06-24-2026, 06:15 PM
(06-24-2026, 06:09 PM)KillerLeft Wrote: I said it somewhere in the heat of the live reacting, pages ago, but the Morez Johnson Jr pick should be seen as a win for anyone who argued in favor of "best player available" as an ABSOLUTE draft strategy.
He was obviously the player they liked best based on who went off the board, and we KNOW that because in terms of immediate fit, Burries would've been a no-brainer by comparison. So clearly, the Mavs think Johnson is a better player, prospect, whatever, than Burries. That much is beyond dispute.
I also think it's pretty clear, thinking through all of the rumors these past weeks, that the Mavs themselves leaked some things in an effort to get someone to trade up with them. I'm 99% sure that's where both the Mara (OKC) and Ament (MIL) rumors came from, and possibly even some of the Burries stuff, too. Remember about a week ago when it came out that the Burries interest in Dallas was "mutual?" That might've been aimed right at GS, honestly. Why were they attempting these games? Because they knew how picks 1-8 were going to go (we all did, basically) and had decided Johnson was their guy. They were trying to get 1-2 spots lower and pick something up for the trouble. Ultimately, it didn't work, but I'm pretty confident they tried.
SO...kudos to them for taking the guy they wanted. Call it a reach if you want, but if so it's only by 1-2 spots, and there are rumors that other teams were trying to trade up for Johnson, specifically, so I'm not even sure how safe a trade down would've been.
In my opinion, anyone who thinks "BPA" is the way to go, full stop, has to be satisfied with this. In my mind, this was CLEARLY the best choice left on the board at 9 in a vacuum, depending on what you feel about the upside of Ament or how high you are on Burries' potential. I sure wasn't interested in Lendenborg or Mara, and not long after that we got the 2nd run on PG's.
A team reaching for fit might've been tempted to reach for Stritz, for example. THAT would've been a reach, and possible even a semi-defensible one, given the circumstances.
Good post. I would add that Johnson is the BPA when you have Flagg as your "centerpiece." A different team with a different roster could argue for another player (maybe), but the one thing I saw last season is that Flagg needs the ball. Moritz Johnson doesn't subtract from that.