Sometimes it is okay to love the current version of someone.
The Dallas Mavericks recently signed Jaden Hardy to a three-year, $18 million extension. This comes on the heels of the 2023-24 season where he averaged 7.3 points on 40.7 percent shooting in 73 games.
As a young prospect, Hardy has been intriguing. He has shown flashes of being a real bench scorer (everyone remembers Utah in February of 2023) and has elicited reactions that dared to say he could turn into a Jordan Clarkson-type player. Of course, Hardy has not quite lived up to that yet, as his career assist-to-turnover ratio (1.4/0.9) and less-than-stellar field goal percentage (42 percent) have prevented him from blossoming.
Now with a fresh new deal, Dallas gets to keep him for at least three more seasons and hope he can develop. Not only that, but the number he got ($6 million a year) confirms what is obvious to the naked eye: Hardy is who he is, and the Mavericks are okay with that.
Young, talented players on bad teams sometimes experience a phenomenon where their expectations are elevated because the team’s floor is lower. When the roster catches up to other championship-caliber teams, fans have a hard time dissociating the previous expectations from the role that player then enters.
This has played out with Jaden Hardy, and because of that I have coined it the “Jaden Hardy fallacy”. The 2022-23 Mavericks were a mess. Hardy was exciting for many reasons, not the least of which was former Mavericks’ forward Christian Wood saying “Jaden Hardy is a steal”. He had first-round talent written on a second-round card and it was only natural that fans wanted him to be more than he was. The yearning for him to be special was mainly out of necessity, and now that the Mavericks have plenty of talent, it’s time to join Nico Harrison and let go of the lofty expectations.
We are two full seasons and one game into his career and Hardy has consistently shown us the player he is. This was on full display Thursday when he scored 11 points and dished out two assists in 20 minutes off the bench. He is a guy who can bring energy nightly, make a couple of threes, put the ball on the deck, and create when he has to. 10-to-20 minutes a night is all he needs to be effective; any more than that and he becomes liable to shoot or fumble the Mavericks out of games.
He doesn’t have to be Jordan Clarkson, he doesn’t have to be a bench general like Tre Jones, and he certainly doesn’t have to be a guy who makes the Mavericks question if they should trade Kyrie Irving. He can just be Jaden Hardy because that’s who the Mavericks need him to be. If he ends up being anything more, then Dallas will have him on the best contract in the league.