Mavs' Devin Harris wishes DeAndre Jordan handled offseason with more maturity

The Dallas Mavericks front office may have been blindsided by DeAndre Jordan's sudden change of heart in free agency, but Mavs point guard Devin Harris wasn't.

"Nothing really catches me by surprise," Harris said of Jordan's decision to back out of his verbal agreement with Dallas, according to Dwain Price of the Star-Telegram.

Still, unsurprised though he may have been, Harris felt Jordan could have handled the situation with a bit more grace. Which likely means keeping the Mavs apprised of his thought process, rather than freezing them out and refusing to answer calls or text messages from owner Mark Cuban.

"Everybody has a right to change their mind," Harris said. "I think if he could have done it in more of a mature way it would have been a lot better off, but what is done is done and we have to move forward and move on to the next step and try to look forward to getting better."

The impact of Jordan reneging and choosing instead to re-sign with the Los Angeles Clippers was essentially threefold. Not only did the Mavs not get the center they so coveted in Jordan, they also watched incumbent center Tyson Chandler slip out the back door and make for Phoenix, and then found that what remained of the big-man free-agent pool was little more than a puddle.

They ended up with Samuel Dalembert, Zaza Pachulia, and a few other scrap pieces plucked off the heap. They're facing an uphill climb and Harris knows it, though he's trying to remain optimistic.

"It’s going to be a little bit more challenging because we don’t have that rim protector that we once had in Tyson," he said. "But I think it’s going to be more of a collective effort and I think we'll be better for it."