Trade & FA 2023-24: Stein-Ingram Trade Inevitable| LAL Want Lebron Back On Any Terms

[Dundalis]

I don't hate PJ Washington.  I just hate the trade.  We gave up our best available asset for him.  If that was the market price for a player like PJ Washington, I think we should have waited.  As many have said before me, we would have had more assets available this coming summer and could have afforded a better player who came available by combining those.  I really like the Gafford trade and I think he will make a big difference to our team.  I think our smaller 4s like DJJ and Grant Williams would have looked better next to another hot-blocking, rebounding big.  I don't see why we needed a desperation trade for PJ Washington.

As to PJ, he's only 25 but he's actually become worse with age.  His 3-point percentage has declined 4 straight years.  His defensive metrics on LEBRON and DPM are all negative.   There may be some talent there to reclamate.  Is Jason Kidd the coach to inspire PJ Washington to actually practice shooting and playing hard on defense? 

I expressed a lot of concerns when we traded the 2030 swap rights for Grant Williams.  I was fine with the Grant Williams contract.  I just couldn't believe we gave up the 2030 swap for him.  We gave up valuable asset for a guy who Boston wasn't going to re-sign anyway.  7 months later, Grant Williams became a negative contract.  Apparently, part of the function of the 2027 1st was to get off that bad contract.  There's a real possibility that the PJ Washington contract will also be considered a bad contract in a year.  

We'll all get to watch PJ play here over the rest of the season.  I hope he plays well and I'm wrong.  I'll acknowledge if I was.  I think there's real chance that plays no better than Grant Williams.  If his 3-point shot stays at 32.4%, then he will be a huge problem for our offense.  

If his DPM stays at -1.0, then he'll be another poor defender on the Mavs.  

We spent a lot in order to get a guy who has been bad this season.  So bad that he's backup on a team on pace to win only 16 games.  There should be more concern on this board about this trade.

Fair enough, but I just don't think saying we gave up our best asset on an asset poor team is saying much. Like if a truly desirable player becomes available, are we  really gonna clutch at our single FRP like some pauper with a penny, when other orgs that are already better than us and have FRP falling out of their pockets that they will want to giveaway, are competing? I'm just not sure how valuable what we gave up really is, given what the competition for any truly desirable players will be in the short term. I think it's debatable. I don't think there is a player the team could have acquired in the off season prior to these trades that it can no longer pull off. 

It is 100% the teams fault that the org is so asset deficient, I'm certainly not absolving them of any blame there. Cuban's careless attitude towards draft picks over the years has always pissed me off. But the situation currently is what it is, and that's what the FO has to move forward with. Also the players we brought in will have value, especially if they get playoff experience, even if they don't absolutely light the world on fire, because that's how teams seem to value players, with Grant Williams the literal perfect example of this.

I think the Grant Williams misevaluation makes logical sense, because players who put up even pedestrian numbers on winning teams, tend to have overestimated value, even well above players with better numbers on losing teams. A primary reason for people talking up the Grant Williams acquisition all over the media had nothing to do with his individual skillset, but was simply that he has a lot of playoff experience. That was repeated over and over. The fact of the matter is he has never had any real  offensive skill outside spot up shooting, and has always been a bad, undersized athlete, who was just wide and managed to put some good defensive performances in against some elite players, but with the context that he was surrounded by excellent defenders when doing so. PJ might not work out, but he literally has none of those limitations IMO. He's not an above the rim athlete, but he's at least solid overall for his position while having a well above avg wingspan, also having a three level scorer offensive skillset that he has so far had no real no consistency with. I think Dinwiddies situation is still a prominent example to me of what can happen moving from a bad situation to a good one. How do you explain the difference between his performances with Dallas vs other teams? Like it might as well be a different player. Even THJ with Dallas vs other teams is a significant difference. These are two players who always had somewhat diverse offensive skillsets that struggled to make it work with any consistency on bad teams, which is some context they share with PJ vs other limited spot up shooter only type acquisitions that have come to Dallas.

It's not remotely a great trade, but I think this team has done the lets wait for the perfect deal to come along (Harrison Barnes trade exception), and had it simply not happen. Also teams with far better assets than us were more likely to not act this trade deadline, than they will be in the off season due to likely wanting to assess where some of their players are at the rest of the season. I think if there even is a deficiency on our asset status post trade (assets lost vs the value of PJ and Gafford), that deficiency is likely worth the risk of getting Gafford and taking the risk on PJ.

You're not wrong but I'm not either.  It simply depends on your perspective.  If you spend 40k to buy a 4runner but then a year later, you trade it and 40k in cash for a Range Rover, you have spent 80k ultimately to obtain the Range Rover.  Minus the utility of driving that 4runner for a year which you could estimate.

Your way of looking at it is also correct.  You're just focusing on the immediate deal.  

It is possible that the Mavericks were sick of Grant Williams, recognized their mistake and wanted to desperately get rid of him even though we just paid a 2030 pick swap to obtain him.  

I think that's really concerning though.  We have done this repeatedly over the past 15 years.  We're not only bad at talent evaluation but we turn on our players very easily.  There's something pathologic there.  I think Cuban is the biggest part of it but Kidd and even Luka seem to contribute as well.  We're like a guy who has been divorced 11 times.  After a while, that guy needs to understand that he's the problem.  

Just in the past year we've turned on Christian Wood, JaVale McGee and Grant Williams.  Other good teams don't do this.  

The biggest issue is just the price we paid for PJ Washington.  It's like we traded the 4Runner for a Toyota Highlander with similar mileage.  Yet we also included 40k in the deal.  The other guy had a really good day.

I think you are leaving out context when talking about players that have been turned on. Good teams don't do that, because they don't put those players in key positions to be relied on by the team to perform. Therefore when they don't perform, there is no rush to push them out the door, not because they wouldn't be perfectly happy to, but because their role on the team doesn't hurt the teams outcomes that much. We get these players in, put them in key roles and expect them to perform to those expectations. Then when they don't, we are in trouble, because their performances are heavily tied to the outcomes of the team. Being more inclined to quickly ship them out makes absolute logical sense given these scenario's, as we need to find someone who can fill these key roles on the team pretty quickly. So while you can absolutely put the blame on the FO for picking these players up and putting them in key roles in the first place, I think it's a bit over the top to ascribe any pathology or mal intent around the team shipping out under performing players quicker than other teams. The context with which they were shipped out makes sense to me, even if the initial decisions to bring them in the first place were obviously poor ones.