2019-2020 Mavs Trade Discussion + Salary Chart

[DanSchwartzgan]

The alternative to this kind of thinking is, "Welp, better enjoy Luka now, because the MBT has put us in a situation in which the roster cannot be improved in the next two or three years, so he'll walk when they can't get him any more help."

I think this is a false dichotomy

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The Mavs are top 4 in the West with the L's best offense in Luka's second year, and our cast of "7th men" just beat the NBA's best team, yet our two most active threads are about trades. I guess that's just how baseball go.

It is absolutely a false dichotomy.  I wanted to post in the other trade thread yesterday (mostly talk of Holiday and Turner), but couldn't bring myself to do it (until this morning) because some of the ideas were so outlandish.  I like a good fantasy trade as much as the next guy, but come on.  People miss DL's capology knowledge, but the other thing he brought to the board was a dose of realism when it came to trade ideas.  I didn't always appreciate his approach, but his willingness to call a spade a spade tended to make people more thoughtful about their ideas.

To your point about the most active threads, I think we as fans find ourselves in an interesting and frustrating position.  There is absolutely no agreement on what we need.  A defensive wing?  Another big?  Should it be a veteran band aide?  Of, a youngster to grow up with our unicorns?  There is absolutely no agreement on who is expendable.  In fact, it changes from game to game.  A week ago Curry is a dog.  Two games later he is an indispensable cog.  Almost everyone on the roster has had a stretch where they looked fantastic.  The truth is we have a delicate balance that works pretty well.  When you are a 55-ish (pace) win team, improvement is likely to be incremental and comes at some risk unless you have the ability to land KD like GSW did.  

Timing is also a factor here.  What we do now impacts flexibility in the summer.  Given our ability to trade our first at the draft, we might be able to do something more impactful then.  To me, we are a bit thin in the big rotation.  Biyombo and Dieng and Henson and others have been mentioned.  They would presumably come along with a small asset.  But small assets can be combined with bigger assets later and we could use another six fouls in the front court in case any of Maxi, Powell and KP gets hurt for a week or two.  Even turning the GSW #2 into a very late #1 would give us some flexibility to trade our own pick as we'd have a first to spare.  That kind of thing seems a much more likely path than the incredibly disruptive 3 for 1's that were being proposed for Jrue yesterday.