Accurately Assessing the Mavs Recent Personnel Changes

[KillerLeft]

One more thing:

Whether we think this is right or wrong, strategically, I'm 100% convinced that, despite his words on draft night, Harrison's main goal this off-season was to improve upon DJJ, at least in the starting lineup. He called re-signing Jones "priority 1A and 1B" but we factually know that wasn't the case, because he clearly prioritized signing Thompson over even considering waiting around to negotiate with Jones. Further, there's a ton of smoke out there about how the Mavs made a serious play for KCP before even pivoting to Thompson, and HE would not only have taken DJJ's starting spot, but most of his ROLE, too.

I think this tells us two things:

1) The Mavs are currently much better at the "tampering" part of this process than they used to be, evidenced by their fixation with KCP starting and ending before free agency even began and then them clearly being in the driver's seat with Thompson the second moves were able to actually happen. We've always known the good front offices operate this way, and the Mavs have probably always done this type of thing more than we realize, but this time, they were SUCCESSFUL. I think that's significant.

2) I think they were VERY willing to let DJJ walk to get what they wanted out of the summer. I think that "priority" talk was to show him respect and to keep the door open to what seems, in hindsight, like kind of a fallback option for them.