I'm out on the 2023-24 season ....

[KillerLeft]

Coincidence.

I cancelled my Fubo TV/Bally subscription today. I just don’t get joy from watching this team. Part of it is probably watching too much sports for the last 30 years. Part of it is I just don’t connect with this team. Both the style of play and the superstar annoy me. I’m a big Steph and Jokic fan and I just can’t stand the diva behavior and the iso ball. I don’t care how efficient this offense might be. Ball movement basketball is beautiful to watch. This Harden ball isn’t. It feels like a chore watching games.

Honestly I can’t stand Luka. The fake tough guy thing where he’d probably get his ass whooped by most people he talks shit to if he did it on the street. The constant complaining with the referees. The constant not running back on defense and ball watching. The yelling at teammates when they make mistakes. The showing up to games hungover. Hunting triple doubles like Westbrook and Harden. His act has gotten old to me.

It’s not even about oh if they had a better roster I’d love the team.

DISCLAIMER: I quoted the post above to reply, but the longer I typed the more this became about the entire topic of this thread, not just the quoted post.  Feel free to skip if you're not interested.

I'm not there yet, but in all honesty I get this POV. I've had thoughts like this 100 times over the past two seasons. 

The reality is that we'd miss him a ton if he left - it would totally gut the franchise (just look what losing Brunson did). But, that doesn't change the frustration quotient on any of the notes above, all of which I believe have some validity. 

I don't think Luka is a finished product, and I've been saying so for years. It has gotten me a lot of flak around here, but to me, he's just a kid. You could put the PERFECT, most complementary team around him overnight tonight, and I don't think he's even close to being able to win an NBA championship. Seriously, not close. NBA championships seem like they are usually won by MEN (28-35?) and Luka is clearly still a boy. 

I don't feel bad about saying this, or worried about him, because he's getting older. He's learning. He's improving all the time. We know he's beyond gifted. We know he's beyond competitive. I still believe that HE will get there. What I'm more than a little worried about is whether how the organization is treating him is the right way to get him there fastest (or at all). I do not think he should be allowed to loaf on transition defense. I do not think he should be allowed to play half court defense as lazily as he does at times. I think there should be consequences to being out of shape at key times on the calendar year. I think there should be consequences to consuming alcohol during the season.

My BIGGEST worry, however, is this whole "can't waste a year of Luka" mentality that has infected the thinking of so many. He's not ready. Building a team the RIGHT way, the ORGANIC way, the SMART way, taking your time to do it on HIS timeline...that's not "wasting" anything. That's just good team building. I was all for the Porzinigis trade with NY at the time, but once that didn't work, chances of a quick-build title were over. Period. The Mavs no longer had the draft capital to do it that way. They blew their wad on a shiny toy, and the toy wasn't fun to play with. Oh, well. 

I was ready to give up around this time LAST YEAR, some of you might remember. Bad team. Bad coach. Same complaints about Luka, only much WORSE (Omahen is correct, imo - he has improved with some of this stuff since last year). No assets. No young talent. No HOPE. 

Then, they did the unimaginable - they had a good summer. I'm dumfounded that Williams is this bad, I'll admit it. That looks like a misstep at the moment, but I haven't totally given up. Even still, Lively was a home run. I believe O-Max will be even MORE valuable than Lively, given time and opportunity. Exum is a piece it looks like they can count on for a while. Green's new contract is great. They got Powell back on a great contract, and he's playing well lately. DJJ was a great signing for this season, at least. I hope it works out in the future, but either way he's good now. 

You can't undo almost a decade of awful with one summer of good. That's not how anything in life works. It's tempting as fans to check the clock that's been running since the night Luka was drafted, but that's just not real. The reality is that the first several years went up in smoke with that Porzingis trade, and with losing Brunson for nothing. FAILURE - no ifs, ands or buts. 

This is a new clock. The post-Donnie, post-Carlisle clock. So far, I would attribute the new team with one abysmal off-season and one that's much better than almost any Mavs off-season I can remember. Look how much hope that ONE good summer ushered in! Look how much more they have to work with on the trade market! Look how much more we have to argue about, as in "no way I put that young player in that deal - he's going to be great!" Right or wrong on those assessments, they have young talent again!!!

I didn't believe they could dig the team even this far out of the ditch. Straight up, this time last year I thought we were just in a holding pattern until Luka left. It was just hard to see what they could accomplish with NO ASSETS. In one summer they got me interested again. Now, I totally agree that we're zeroing in on the ceiling for the current team, and that can certainly be depressing. However, if one good summer can get them this far, what would ANOTHER good summer do? Am I the only one cautiously optimistic that this past summer is indicative of organizational improvement?