Here’s how the Mavericks can keep Christian Wood beyond this season

Now that the Mavericks have acquired a young starting center in Christian Wood, the next question is about how to keep him around. Here are the different ways the Mavericks can keep Christian Wood beyond this season.

Re-sign him in 2023

When his contract expires next summer Christian Wood will be an unrestricted free agent. The Mavericks will have FULL BIRD RIGHTS so they can offer all the way to the max if they desire. This is good because the Mavericks won’t have any cap space. Bird Rights allow that not to matter.

Contact Extension

Players are eligible to extend their contracts after the two-year anniversary of them signing the contract. He signed this three year deal November 24th, 2020. So it seems like you’d have to wait till November, but I think it will come much sooner. The league has been adjusting year anniversaries with the odd timing of the last two seasons (and off-seasons). So I believe the Nov 24th, 2020 two year anniversary will actually hit sometime in July or August at the latest. Whenever that date passes the Mavericks will be able to offer him an extension.

When a player is traded the team acquiring them has limitations as to what extension they can offer for the first 6 months AFTER the trade. The extend-and-trade rules limit how long the extension can be and how big the raises can be. The limit is three seasons INCLUDING the years still on the contract. We saw a max extension under the extend-and-trade rules with Jonas Valančiūnas and the Pelicans in the 2021 off-season. Valančiūnas got extended at the most the Pelicans could offer. The Pelicans took his 2021-22 contract and gave him the max 5% bump on that for his 2022-23 year and then gave the max 5% raise for the 2023-24 year. Let’s look at what it would look like for the Mavericks to offer Wood that same max extension. It works out to a max extension of 2 years $30,818,331.

After the Mavericks wait out the six months following the trade, they’ll be able to extend him up to five years in the future including the one year left on his contract. So they’d be able to give him 4 new years on his deal. This would give Christian Wood a 20% raise on his 2022-23 salary and allow for larger 8% raises on the subsequent 3 seasons. That works out to a max extension of 4 years $76,970,660.

This is what the max extension the Mavericks can offer when six months will have passed from when the trade was made official.

The Mavericks have several ways to retain Wood long term. Whether they extend him or sign him, they are in the drivers seat to keep him in the home jersey for years.

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