MAVS NEWS: Luka Wins Community Cares Award! | DLive's Mom Passes Away| Maxi OUT

[HoosierDaddyKidd]

Random notes ....

1 On Siakam, I am a yes with conditions, but not sure my main condition is doable. It's that it must be an extend-and-trade, so that I'm not trading for a short-term rental. The max on such a deal would be to add 2 more years, beginning at ~40M. However, Siakam's max as a FA will be about 42M, so I'm guessing an extension is a non-starter for Siakam unless he really likes the idea of playing with Luka. But that's where I start.

2 It's disappointing to see the dearth of talent on this roster after a summer of getting done what they wanted. G Will is still an 8th man, like he was in BOS - there's nothing in his game that really has the potential to somehow blossom. And sad to say, this meh-ness should not have been a surprise to Mav talent experts, as he's the same guy here playing at about the same level as he was there.

3 Was OMax worth being saddled with Holmes? Lots of crowing about that one. Yet hard to see why. We need talent, and the net result of that move seems to be we got an iffy rookie who has showed next to nothing PLUS a cap-choking player for 2 years. 

4 Adding DJJ and Exum were good moves -- but the cap mismanagement means we will have a hard time turning them into long-term Mavs. Ugh.

5 With all the trade ideas swirling, I am reminded that the Mavs issue is a talent issue. We are trying to imagine trades that are possible using junk, rather than talent. No talent? Oh, ok, strip the team of its picks. All of this is not new, and I'm discouraged that Cuban is still in charge of the strategy to work the cap and identify talent properly, because he has done poorly at those for so many years.
.... Cuban is now the GM (or POBO) -- and nothing else. And he doesn't have a side gig anymore to keep him out of using his "smartest guy in the room" thoughts. To my way of thinking, that's not good.

6 I would hope that the Adelsons would be a solution, allowing more spending, but the Mavs way of roster building under Cuban would tend to get in the way, in how they end up with bad contracts on meh-talent players and no cap permission to spend more. You can't trade your way out of that situation, because you lack talent, and you can't spend your way out of that situation, because the cap rules block you. Where deep pockets work is when you have a slew of underpaid highly-talented players who will need raises later. Lively is one, but they need 3-4 more.

This. In a nutshell. Bravo!