TRADE: Tyus Jones to DAL | Branham to CHA

[Scott41theMavs]

Isn't it likely that the Mavs are of the belief that not only do they have higher priorities than chasing all the losses they can attain, but also that they can't really make much of a diff anyhow, even with a random extra win here or there?

They won't make the play-in, so their limit is pick 10 on one end. They also have a really hard time "catching up" to any of those currently in the top 6, most of whom have a sizable gap difference, and that includes 2 teams (WAS, UT) who simply MUST land in the 1-6 range or lower or else they have a big risk to lose their pick. So I expect those in 1-6 will do what it takes to say in that 1-6 tier.

That means the Mavs are set to land in the 7-10 range (currently in 7) and I would suggest they may not be all that worried - at least for now - as to which of those it is. Maybe in the last week or 2 of the season they shift a bit, but I think they want to have the best play possible from a lot of backup-caliber players that are unlikely to win even if they are "unleashed".

Once again, I cannot disagree more re: Mav wins the rest of the year vs. "catching" the top six tankers.

The Mavs cannot control what happens with those top six. They can control what happens with them. If I'm running the front office, I'm telling Kidd that his secondary mandate is to gauge the fit of the current players with Flagg and what most complements his game, but his primary mandate is a hard, set in marble cap of seven more wins the rest of the way, and even that may be too much. 

It's not just a matter of "the future of our franchise depends on the luck of the ping-pong balls," (we can't control what the ping-pong ball do, that's crazy, man) but also what happens in the worse-case (and more likely than not) scenario that you don't make the top four. There could be a simple monumental difference between picking fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, or tenth, and the importance of getting a cornerstone player in this draft is simply do-or-die. They can't control what the ping-pong ball do, but they can do what is necessary to produce the best pick possible. If they don't pick at least seventh in this draft, to me, that means that more front office malpractice took place between now and the play-in. 

No one seems to have mentioned regarding last night's game that Christie's "ill-fated" (lol hells to the no) hero ball was probably Kidd's specific call. Give the kid the experience of having the game in his hands. After all, he can learn from failure, and what you wanted to happen, happened.

Oh, and perhaps nothing is more important, once again, to keep beating the cowbell, than getting the right decision-maker in place to make the pick. Wherever the Mavs pick, it had damn well better be the guy whom, in five years time, the league and journalistic consensus is that he was the best guy still on the board at that pick.