Trade & FA 2025-26: Free Agency Starts 5pm CST/6pm EST

[Chicagojk]

To elaborate more. Several teams try, and fail, to assemble a roster with 3 players of Davis, Irving, and Flagg's caliber. If you're the GM, why would you trade Davis for pennies on the dollar before you ever see it on the floor. Why would you make your team worse when there's no incentive to do so... Having no draft pick next year. It all needs to make sense. Fear of Davis getting severely injured isn't an acceptable reason for a terrible trade imo.

It is a tricky situation though.  If I woke up after the draft and we had another real exiting young player to pair with Flagg this situation is completely different.  I would be fine keeping AD and Kyrie.   This team would be positioned as well as almost any team outside of OKC, SA and Houston moving forward.   

The issue is how do we get there.   If AD has ears he has certainly heard of his value.  I would expect inspired play from him.  If not, that is a glaring warning light.  Flagg is a lunatic and a winner.    The Mavs front court is good (even without Lively).   If they get average backcourt play this team will win more than they will lose imo.  

So how do we get to a place where we can secure another young building block and not wind up with the 15th pick in the draft.    It is easy to say just throw this season away, but much harder in reality when you are talking about alphas and guys with pride.   

I also don't want to even bring extension to the table either.