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

[cow]

I've said it many times, and it bears repeating ---

Until Cuban hires an EXPERT (and takes himself out of the equation, fully empowering the expert) to handle the player evaluation, negotiation, drafting, development, and all the other roster-building tasks, the Mavs will continue to blunder their way along. It's a GM's league, there are only 30 teams, and the competition has EXPERTS who are actively competing against the Mavs.

The fact that Cuban chose to replace Donnie with a man who has none of those skills, and will be learning on the job while competing against others who are miles ahead and also learning more skills, it was a terrible choice. They needed an expert, and got a kindergartner. While we are disappointed by what's going on, none of these results should be surprising.

They still have no clue how to get players who are two-way talents -- in particular, those who can defend -- so how are they going to fix this? Blind leading the blind.

Agreed.  They've also had the bad habit of collecting and paying too many one dimensional players.  The days of specialists, unless you are a top flight defender, are quickly coming to an end in the NBA, especially on heftier contracts.  

I also think most teams would have issues building around Luka.  He's a transcendent offensive talent, but is a liability on the other end of the floor (some of that by his own choosing) and for as good is offensively, he's shown he doesn't naturally mesh with other players who need the ball.  KP was disaster but even Jalen, Din and now Kyrie feels more like a my-turn-your-turn situation than an offense.