Luka Dealt to Lakers: Nico Harrison is a Basketball Terrorist

[mvossman]

All conversational roads lead back here, don't they? You're stating this as an objective fact, and I think many people agree, to the extent that they haven't even tried to imagine this not being a fact, even if only as a thought exercise. But, what if it's not true? 

Over the past week, we've eliminated the possibility that this is all some sort of tin foil hat conspiracy to move the Mavericks to Vegas or some other crap like that. 

With today's conversation, I think we've ended any/all talk that the new ownership is just "too cheap to pay Luka," unless you think they're HOPING Kyrie walks for nothing. I  was pretty surprised to learn how close AD's salary was likely to be to Luka's moving forward. So, it's not that they just don't want to pay ANYONE that much. Salary structure wise, they're pretty much right where they would've been, only with AD instead of Luka, and they had to (or were able to?) use Kleber's contract to get there (we're probably not talking enough about HIS inclusion in the deal, and how that remaining year might have had an impact on the return, btw). 

It really is just that they do not believe Luka, specifically, is WORTH that contract, and that giving it to them would cripple the team. That's the bottom line, and all there is to see here. Obviously, they can be way wrong about that, and it's natural for we, Luka's biggest fans, to assume they are. But, I just keep coming back to the idea that these are the people who see Luka the most, behind the scenes. They did not like what they saw. 

I think there's at least a small chance this might have improved their chances of winning in this new, shorter window. I'm at least trying to stay open to it.

This argument would have more pull if I thought we were dealing with competent people making these decisions.  We are talking about a shoe salesman and a casino owner (by marriage) who are calling the shots.