Following a 114-103 victory over the Milwaukee Bucks to top off an undefeated preseason, The Dallas Mavericks announced they’ve cut Tyrell Terry, Feron Hunt, and Carlik Jones.
Hunt and Jones both had exciting moments in the preseason — in particular, Jones’ 6-of-10 shooting night for 13 points in the opening preseason game against the Jazz. Anyone invested enough in Dallas Mavericks basketball to watch preseason games may be feeling a twinge of sadness with the news of their departure. Especially hometown Desoto native and SMU product Feron Hunt. Alas, such is life as an undrafted prospect. Hopefully, these two showed enough for another enterprising team to give them a shot to stick to a roster.
The slightly more eye-raising cut is that of Terry; the former 2020 31st pick who joined the Mavericks as perhaps the most ballyhooed 31st pick in history. He was a bit of a “NBA Draft Twitter” darling due to the his impressive shooting performances during his lone season at Standford. Unfortunately, Mavs fans didn’t get to see much of that exciting shot repertoire in his rookie season, as he was largely away from the team for much of the season dealing with personal issues.
The hope was he would enter this training camp and start to show some of that long-distance shooting flair that had some hoping he’d step right into the Seth Curry role as a microwave scorer. However, it was the same song, second verse, and Terry again had to be away from the team for the entirety of the preseason to deal with personal issues. A shame, and certainly the hope is that Terry can take care of himself and still one day find his way back to an NBA team, but he simply ran out of time in Dallas.
With the announcement of the cuts, head coach Jason Kidd mentioned that last spot came down to Terry and the recently-signed former Knick Frank Ntilikina. For a coach who puts an emphasis on defense, it seems Ntilikina’s defensive stature and simple availability was enough to tip the scales in his favor.
Terry is still owed a guaranteed salary of $1.5 million this season and $1.8 million the following season as part of his rookie contract.
