Stein: "Don't Worry About Mavs Moves"

[ItsGoTime]

None of this changes what YOU said: that their assets aren’t good enough to afford them the players they really need. 

When faced with that situation, you get younger. Seems like that’s part of the Mavs’ thinking here. I’m fine with it, because they’ve been a race car speeding towards a red light ever since the Porzingis experiment failed. You just can’t miss on those blockbuster, multi-pick moves, imo, especially not if you’re going to follow that up by letting your 2nd best player, a star, walk for nothing. At some point, the bill comes due. 

Instead of running out the ground ball out, why not switch gears and start building towards the next Luka decision point. I think they might have a chance of pulling themselves to a good place by then, but I have no faith whatsoever that trading that UNPROTECTED ‘27 now will net something that will make them a contender. None.  They can’t even afford Jarred freaking Allen, ffs.

It’s over. This is a tactical retreat, imo, but a fairly well executed one, so far. Should they have made the Kyrie trade? No, I think it was dummmmmbbbb and said so at the time. You could make the argument that they are chasing the sunk cost a little too much even now by signing him, imho. But, I’m willing to roll with it because the contract isn’t terrible.  

You seem to be hung up on the logic being not trading ‘27 now because they’re itching to make another multi-pick swing later, and maybe that will be the play, but MAYBE NOT! Look how well they’ve been drafting, lately? Who’s to say they won’t continue to USE the picks, at least for a while, until they ARE one player away from contention and DO have the assets (including young players) to snag him? Hell, just look what they were able to do with ONE lowish lottery pick a few weeks ago! Why not try to get more swings at moves like THAT?

I was right there with you on the Kyrie trade, BUT, THEY did it AND they’re sticking to it. THAT decision alone goes against all that you are saying. Using the 27 pick now does not interfere with any of your stated plans at this moment. We can still draft and develop players up until then in the same way up until 27. At that point if we’ve done a good job, teams will be lining up to give us picks for that work and losing the 27 will be an afterthought. 

In the meantime, we’ve been giving Luka AND Kyrie the best team we can to get them the highest seed and a punchers chance they need in the playoffs. Taking for example the newest CHA trade. THJ, Bullock, Holmes, McGee and 27 for Hayward and PJ. That gives us a rotation of:

Luka/Kyrie/Hayward/PJ/Powell
Seth/Hardy/Green/Maxi/Lively

That is a team full of everything we need to succeed (defense, shooting, pnr, ball handling, driving and distribution). Especially in a contract year for Hayward. Heck, I can see a world where Green beats out Hayward and the bench is bolstered with Hayward. We also could still have the full MLE to give another contract out or the Dan deal of splitting it with Curry and Thybulle (although I’m not sure why POR doesn’t match). 

After next season we would have roughly $130Mish in committed salary depending on what is done to fill roster spots after the trade with 2 available picks. All while freshly coming off another exciting WCF run (and finally closing the chapter on the KP trade). OMax has now proven to need Maxi’s minutes and we use him to upgrade for the following year.

Edit: “their assets aren’t good enough to afford them the players they really need.”
This is exactly why we’re having this conversation about using the 27 pick.