Dwight Howard? Chandler Parsons? Reunited in, presumably, Dallas?
Don’t rule it out.
Shoot, knowing what happened last time Parsons recruited Howard, as a member of the Houston Rockets, perhaps we should expect it.
During a sit-down with ESPN.com’s Tim MacMahon, Parsons made it clear he still values Howard as a player and friend:
Yeah. We have ongoing talks and text messages still to this day. He’s one of my good friends. It’s cool that we could have the opportunity to go into free agency this summer together.
I’ve expressed how I think he can be one of the dominant players in this league. I think he still has a lot left in the tank. He gets criticized a lot for whatever reason, but I still think he can be one of the best big men in the league and a game-changer. He’s not that old [Howard is 30]. He still has a lot left in the tank.
It’ll be interesting to see where his head is going into free agency. Obviously, right now is not the time to be talking about that with five games left and both of our teams in position to try to make a run here, make the playoffs and then hopefully advance. When the time comes this summer, we’ll definitely be spending some time together and talking.
Assuming Parsons’ return to the Mavericks becomes the formality everyone expects it to be this summer, Howard looms as a potential, if inevitable, free-agent target. Dallas knows how to maximize pick-and-roll bigs, and Howard would give the team a rim protector it hasn’t employed since the 2010-11 version of Tyson Chandler.
Of course, it could take two near-max deals to house both Howard and Parsons. The Mavericks will have ample wiggle room over the offseason, in part because of the salary-cap boom, but also because Dirk Nowitzki is making pennies on the dollar, and should be able to carve out enough space for both. But the idea of tying max or close-to-max money in Parsons and Howard, when you’re already knee-deep in a max-like deal with Wesley Matthews, is a tough one to justify.
The resulting team would be competitive, just not championship level. The Mavs would need to bank on finding cheap, bargain-bin talent elsewhere to round out a roster on the fringes of Western Conference relevance.
