DRAFT: #18 [Green] & #31 [Terry] & trade for #36 [Tyler Bey]

[Scott41theMavs]

And your reasoning about a rookie contributing is just hide-bound dogma.

As for keeping Luka happy, look at the history on Gordon Hayward.

I think your '24-'25 comment is once again overly-dogmatic and extremely naive.

Scott your adjectives crack me up sometimes. Hayward played seven years with Utah. Luka here for seven years takes us to...the end of the 24/25 season.

This is the silly season where draft picks are wildly overvalued. The 18th pick is a lottery ticket...nothing more. We have the 15th pick in what was considered a much better draft on our bench and we can’t wait to get rid of him. But, the 18th pick in this draft is going to be a baller...I just know it. C’mon Man.

I hope you are right and I hope a significant first year contributor falls in our laps. I just don’t see it.

The Heat and the Spurs (and Thunder and Warriors of yore) seemed to have no problem getting very good players the majority of the time.

It's scouting and the accurate evaluation of the player's character. The Mavs have had some excellent hits (seeing the value of Luka; Brunson in second round, DFS) and some horrendous misses (DSJ, although they did a great job of cutting bait; Simba, and highest-paid-second-rounder-ever Roby) in the recent past.

I call complete BS on the draft being a lottery ticket. There's some luck involved, but far more skill. Bad franchises have a much worse draft record than good ones. I think the best comparison is poker or blackjack. I'd lean more toward poker, but could accept some seeing it as blackjack.

In any event, the situation is that the horrendous offseason of 2019 is a "gift" that keeps on giving. The Mavs have one of the best players in the league, a guy who could become a top 20 player if we can keep him healthy, and no trade assets aside from three value guys they should prefer not to get rid of. If the 18th pick doesn't have the value they need it to, they need to nail it and *create* value - not flush it down the dad-burned toilet for powder.