What would you have done as GM that would have gotten you an A+ this off-season?

[Mavs2021]

Read them all.

This is not the same exercise. We have more complete information now then we did then. We can complain that the Mavs didn’t sign Lowry, Lonzo, CP3, or Connelly, but now we know that none of them were truly available.  I was in favor of pursuing Lonzo, but now I see he had already picked Chicago so I have to pivot.  I liked Powell but he already had a deal lined up to return to Portland.  It looks like Fournier and Kemba were available, but I don’t like either of them on the Mavs, so I have to be ok with THJ.

What I’m attempting to do is have a conversation where we stop going through the same exercise from the last several months where we had complete information; I’m trying to have a new conversation with complete information where instead of complaining about our pipe dreams that had ZERO chance of happening, we discuss possible plan B’s that we would have liked more.

Let’s imagine we’re in the War room, it’s 5:01pm on Monday, we get off the phone with the agents of the top 4 FA PGs and they are going elsewhere, what do we do?

Sounds like a lot of people here would have quit their GM jobs then and there because they failed at Plan A.

So what?

The whole point of a front office is to assess the market place and free agency with imperfect information. To fill in the blanks is their whole job. It´s not exactly rocket science either. When you contact a free agent four weeks before the official start of FA and he keeps saying I think about it, that means he does not want to sign here and has or is looking for other options.

I guarantee you that´s what happened with Lowry. He did not say YES and then VAJ´d on August 1st. He said: eh maybe, we´ll see, could be, I consider you an option. THAT MEANS NOT HAPPENING. I don´t know how many times this has to happen before THE SHARK gets it. Apparently a decade of Danny Greens, Dwight Howards, Hassan Whitesides and Mike Conleys is not enough.

If it has not happened before Day One, it´s not happening at all, especially with the biggest available free agents.

At that point I expect the Mavs (with four weeks left on the clock until official free agency) to move onto their next plan/ realistic targets, UNTIL they get a definite YES from a FA or can make a trade.

You simply cannot convince me that in a decade thousands of free agents flat out rejected the Mavs. No it´s because they always target the wrong players.

For Christ´s sake Julius Randle lives in Dallas to this day. Every off-season he is back in the city, not in Los Angeles and  not in New York. He tattooed the city on his forearm in 2019. NOPE. Got to negotiate with the Grizzlies over a S&T for Delon Wright that actually cost us two 2nd round picks. Then people whine that nobody wants to sign here. You picked Delon Wright over JULIUS RANDLE and TWO 2nd round picks.

Look maybe the big trades are still happening. Maybe they pounce on some interesting players with the MLE or TPE, since I believe Bullock hasn´t officially signed yet. There is still time for the new MBT to be different.

So far though this is the same stupid Cuban playbook just with different people in charge. And there are no after the fact excuses. The only time they have a legit excuse is DeAndre Jordan Part I.

This off-season has only washed the hands of Carlisle and Donnie clean, without them even touching the soap.