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[StrandedOnBeauboisHill]

from John Hollinger

travel Geekery: Dallas and Portland
I stopped in Portland this past weekend to catch back-to-back meetings between Dallas and Portland, and the less we say about the games, the better. It was a good showcase of life in the middle of the Western Conference pack, with Dallas betraying its mid-road-trip wear and tear just as the Blazers were coming back to full strength.
The Blazers ended up smashing Dallas twice, but the bigger takeaways came in talking to people around these teams and thinking about their futures. Neither is good enough to contend for anything important right now despite the individual brilliance Luka Dončić and Damian Lillard (averaging a cool 38 points per game over his last five games), but both clubs could be stealth trade deadline entrants.


Dallas played without Christian Wood in the first game and Dončić in the second, and it underscored how wanting the rest of the roster is. Spencer Dinwiddie has been the Mavs’ only other reliably productive player; Dallas, amazingly, has used five different players at least 250 minutes this season who have produced a single-digit PER (and, no, JaVale McGee isn’t one of them).

Standing $15 million into the tax, locked in on some ugly contracts (including the recent McGee own goal) and already owing a 2023 first to the Knicks, it’s not totally clear how the Mavs can fix this in the short term. Wood is a free agent after the season whose price tag is going up, which means the tax is likely in play for 2023-24 as well. Can Dallas use a 2025 first to get out of this mess? Is Josh Green enough of a carrot to swing a deal? Can I interest you in Dāvis Bertāns? Expect the Mavs to be active, but it’s going to be hard to do anything that moves the needle prior to the offseason, when Dallas’ 2024 first-rounder is in play.

One thing that injuries to a team can really highlight is how much national pundits are really paying attention to details at a team level (it's very difficult so it's not really their fault).  Hollinger watching a game with 5 of our 8 rotation players out and trying to make anything of "the rest of the roster" is kind of funny to me.

Russilo did this the other day in his podcast.  He admittedly doesn't watch a lot of Mavs because "Luka is so good it's boring" and then when listing off injuries "that should be noted" he kind of laughed at the idea "the also keep listing Josh Green because I guess he's a huge part of the rotation now".  Shit like that drives me crazy, Josh Green was arguably our 2nd most consistent contributor before he got hurt and we get some sarcastic hand waiving from a guy who prides himself on reporting player development?

It's just weird to me because I like a respect Russilo because he clearly watches a TON of games but it's always clear to me who isn't watching YOUR games when they say stuff like that.