02-14-2024, 06:23 PM
(02-14-2024, 01:32 PM)F Gump Wrote: 1 That's one way of thinking, but it's exactly backwards if you are trying to build around Luka. With Luka you want picks NOW to improve the team, not later, so the ones you have to offer are those later down the road. See Lively, Derek. Your approach is working under the assumption you will suck and Luka will leave, rather than working to improve. Other teams want to roll the dice on later picks, but if you want to improve now, that is how you play it too -- you offer those later picks they value so highly, use the soonest to improve the roster, and then let them squirm when you are even better later.
2 Not necessarily. Wemby will perhaps make them better. Then again, who knows (it's not like they are winning big so far). And if the Mavs are a good team later (Luka in his prime), the Mavs can have the better record, making the swap worthless. All swaps are like that - and this Mavs team is young, not old.
3 The Mavs can't decline Bullock's PLAYER option for him. They decided he was done (and the NBA seems to agree that he's washed) so wanted him replaced. And he wasn't going to decline it.
I am OK with using future draft picks to acquire talent now around Luka. I am concerned though when I think we overpay in draft capital for certain players.
I thought the Kyrie trade was amazing at the time and I loved the discount. I really liked the Gafford trade as I think he's a really good player on a good contract and a perfect fit on this roster. Those were winning moves. I thought the Grant Williams trade was absurd though because of the inclusion of the 2030 pick swap. I also think the PJ Washington trade was dumb. I like PJ Washington's potential. I just don't believe he has been that much better than Grant Williams this year that he was worth our almost completely unprotected 2027 1st. I think we should have made it top-10 protected. Then it would have been a good deal.
We seem to target certain players and decide that we must have them regardless of the cost. Better organizations acquire good players when they feel they can obtain them at good value. We target the player, announce our intention then pay whatever price is demanded.
We've made some really good moves over the past year but also a few dumb ones.
I'm not against trading for talent and I'm not against the players we've acquired. I simply think we've been careless with draft picks historically and I still see a lot that going on this year. In this case, we paid too much in assets for Grant Williams and then PJ Washington.
Also, I'm pretty sure that Bullock's contract was only partially guaranteed. I believe we could have just waived him and saved significant money. Instead, we decided to keep him and had to pay something to dump his contract on the Spurs.