07-01-2021, 03:02 PM
(07-01-2021, 02:21 PM)mavsluvr Wrote: I was reading some stuff on this the last few days. According to the report, teams historically get stars by drafting and developing them or by trading for them. Transfers in free agency make splashes, but are the least common way that stars go from one team to another.
As you note, Cuban decided long ago that he wanted to rely on the free agency route. It would be like him to want to do something counterintuitive. And by all appearances, he is digging in his heels on that approach, hiring Nico, who has some relationships with stars, and Kidd, whom he views as a "relationship guy."
There might be a reason why other teams don't rely on free agency to get stars. Or, it might be that Mark is applying his philosophy that it doesn't matter how many guys he misses out on, as long as hits on someone at some point. That might have been at least logical in years where the team had little talent anyway, but now with Luka, there could be a big cost to just missing out a few more years.
It might be hard to shift to a trade-based philosophy right away, since they don't have the assets to appeal to a team that needs to unload a star and rebuild. He needs to build up a clutch of draft picks and promising young players for that, but it's difficult to switch to that midstream, when they're trying to contend now.
Long story short, I agree that the strategy of depending heavily on free agency to acquire a star is dubious. It has failed for ten years. But, I think they're going all in on it, at least for now.
Trading used to be their greatest strength. They had a cupboard full of assets gathered by Nellie Sr., and went to town with Mark's willingness to overspend. Since our talent evaluation has stunk for more than 15 years (aside from "Luka good" and lucking into Brunson good too by virtue of Carlisle's friendship with Rick Brunson, let's be honest), we no longer have the assets to trade.
They need to fix that, and fix the "farm program," because in this day and age, a big part of recruiting is guys who request trades - and then you can go after them through their agents (i.e., tampering, which 2019 taught us is 100% legal as long as you aren't completely stupid about it). But you have to have assets to make those trades.