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

[StrandedOnBeauboisHill]

I'm not feeling the doom and gloom yet for this season.

I think a lot of the disappointment I've been noticing has all been related to expectations.  Just talking to some buddies who don't follow the nuance that folks on this board would follow, the expectation seemed to be "this is a western conference finals team" as opposed to "Brunson just walked for nothing and we're still paying for the Porzingis trade so of course this is going to be a small step back sort of year while we recoop assets unless we totally mortgage the future to make Luka slightly happier for this one playoff run that will mostly be a lost cause anyway because we even our best offer in season is still a half measured move at best that would make the second half of this decade the most miserable one you can imagine".

This team reeked of a 45-50 win team that landed in the 4-6 range with a puncher's chance to win a playoff round because of Luka.  It's tough on the eyes and frustrating in the moment but this has kind of gone how I expected it so far.  I don't want to be painted too much of an optimist because I recognize that this current roster and the current assets are in an awful place and Cuban has been cheap and made some head scratching decisions but the main thing that has led to all of this is how much we paid to get Luka and KP together and most people applauded mortgaging everything to do that at the time.  Well we missed on that and we're paying for those sins but we're very close to getting a clean slate back and roster management/changes will become much easier again assuming we just make a move with our smaller assets this deadline.

To me the western conference is broken into a handful of tiers in terms of assets for this trade deadline.

Already good with all their assets plus others to get even better:

MEM
NOP

Already good/decent with all/most their assets to get even better:

PHX
GSW (still owe a protected first to MEM)
SAC (they do owe a heavily protected first to ATL)
PDX (they have a weird reverse protection going on so their draft capital is kind of tied up depending on how this season goes.  I'm also not sure if they're good or decent)

Improving teams loaded with assets:

UTH
OKC

Great teams that are completely tied to their current roster without much flexibility:

DEN

Good/decent teams completely tied to their current roster without much flexibility:

LAC
DAL
MIN (much more tied to their roster than all these others)

Bad teams completely tied to their current roster without much flexibility:

LAL

Tanking:

SAS 
HOU

We move out of that tier this offseason. This season is a wash and that's awful for a fanbase to sit through when you have someone like Luka and it's also awful for Luka to sit through but we'll be able to build team Luka 2.0 after the draft with some lessons learned from the KP miss.  I'm not saying that it's 100% that Cuban and Nico will make the right decisions and build a great contender this time around but to me it kind of feels like the first time we'll actually be able try again since Luka's rookie season.