FIBA Qualifying Tournament: USA loses to Germany|Gold medal between Germany+Serbia

[Scott41theMavs]

Boy, I hate slotting players that way. Can you even look at an NBA roster and say with certainty who is the 5th-best player? It’s just so dependent on matchups and roles, the way the rest of the roster fits together, etc. 

If your only criteria is scoring, then sure, you can say who’s the 3rd- or 5th-best player. But don’t you care more about how well players fill their roles?

It’s a little like saying that, if you replace a 5ppg scorer with a 15ppg scorer, the team should score 10 more points per game!

On a certain level, I get you. But in the end, it's about 1) are the guys we have good enough to win a championship? and 2) is the amount of minutes and trust that each player receives merited within the team? 

The Mavs have done a simply atrocious job of putting a "good-enough" team around their generational superstar the past five years. Kyrie is a godsend in that he elevates the talent level around Luka all by himself. But if none of (or, more generously, unless at least three of) the other 13 guys are truly good enough to start for a playoff team, the Mavs still won't win this year. To me, perhaps GW, perhaps OMax, maybe Green, and maybe (if he really wows us) Exum, and maybe (if he grows by leaps and bounds in a single season) Lively could fulfill some of those roles. Maybe even Holmes, as skeptical as some of us are. But all of those cases are big question marks. We have seen enough over the years to know that THJ and Powell are absolutely not those guys (THJ bench on a championship contending team, and Powell glued to the bench on a contending team), and Maxi once was but is now on the decline from being such. Hardy at his ceiling is by nature a sixth man. I disagree with Omahen's overly vehement Green skepticism - trading him under any circumstances this year unless an even better defensive two-way wing is coming back in the deal or acquired prior to the playoffs is the deliberate choice to tank the season, since we have no other starter-minutes-worthy on-ball defenders until OMax is ready - but he makes an indubitably true point about the talent level around Luka and Kyrie.