ROSTER TALK: Mavs favs for Vogel if no HC job exists. Kyrie handshake deal?

[KillerLeft]

You want to have DFS and Maxi as high level contributors at the end of Luka’s contract? I don’t think I can go there with you. They’ll be 33 and 34 at that point. Heck, Wood will be 31 then too.

I think that while it's obviously good to make smart, practical decisions regarding player age and their impact on your future window, a mentality of looking at roster building this way, to this extreme, is lacking in nuance and counterproductive. 

The majority of your thinking when building your roster, imho, needs to be about the 2-3 years right in front of your face. You want to be a good team, not one in constant search of the "perfect starting point" that will stay perfect for years and years. For one thing, you might lose more than gained in the process of flipping players who know how a winning team works in favor of the younger potential. For another, teams just don't stay together very long anymore, so it seems kind of pointless to think that way to me. 

I probably have a higher opinion of those players right now than you do, and I'm sure that's part of it. On some level, I'd see what the team would be losing as more significant than you do, I bet. I don't think this team is anywhere near as bad as we (myself included) have been saying early on. I think it's just another slow start, and if anything, might be due to youth in a weird way. I agree that it's getting harder to call the team "young" but their star/leader is the very definition of that word, and I think that by extension, the team is kind of young, if that makes sense. 

But, I don't think it would be positive, ultimately, to sweep away everyone over a certain age in favor of players who are cemented into Luka's timeline. I think there's real, tangible value in establishing the best possible version of the team right now and giving the franchise an improved rep for simply being a good team. It won't be hard to retool the role players around Luka as you go, provided you make the right "better than role player" acquisitions. If you can get one of those by moving out role players, go for it! But I see almost no value (at this moment in time) in replacing an existing, effective role player who is already ensconced here and has a relationship with Luka, the team and the city, with someone who has none of those things, solely due to their age.