2020-2021 AROUND the NBA: Archived

[mvossman]

I guess it depends how you define win now.  Mavs are kind of stuck in the middle.  Too good to be a lottery team, not nearly good enough to be a championship team.  I think they'll try to improve the team with our available cap space, but if that doesn't work out, you could use that cap space to take on shorter, bad contracts and try to grab assets.  They could do this with KP too.  You could also flip our better players/contracts (Brunson, DFS, Maxi) for future picks.  

I agree that Mark wants to win, he's always impatient.  But if you can't land an impact player with our cap space, there is no use in spending money on a player along the lines of Wright or Richardson as you aren't improving the ceiling of the team (2nd round exit).

I don't think they are quite as far as you are stating from competing, especially if KP gets back to what he was last year.  I don't think Cuban brought in Nico and Kidd to trade away players for picks.  That's not something he did back when it made sense, and I would argue it probably does not make sense now.  Luka is about to sign his first extension.  The clock is ticking.  They have 34 in cap and need to add two starters, preferably one who is at least close to "star".  If they have to go old (Lowry/Conley), bad fit (DeRozan), out for a year (Kawhi) or overpay an RFA (Collins/Ball) they are going to go balls out to get that star.  And if they completely fail on getting a star, then they will go hard at second tier guys (Powell, Fournier, Holmes, Barton, Schroder, Dinwiddie) and there are a lot of guys around the MLE that could easily start on this team.

There are probably over 20 guys out there before you get to Wright/Richardson level.  We are one of the few teams that has significant cap space and can spend well over MLE on multiple players.  This is it.  I don't think they can push the can down the road any more after Luka signs his extension.  They have to get some talent in, and I think they will do anything they can to do it.