{"id":449263,"date":"2026-02-04T21:58:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T21:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/449263\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T21:58:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T21:58:07","slug":"mavericks-to-trade-anthony-davis-to-wizards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/449263\/","title":{"rendered":"Mavericks To Trade Anthony Davis To Wizards"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Mavericks are trading big man Anthony Davis<\/a> to the Wizards, according to ESPN\u2019s Shams Charania, who reports (via Twitter<\/a>) that Jaden Hardy<\/a>, D\u2019Angelo Russell<\/a>, and Dante Exum<\/a> will also head to Washington in the deal.<\/p>\n

\"\"In return, the Mavericks will receive Khris Middleton<\/a>, AJ Johnson<\/a>, Malaki Branham<\/a>, Marvin Bagley III<\/a>, two first-round picks, and three second-rounders, sources tell Charania.<\/p>\n

Those first-rounders will be a \u201cleast favorable\u201d 2026 pick that will almost certainly be the Thunder\u2019s, plus the Warriors\u2019 top-20 protected 2030 pick, per Charania. The second-rounders are Phoenix\u2019s 2026 pick, Chicago\u2019s 2027 pick, and Houston\u2019s 2029 selection.<\/p>\n

Davis had been on the trade block in Dallas for much of the season, but there was some doubt about whether a deal would materialize after he suffered a hand injury<\/a> expected to sideline him for least most of February, if not beyond that. Rumored suitors like Atlanta and Toronto appeared to back off to some extent, opening the door for a surprise team like the Wizards to make a deal.<\/p>\n

While Washington is an unlikely landing spot for a veteran star like Davis, the 13-36 Wizards are clearly pivoting toward being competitive next season, having acquired<\/a> four-time All-Star Trae Young<\/a> from Atlanta last month and now pairing him with a 10-time All-Star in Davis.<\/p>\n

According to Jake Fischer of The Stein Line<\/a>, the Wizards would ideally like to use second-year big man Alex Sarr<\/a> as a \u201csuper-sized\u201d and \u201cswitchable\u201d power forward and had been seeking another impact frontcourt player to use alongside him. Washington explored a possible deal for Kings center Domantas Sabonis<\/a> and had considered making a run at Jazz center Walker Kessler<\/a> in restricted free agency before pulling the trigger on a trade for Davis, Fischer says.<\/p>\n

As they did with Young, the Wizards are buying low on Davis amid an injury-plagued season in which he has dealt with several separate health issues and has been limited to 20 appearances. Although the draft-pick haul they\u2019re giving up for AD looks substantial at first glance, the 2026 first-rounder will likely end up at No. 30, while the 2030 selection will turn into a \u201930 second-rounder if it lands in the top 20.<\/p>\n

Like Young, who has yet to make his Wizards debut as he rests a knee injury, Davis appears unlikely to play much \u2013 if at all \u2013 during the second half of this season. Washington will owe its 2026 first-round pick to New York if it lands outside the top eight, so the club will likely do all it can to avoid that scenario. Resting its veteran stars should help that cause.<\/p>\n

Despite the modest value of the first-round picks changing hands, the Wizards\u2019 package likely appealed to Dallas due to the financial flexibility it will afford the team going forward. Besides moving off Davis\u2019 maximum-salary contract, which will pay him $58.5MM in 2026\/27, with a $62.8MM player option for \u201927\/28, the Mavs will remove Hardy\u2019s $6MM guaranteed salary and Russell\u2019s $6MM player option for \u201926\/27 from their books.<\/p>\n

Besides giving the Mavericks more cap flexibility going forward, the deal will also generate considerable short-term savings, with the Wizards taking advantage of their significant breathing room below the luxury tax line to take on more than $24MM in 2025\/26 salary. Dallas had been operating right up against the second tax apron but will move all the way out of apron and tax territory with this move, resulting in $57MM in savings, tweets<\/a> cap expert Yossi Gozlan.<\/p>\n

Most importantly, the trade lines up the Mavs to begin building around star rookie Cooper Flagg<\/a>. Dallas will have a pair of first-round picks in a strong 2026 draft, including their own selection which is on track to be a lottery pick. And the team has a much cleaner cap sheet to work with moving forward, even with long-term deals for role players like P.J. Washington<\/a> and Daniel Gafford<\/a> still on the books.<\/p>\n

Still, the return for Davis stands in stark contrast to what they gave up to get him just one year ago. Under former head of basketball operations Nico Harrison, the 32-year-old was the centerpiece of the package the Mavs received for franchise player Luka Doncic<\/a>. Since making that deal, the franchise has parted ways with Harrison and now done the same with Davis, conceding that it made a major mistake at the 2025 deadline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Mavericks are trading big man Anthony Davis to the Wizards, according to ESPN\u2019s Shams Charania, who reports…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[210741,60523,5554,81779,100477,109037,59054,74190,210742,64234,99,21146],"class_list":["post-449263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-aj-johnson","tag-alex-sarr","tag-anthony-davis","tag-dangelo-russell","tag-dante-exum","tag-domantas-sabonis","tag-jaden-hardy","tag-khris-middleton","tag-malaki-branham","tag-marvin-bagley-iii","tag-sports","tag-walker-kessler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}