For whatever it’s worth, T-Mac doesn’t see Howard and the Nets.
“I can’t see him coming here,” McGrady told Yahoo! Sports late Tuesday inside the visiting locker room at the Prudential Center. “If it’s just Dwight and D-Will, he’s better off just staying in Orlando. You want to go to a team that’s championship caliber, and just him and D-Will won’t get it done. There’s got to be other pieces around to make it look sweet.”
After watching the Nets offer no resistance to the Hawks in a 106-70 dismantling Tuesday night, T-Mac’s vision of Howard’s future had been further validated in his own mind.
“D-Will is from Dallas,” McGrady said. “You’ve got Dirk Nowitzki there. They’re going to have [cap space] there. That looks sweet. Dirk. D-Will. And then you get Dwight Howard. That’s it, right there.”
The Mavericks will have space for one star, but after possible contract buyouts and an amnesty waiver, it would still take a team to accept the final two years left on Shawn Marion’s contract to get the Mavericks near $30 million in room next summer to sign Williams and Howard. “And that would be really hard because they don’t have a first-round pick [to send with Marion] until 2014,” one league executive said.
Needless to say, that'd be a major coup if the Mavericks could get Howard and Williams to team with Dirk for a year or two, then carry on together without him after he hangs it up. A few things will need to fall into place for them to actually get both but if they could at least get Howard, it'll surely be worth passing up the best possible opportunity to repeat as champions this season.
