Should the Mavs Turn Dwight Powell Into a Specialist?

Just 12 hours before Kevin Durant would turn the NBA world upside down — announcing in his infamous Players’ Tribune Letter that he would be leaving the Oklahoma City Thunder to join forces with the Golden State Warriors, Shams Charania tweet this:

Dallas RFA Dwight Powell has agreed to a four-year, $37-plus million with the Mavericks, league sources tell The Vertical.

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) July 4, 2016

Would you look at that? The Mavericks were proactive last offseason. Donnie Nelson and his team were way out in front of their negotiations with their own restricted free agent.[note]Sorry Nerlens![/note] But maybe the Mavericks learned something from last offseason — $37 million dollars to a player that was coming off a season where he averaged 5.8 points, 4.0 rebounds, and 0.3 blocks.

That seems like a little overpay, right?

To top everything off with Powell’s contract negotiations last summer, the Mavericks even decided to throw in the “always coveted” player option for Powell’s fourth year, which amounts to $10.2 million for the 2019–2020 season. With the salary cap leaping from $70 million to $94 million, the Mavs’ front-office may have been bidding against themselves, ultimately miscalculating Powell’s true worth. Last season’s negotiation process looks to have become a cautionary event as the front office seems to be taking the proper steps to ensure that a ‘Dwight Powell’ type of deal does not happen with Nerlens.

Luckily for the team, not all is lost with Dwight. He’s still relatively young at just 26 and the Mavs are betting on his development.

So let’s take a look at what he needs to do as a player in order to validate the $28.9 million left on his contract.

The one big issue with Dwight is that he lacks a true position. He is a tweener big man. Not big enough to efficiently guard the overpowering centers like DeAndre Jordan and Andre Drummond and if you slide Powell to the four, his jumper has not been consistent enough to be respected out on the perimeter.

Non-shooting bigs simply don’t have the same value as they once did, unless they are a threat defensively. [note] Like Nerlens Noel[/note] In order to find a steady role for the Mavs, Dwight needs to develop a consistent specific skill set to try to find a niche in this league.

Would it be smart for the Mavs to try and convert Dwight Powell to a big man that is a 3-point specialist? It may be a risk the team may have to take.

In his first full season with the Mavs, Powell shot a total of 16 three pointers. The Mavericks viewed him strictly as a rim-running pick-and-roll dive man. [note] Think Brandan Wright [/note] It’s worth noting that during Dwight Powell’s first full season with the team he made $845K. After inking what now looks like a massive contract last summer, the Mavericks made the investment hoping that Powell would transform his game and become a playable big man.

Last season, Powell ramped up his 3-point attempts from 16 to 74. Unfortunately for the Mavs sake, Powell only canned 21 of the 74 attempts which comes out to a 28 percent clip. His mechanics are not flawed by any means, although many of attempts looked rushed. If the Mavericks want to make him more of a specialist, they have to do a better job of getting him in better spots to succeed out on the floor.

What’s thought to be the easiest three point shot, the corner three, Powell struggled mightily only hitting 2 of 16 attempts from either corner for the season. Powell and the Mavs need to utilize that shot more this year, to see if he can be a contributor from that spot on the floor.

The NBA has made it clear that players need a variety of qualities out on the court to thrive in today’s game. Dwight has the physical gifts to make things work in Dallas. The question is do the Mavs still believe in Powell’s development? They sure have invested the dollars into the 26-year-old. Becoming a specialist could be the key to unlocking his true value.