Jalen Brunson and Dorian Finney-Smith are eligible for 4-year, $55 million extensions

[mavsluvr]

If Nico could somehow change this philosophy it would be huge.  In my view Brunson is a perfect example - a player good enough to get something back in trade and probably talented enough to take on a bigger role than what he would be able to have on the Mavs.  Seems like a trade would be a win/win for both the player and the team.

I am not disagreeing with that, just making observations on what the situation seems to be.

Nico is still learning the job himself. Brian and Mark talked about this a little on their previous pod. While Nico's experience and relationships as a shoe executive are valuable, they don't mean he knows how to be a GM, and he has really been thrown into the deep end. According to Brian, anyway. 

I think there is a reason Cuban hired a GM who has no experience in the field. A guy who has done it before might come in with his own ideas about how things should be done. And those might not match up with the way Cubes likes to do business, even if they're good ideas. With a tenderfoot like Nico, Cuban really has no reason to think that guy knows any more about roster-building than Mark does. 

So far, Cuban appears to be using Nico more as the guy to re-organize basketball operations, looking for more structure and accountability. In that area of responsibility, he reportedly does have a lot of experience in the way of organizational management. 

tl;dr   I don't know that it is realistic of us to think that Nico is going to persuade Mark to build rosters a different way, at least for the time being.