JaVale McGee’s NBA career might put a stock-market graph to shame.
He was up. He was down. He went back up again. And now he appears to be paying dividends to everybody who bets on him.
The Mavericks signed McGee on Saturday to a multiyear contract, widely reported to be in the $7-million range per season.
It will be his second go-around with the Mavericks, having played for them in 2015-16.
You can easily make the case that McGee’s first run through Dallas was the catalyst for him breaking free from a bear-market time in the middle of his career. Numerically, he hasn’t changed that much since the 2016 season with the Mavericks.
But after leaving, he picked up two championship rings with Golden State in 2017 and 2018. He then won another with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2020.
He established himself as a reliable backup center for two high-quality teams and his team last season, the Phoenix Suns, made it to the second round before the Mavericks ushered them into the offseason.
Health has been the overriding reason why McGee has gotten his career back on track relatively late in his basketball life. He will turn 35 in January and in three seasons from 2013 to the end of his Mavericks’ first tenure, he played just 62 of a possible 246 games.
This after averaging 10.1 points, 6.8 rebounds and 2.2 blocks in the three seasons before that – and he missed just three games in two of those seasons.
So what kind of player is McGee now?
He’s always had an emotional style. He is a hype guy. This is a good addition to any locker room, although we’ve all seen instances when over-exuberance works to the detriment of a team.
As far as production, McGee lacks any outside game. He will be a polar opposite offensively from Christian Wood – likely the man he will be backing up, although there have been suggestions that starting both of them could be an option for coach Jason Kidd, something he said as recently as Friday that he’s open to.
Last season, Phoenix coach Monty Williams said he felt like he was trying to put a “diaper on a grizzly bear” when McGee launched a 3-pointer in a game.
Rather, McGee will concentrate on post-up opportunities, second-chance buckets and setting great screens on the pick-and-roll. Defensively, he will be his usual disruptive self around the rim.
That, by the way, is something in which he’s always taken pride.
“People aren’t shooting a high percentage at the rim when I’m in there,” he said while in Phoenix.” His role with the Suns was to back up Deandre Ayton, and he turned in an exemplary year doing so.
In short, he’s a different player than when he came to Dallas in 2015, if for no other reason than he’s proven he can stay healthy.
That’s something the Mavericks’ training staff headed up by Casey Smith can be proud of.
Plus there’s the championship experience. He was a rotation member for the Warriors and the Lakers in the their playoff runs those seasons. It was the same for him when he was a replacement for injured and COVID-19 players in the Tokyo Olympics. He’s got a gold medal because of it.
And his success is not lost on McGee.
“My resume is going to be so crazy,” he said. “It’s a crazy concept when you think about all the championships I’ve won and who I’ve won with . . . an Olympic gold medal with all those guys. It’s amazing.”
Twitter: @ESefko
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