2026 NBA draft thread

[mvossman]

I feel I've been pretty careful to word things in terms of whether or not the Mavs have identified their guy from among the PG's in that tier. It's very possible that their opinions are just as guess-oriented and gut-feelingish as ours, but I kind of doubt it, since they have access to more info and the players themselves, and...idk, I guess I just really hope they have a better grasp than we do. 

But, I'll state it all again, for the 100th time, I guess: If you don't have a PG, and a very good one, you don't have a basketball team. The only thing that passes for a PG on the Mavs' roster right now is 34, coming off of an entire missed year and I wouldn't be surprised if he'd rather be somewhere else, since the team is quite literally starting over in basically every conceivable way this summer.

If you can get Peterson, great! If not, which seems likely, I could be talked into any of Wagler, Brown, Acuff, Flemings or Burries. But, just because I'm ok with lumping them together doesn't mean they're interchangeable. I'm watching YouTube highlights and listening to podcasts while I work on my real job. The guys who make these choices for a living had better not see those guys as interchangeable, because 1-2 of them will be misses and 1-2 of them will be stars. If the Mavs think they know which will be stars, or more accurately, if they've identified which of them they feel confident they can MAKE into a star, depending on them to fall to #9 in order to move the franchise forward seems like loser thinking to me.

I just don't think its that black and white for the experts.  If it was, you would see a lot more movement in the draft.  I think every draftee is a probability function, and those 5 guys may be really close to each other even for the experts regardless of how far apart they actually end up.

I will say this, given your hyper focus on lead guard, I don't think you should have Burries in your second tier.  I think his odds to turn into a starting NBA player is at least as high as the rest of the guys, but his odds to turn into a starting lead guard is appreciably less than those other guys.