As the Dallas Mavericks examine paths to use "June Room'' in a way that pretty much no other NBA team can, along comes a report from ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski that the Denver Nuggets are trying to dump Kenneth Faried and that, according to Woj, "They're a candidate to use that 14th pick to get off of that salary."

Look at the puzzle pieces.

*The Nuggets have the 14th pick in this NBA Draft.

*The Mavs have the fifth-overall pick and we know they'd like to add another.

*Denver has cap concerns and lux-tax concerns (especially with its coming max-deal plan for Nikola Jokic), and getting out from under Faried's $13.7 mil salary would provide relief.

*Dallas' "June Room'' just happens to be about $13.9 million - a cozy fit.

Faried-to-Dallas would be a pre-Draft deal, of course. What the Mavs would give up here is only pre-Draft cap room; nothing else would have to be conveyed (except for a "fake pick.'' The Mavs, because of their June Room, are the only team that can do a deal like this in a manner like this.) And this sort of a deal wouldn't have to eat into every possible summer acquisition plan -- in fact, it could help facilitate some summer acquisition plans.

The first issue to be addressed if/when this opportunity arises for Dallas: Does the 6-8, 228-pound Faried (last year a five points/five rebounds guy, shrinking down to half his traditional output) represent "ballast or benefit''? His contract is expiring, and that's helpful. But I'd envision Faried's ideal stay in Dallas to be even more brief than that; the Mavs could flip him for another asset, or package him as part of a "Nuclear Winter'' trade. A blockbuster one? Some preliminary number-crunching there makes it tight, especially if the ideal is at a level of the sort that our David Lord has long pondered -- that is, for somebody like Bradley Beal of the Wizards. Depending on when you do these sort of deals (with June Room or as part of a post-July 1 deal) can change a great deal. Using Washington as a model, the Wiz can get $20 mil of pre-Draft room by dealing Beal ... while in July, depending on what Dallas does, it might face losing all the Mavs' cap-hold free agents (like Seth Curry and Doug McDermott).

"Faried and 14'' might help some of these concepts along, and it might block others. But inarguably, "Faried and 14'' still count as assets, assets that can essentially be acquired in exchange for air.

Short of that ultimate goal, then, the "Faried and 14'' deal is very, very doable, and would really lead to the next Mavs-related question: When team sources tell DBcom that they are in search of the "bigger and better'' than so many of the rumored names being attached to them, does "Faried and 14'' fit that profile? Or at least, a first step toward a goal? The puzzle pieces make this a concept obviously worth of examination inside Mavs HQ.