05-05-2026, 10:22 PM
(05-05-2026, 04:51 PM)F Gump Wrote: My thoughts...
I would offer to take a usable player from someone needing space, using TPE, at a price of a FRP to DAL. Key word is "usable." Usable is someone Mavs need, OR someone who might be in demand where someone later pays to get them. I don’t want to be the garbage man taking your totally useless trash.
I would alternately offer to take your bigger salary, better player for Martin and Johnson. Trading some savings for some more usable player.
I would not be sending picks. The goal is to increase draft capital. Always.
Who might be useful here can change drastically due to the draft upcoming.
I don´t think he´ll care about the return quality of the player for the TPE as much as he does for the length of the contract. That will be more crucial. The plan will be to add draft capital, but keep the cap clean going forward. Somebody with his draft expertise in a draft of this depth, will be more than happy to do deals with Cavs/Nuggets/Lakers for late 1st round picks.
That will be step one imho regardless of the continuation afterwards.
Then it can basically go two ways. He either forces the issues using Gafford/Washington/Thompson/Lively/Christie to acquire a superstar like Giannis. Or it goes the other way and he´ll liquidate all the older assets including Kyrie for more draft capital and keeps adding to the Flagg/Lively/Christie/2026 picks core.
Decision might come down to the actual costs to acquire the superstar, the health/long-term projection of Lively and whether he rates Christie as a long-term piece.
One thing I´ll be pretty confident about. He´ll have Wilson over Boozer and probably Peterson, too. Also guess Brown and Burries would be the guards he fancies and Steinbach might be in play, at 8-10 range.