Ideal roles for the current roster

[mvossman]

I have shared your thinking about this for years, although I find your explanations far more expert than my own. 

But what I've seen since the trade leads me to believe that the Mavs actually play better defense and offense with either Gaf or DLive on the floor. I haven't checked out the metrics on that for confirmation, though. 

Are you seeing that as well? If you do see them playing better with Gaf or DLive on the floor in these regular season games, do you think things might be different in the playoffs? I acknowledge that that may be the case, as teams try to target centers in space. 

This stretch of games has me leaning pro center, or at least, pro these two centers. 

I'm a Maxi fan as well. But Maxi plus one of the centers has actually played well (admittedly, without looking at the numbers).

Its hard to compare Maxi with the two other bigs because they are used in different situations.  Maxi is generally used in small ball lineups (against other small ball lineups), and the one featuring Maxi/PJ is a net +15 with a crazy good defensive rating of 96.  The numbers say he has been more effective in that role than as a power forward next to one of the bigs, but again it is heavily driven by matchups.