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

[mvossman]

"Atl receives: AD/Gaff/Naji + future FRP
Dal receives KP/Kennard/Risacher/OO + 2026 NOP FRP"

Count me out on that. IMO wayyyyyyyyy too much talent outgoing from DAL - it feels like the Mavs are bribing a team to take their best talent AD (which is bad roster-building in and of itself) by sending out even more talent, and then they add in a pick (!) (a major no-no to trade away picks when Mavs are rebuilding). 

The goal is to GET talent, not give it all away. 

That would be a GREAT trade for ATL, of course - they only have to give up a center who isn't really working for them, Risacher (a busted big-salary recent draft pick), and the NO pick (which has no guarantees) for a proven star and two proven starter-level players. But very sucky for Mavs talent level and their future. 

Beyond all that, it leaves ATL over the tax line (a deal killer) with an empty roster slot to fill (pushing them even farther over the tax line), and it makes Mavs waive players to do the deal (the deal needs to be even-numbered since both teams have full rosters). 

Take out Naji (not sure how he even fits their lineup needs) and put in Hardy instead (which leaves ATL under the tax line), and take out the DAL pick, and while I think it's still a bit light for DAL, imo it is getting much closer. That would make it:

Atl receives: AD/Gaff/Hardy
Dal receives KP/Kennard/Risacher/OO + 2026 NOP FRP

A note about the NO pick. To me with 3 top prospects available (after which there is a pretty big drop off imo), right now that pick has about a 50-50 chance to be a difference-maker of a pick. ATL will have a hard time letting go of 50-50 odds, of course.

I call it 50-50 now, because I don't think the touted names in slots 4-8 or even lower are necessarily going to be all that great, having watched a few of them and coming away VERY underwhelmed. VERY. 

And those odds of great success can get worse if NO finally starts winning at some point. I thought we would see that already. Sad to say, nope not yet, and we are about 1/2-way through the season. Only about 3 weeks to TDL.

One way forward would be to get the pick but give ATL top-3 protection rather than try to get them to let go - but then DAL loses the enticing aspect of the pick, with the BEST they can get being a much iffier prospect who imo has a decent chance to be a Risacher (big salary, not so exciting prospect after all) so not nearly the value. That's hard to navigate such conflicting values. My hope is that NO starts winning over the next 3 weeks, where the pick loses a lot of its appeal to NO.

Which reminds me - the BEST outcome for DAL is to tank their season away from here, and get a top 5 slot on their own to enter in the lottery. If they can get one of those top 3 guys it would change their trajectory tremendously. It would help to have the NO pick, but that's not the only way to do it.

There have been a lot of very knowledgeable basketball folks (including Stein) who have weighed in on AD current value and you are not in the ballpark of any of them.  I don't know if its because you don't want to move AD unless you are blown over by an offer or if you think everybody else is wrong.  If its the former, these posts would seem more reasonable if you just preface with that.