The Athletic: Inside the Mavericks front office, Mark Cuban’s shadow GM…

[Mavs2021]

So imagine a team where you have:

A supernova star on the LBJ, MJ, Bird level
A "unicorn" who's skills don't match his size
A streaky shooter who's not much on defense
A handful of so-so 3-D guys
A couple of bench bigs that are situational
A bunch of rookies nobody know what to do with

Further, imagine that you got the first three (because KP+THJ were a package) by mortgaging every asset you could get your hands on which resulted in only being able to get everything below those two.

So, now you have the challenge of increasing your success levels with not much in the way of resources. One path is to uncover hidden advantages through statistical analysis, which may not work but is worth trying. Problem is you eventually run into matchups where either the opposing talent pool is too deep or their strengths wedge right into the weaknesses you are trying to hide.

So modern math can help find advanatages, but eventually talent is going to win games.

Maybe DAL overachieved this year? Probably attributable to Luka's transformation into a basketball demi-god? But the team needs a talent infusion to take the next step and the statistical personnel decisions haven't been effective the last two seasons. So maybe it's time to get some experience back in the room.

It´s not nearly as dramatic as people make it out to be, cause most of the asset transfer will be behind us in two months.

We have already established some capspace + talent trades for Porzingis like

Bridges (Monk) + Carey Jr. + X
Turner + Lamb
Harris + Bamba + X
Hield + Bagley III

that can free up maximum capspace next summer.

We can S&T THJ to a contender for a small asset.

Richardson + WCS + Brunson expire next summer. DFS has only a $7.6M caphold. Kleber has a fully non-guaranteed final year and is a trade asset. Powell + Burke enter the last year of their contracts next summer.

We can easily come away with...

Doncic
Lamb
DFS
Markkanen
Turner

....as a starting five for next year and maintain max capspace for 2022. I hardly find that dramatic.

Of course we can also make decisions that mess everything up for the next three years, but we are not at that stage yet.

Let´s just not make excuses for the MBT already.