The Dallas Mavericks may have just signed point guard Jaden Hardy to a three-year, $18 million contract extension, but that doesn’t mean that he is safe and secure with the team, considering especially that D’Angelo Russell is now on the Mavericks as well after coming over from free agency.
And in Bleacher Report writer Zach Buckley’s article of “NBA Players Under 25 Who Already Need a Trade,” the Mavs’ 23-year-old point guard is on there, with Buckley calling the team’s overall handling of Hardy a “back-burner item” for the team, and insisting that other teams would do more with the young star than Jason Kidd and the Mavericks are currently doing.
“He hasn’t done enough in three seasons to drive up his trade value, but it still seems like other, more forward-thinking franchises would covet him more than his current club,” Buckley wrote.
Signing with the NBA G League Ignite as a consensus five-star recruit right out of high school, Hardy was drafted 37th overall in the 2022 NBA Draft by the Sacramento Kings before being traded to Dallas the night of the draft.
Hardy would start his first career game in March 2023, one month after recording a career-high 29 points in a game against the Utah Jazz and was a part of the Western Conference champion Mavericks that lost to the Boston Celtics in five games in the 2024 NBA Finals, averaging 4.2 points throughout the playoff run.
In 178 career games up to this point, Hardy has started 15 games, averaging 8.1 points, a .381 three-point field goal percentage, and a .425 field goal percentage.
