Former Arkansas center Daniel Gafford got a new deal in the NBA on Tuesday.
A report from Shams Charania said Gafford intends to sign a three-year contract extension with the Dallas Mavericks. Grant Afesth, a reporter for the Dallas Hoops Journal, said the contract is for a total of $54 million, and there's no option in the final year of the deal.
Gafford will be signed with the Mavericks through the 2028-29 season once the deal is finalized, which is expected to happen in July.
The El Dorado, Arkansas, native was nearing the end of a three-year, $40 million extension he signed with the Washington Wizards in 2021, where he was before he was traded to the Mavericks in 2024.
Gafford started his NBA career with the Chicago Bulls, which drafted him in the second round of the 2019 NBA Draft. He played for Chicago for two years before he was traded to the Wizards in March 2021 and helped the Wizards to a playoff appearance in the 2021 NBA Playoffs.
During that playoff appearance, he broke the all-time record for field goal percentage (minimum 15 shot attempts) with a highly-efficient 84.6%.
Not long after he arrived in Dallas after the trade in 2024, he set a record of 33 consecutive made field goals over the course of eight days. Those field goals were second all-time to Wilt Chamberlain.
Last season, Gafford averaged 12.3 points and 6.8 rebounds per game and had a 70.2% field goal percentage. He battled a knee injury in February, which caused him to miss six weeks, and appeared in 57 games over the course of the regular season.
Prior to his time in the NBA, Gafford spent two seasons at Arkansas from 2017 to 2019. The elite big man holds the second-best field goal percentage (63.5%) in school history, and made multiple highlight-reel plays, including this windmill dunk against Vanderbilt in 2018.
After the 2017-18 season ended, Gafford was named to the SEC All-Freshman Team by the league's coaches and was the first freshman in school history to record 400 points, 200 rebounds and 60 blocks in one season. He was named SEC Freshman of the Week three times and joined fellow former Hogs Bobby Portis and Patrick Beverley to be the third Razorback to earn the award multiple times in one season.
In his second season with the Hogs, Gafford was named First Team All-SEC and was also named to the SEC All-Defensive Team. He was the second Razorback to earn both of those awards in the same season.
Gafford is one of 11 former Razorbacks who are currently in the NBA and is one of 42 in program history.
