Mavs My Have Broken Salary Cap

June 9, 1999 / 10:27 PM EDT / CBS/AP

Did the Dallas Mavericks exceed the NBA salary cap by showing Gary Trent the royal treatment?

That's what the NBA is investigating, according to league spokesman Chris Brienza.

The NBA told The Associated Press on Tuesday it is investigating whether Dallas should be held liable for salary-cap violations because Don Nelson, coach and general manager of the Mavericks, arranged for Trent, his fiance, their infant son, Trent's parents and his fiancee's mother to spend a week at his Maui, Hawaii vacation home last month.

The team could be be fined if found guilty of the offense.

Nelson said he hoped the vacation would serve as a goodwill gesture to the 6-foot-8, 250-pound forward whom the Mavericks are aggressively trying to re-sign.

Trent averaged 16 points and 7.8 rebounds per game this season and finished third in the balloting for the league's Most Improved Player award. His salary this season was $1 million.

Nelson has not been bashful in efforts to persuade Trent to remain in Dallas. But the Mavericks can't exceed the salary cap to re-sign him and so are limited to paying Trent no more than $5 million over the next two years. A team can exceed the salary cap in resigning a player only if he has been on the roster three or more seasons.

"I think everything, all the little things we do, helps the big picture," Nelson told The Dallas Morning News in Tuesday's editions. "Like I said before, we just want to rub his belly a little bit and show him a good time. But we have to be careful how we approach things."

They didn't say when a decision would be handed down.