Jordan Hamilton. Just before, talks arose that they traded the pick to the Portland Trailblazers for guard/forward Rudy Fernandez. The pick, apparently, was then shipped to Denver in a Ray Felton-Andre Miller deal.
At the moment, all of this is rather officially unofficial.
The Mavs traded their No. 57 pick to Portland for the rights to Finnish point guard Petteri Kopenen, who was drafted in 2007 and has been in Italy ever since. He'll never, ever amount to anything because he's Finnish and should have played hockey.
As for the Fernandez move, I really like it. The Mavericks I think draft poorly because they don't know how to develop players, they've never had a coach that would develop them and with Dirk Nowitzki in place, they had little time for either. This thing, for the last decade, was built for a championship. They will still be in this mode until Nowitzki retires and probably for the decade after, whether they're any good or not.
Why not try to get young (Fernandez is 26 ... Corey Brewer is 25), yet add veteran rotation help along the way. It makes sense.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not in love with Fernandez. Far from it. He doesn't play defense and he's a shooting guard that can't shoot. What's to like?
With the move, this probably spells the end to DeShawn Stevenson's time with the Mavericks. He is a free agent making $4.1 million last year. Fernandez is due $2.1 million.
It also probably means good things for Brewer. Stevenson was an erratic shooter. When he was on, he was on. When he wasn't, he wasn't. Still, he was tough, played some defense and was a bit of an enforcer. Fernandez is not this.
Neither he or Brewer will fill the shooting (shooting ... not scoring) void left by Stevenson, but Brewer should be able to pick up the slack defensively and Fernandez can fill it up in any game. He just doesn't.
As we pass judgement on the Mavericks, we are handicapped. For one, we are evaluating a the greatest basketball team in the world. It's a team that would draft Jason Kidd, Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Terry and Tyson Chandler if they could and roll into battle.
Two, we must evaluate based on expectations and history. Is taking Fernandez the most ideal situation? Certainly not. I would love to see what Hamilton, Tyler Honeycutt, Shelvin Mack, Jimmy Butler or Kyle Singler would do as a Dallas Maverick, but that will not happen. The Mavericks roll one way on draft day and that will not change outside of them landing in the lottery. If that should happen, we'd have bigger problems.
