Trade & Free Agency 2026/2027

[cow]

Since the TWolves don't have a lot of future firsts, if they want Kryie, they can give up McDaniels. Otherwise, no.

My issues with trading Kyrie are 1) he brings a lot of value to the court for the Mavs for the coming year for Masai's "We're winning in Dallas" agenda, and 2) his value is distressed until teams see how he plays. Some have talked of the risk of his value going down even further if he looks like crap. He won't look like crap. So the solitary reason to trade Kyrie now is if a first rounder in this year's draft is included. The package would have to be:
1) A pick in the 1-8 range;
2) A pick in the 10-18 range along with a 27-or-younger contention-level rotation player (plus expirings);
3) A pick in the 18-29 range along with 2 27-or-younger contention rotation players, with one of them being a contention-level starter.
If one of teams linked to Kyrie can pony that up, sure, do a deal. Otherwise, wait and see what is offered at the deadline.

Agree with the sentiment, but I'd be more greedy than that.  Like:

1.)  A pick in the 1-4 range (not at all likely to happen)
2.)  A young player with upside a la SGA for PG13 (I'm not expecting that player to turn into what SGA is now, but he was a very promising prospect when that trade happened)
3.)  Multiple future FRPs with a young starter/rotation level player

We have no reason to be bad moving forward so Kyrie is valuable to us and he seemingly wants to be here.  Until those factors change, I'm in no rush to trade him.  He's also our last piece that can significantly restock our barren future asset cupboard.  Further, if you are hoping to turn the likes of Gafford or PJ into a future asset, their stock will go up if they get some court time with Kyrie, otherwise you'd sell them as depressed assets.  And I acknowledge the risk in keeping Kyrie as he might not look the same, but I'm not overly concerned with that and it's a gamble I'm fine with.  Once Kyrie is gone, this is a bad team again, but probably not bad or lucky enough to preserve that '27 pick.