Accurately Assessing the Mavs Recent Personnel Changes

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For an interesting thought exercise, go back and find the original thread regarding the signing of DJJ.  Crickets.  There was very little reaction in the moment.  No one knew back then what we were getting.  When people put together their depth charts as we headed toward preseason, people had DJJ as the 3rd and sometimes 4th PF.  Not a wing and a mile from being a starter.

Point being, the only reason we can list Marshall as a second string 3/4 is because we saw how that role played out for a year.  But, at this point last year, almost no one had a vision for what ended up happening.  Some watched almost the entire regular season and still thought he couldn't defend the POA.  Are we confident that our prognostications about what Marshall can't do on this team are any better than our prognostications about DJJ a year ago?

I was the loudest cricket chirping for DJJ before we signed him.  I thought he would fit in well with Luka but I thought he would be our 7th or 8th man.  I never anticipated he would start for us and I thought Kidd was foolish for that decision  Kidd was right.  I was wrong.

I'm a Pelicans fan as well and very familiar with Naji Marshall.  He's a comparable overall defender to DJJ but not as quick or athletic.  He's bigger and stronger.  The fit defensively might not be as good as DJJ.  Offensively, he can do more with the ball than DJJ.  I'm not sure we want that on this roster though.  

I believe Nico would have preferred to retain DJJ rather than signing Naji Marshall.  However, DJJ misplayed his hand and Nico made a good decision to grab a good player on a reasonable contract rather than risk losing out on both DJJ and Naji.  

You're right though in that we've downgraded our defense by losing our POA defender.  That is the most apparent weakness on our current roster.  We'll see how that shakes out.  

Our roster is clearly better than last season though including Klay Thompson and Quentin Grimes.  I believe we have the 3rd-best roster in the NBA right now behind only Boston and OKC.