The Tim Hardaway Jr. era in Dallas is officially coming to an end.
The Mavericks traded Hardaway and three future second-round picks to the Detroit Pistons in exchange for Quentin Grimes, Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN reports.
Hardaway, 32, will earn $16.2 million next season in the final year of a four-year, $75 million contract. Grimes, 24, is due $4.3 million in the final season of his rookie contract.
Hardaway's five and a half year Mavericks' tenure can literally be compared to what it feels like to ride through the ups, downs, and turns on a roller coaster.
Hardaway averaged 14.4 points per game this season as the Mavs' sixth man, but his playing time diminished as the team advanced in the playoffs. Hardaway can get red-hot from three-point range, as he showed when he drained five straight threes in the fourth quarter of Game 4 of the NBA Finals. But he became unplayable when he went cold due to his deficiencies on the defensive end of the floor.
Outside of a 17-point performance in Game 4 of the Mavs' second-round series against the Oklahoma City Thunder this postseason, Hardaway never could catch fire and was eventually benched for good by Mavs coach Jason Kidd during the Western Conference Finals against the Minnesota Timberwolves.
By trading Hardaway, Dallas should have no issues accomplishing what general manager Nico Harrison described as priorities 1A and 1B this offseason, which were to re-sign forward Derrick Jones Jr.
Dallas can now offer Jones part of the $12.9 million nontaxpayer midlevel exception whereas they would have been limited to the $5.2 taxpayer midlevel exception had Hardaway still been on the roster.
Grimes, 24, averaged 7.0 points on 37.2 percent shooting in 51 games played last season between the New York Knicks and Pistons.