TRADE: Tyus Jones to DAL | Branham to CHA

[Scott41theMavs]

Thanks for your responses.

On the idea of trading the 1st, to me the best player to add alongside CF is the one with the best upside, rather than the one who is farthest along at the moment. CF's trajectory is like a rocket. I took some heat back in the summer when I said he needed to be used in challenging ways, even if he isn't yet up to the task, because he is a super fast learner who will grow his game incredibly quickly. He needs game opportunity to grow his skills. We are not even 2/3 of the way through season 1 and he's already leaps and bounds ahead of where he began the year. 

That won't stop. So just find the best talent, and hope they can grow their play as fast as he does.

As far as trading for that guy rather than draft pick, who is that guy who is still young, and who would be the perfect fit next to CF? And would he even be available? I don't recall these sort of trades elsewhere, do you?

PS This is where you need an expert GM!

Speaking of which, if we go back in NBA history, we can see a GM who did make a move like that. In 1980 BOS had added Bird a year earlier who had a stellar rookie season. Then they ended up with the top pick and there was a franchise-type center coming out of college. Auerbach traded that pick to GS, who sent them pick 3 and a young center. The center was named Parrish. Pick 3 was McHale. 

If the Mavs get more lottery luck and land pick 1 (or 2 or 3), would you do a trade like THAT?

One of the reasons the Mavs traded for KP in '19 was because of how "ahead of schedule" (which should have been easy to see for anyone with the brain before the draft even happened) Luka was, combined with the reality that they didn't have a pick because they used it to trade for Luka. CF is just as ahead of schedule as Luka was (imho, but I'll admit it's debatable), but the difference is we have our pick. 

In spite of no decent picks (aside from grabbing Brunson with Luka in '18 and the DL pick), the Mavs lucked into some success due to Brunson and then chessed into success due to Lindsay - and then of course promptly lost Lindsay and traded away the golden egg-laying goose. The single most obvious and speedy way for Dallas to become a perennial contender with Flagg as the flaggship is to nail this draft (as in, move up in it). If they don't, let's say that due to botched tanking and leapfrogging they pick 10th. This draft is so tremendous that there is a 100% chance that an average or better perennial starter (a guy who, in his prime, is going to command $18-20 m/year) is going to be available there. If you have the right GM, you'll get that guy as opposed to doing a Sacramento or a New Orleans. If you don't have the right guy and they botch it, then I suppose that isn't the end of the world as Lindsay showed us - but it does mean you're going to have to get a better guy real darn quick to fix what that guy messed up.