Luka Dealt to Lakers: Nico Harrison is a Basketball Terrorist

[audiosway]

All conversational roads lead back here, don't they? You're stating this as an objective fact, and I think many people agree, to the extent that they haven't even tried to imagine this not being a fact, even if only as a thought exercise. But, what if it's not true? 

Over the past week, we've eliminated the possibility that this is all some sort of tin foil hat conspiracy to move the Mavericks to Vegas or some other crap like that. 

With today's conversation, I think we've ended any/all talk that the new ownership is just "too cheap to pay Luka," unless you think they're HOPING Kyrie walks for nothing. I  was pretty surprised to learn how close AD's salary was likely to be to Luka's moving forward. So, it's not that they just don't want to pay ANYONE that much. Salary structure wise, they're pretty much right where they would've been, only with AD instead of Luka, and they had to (or were able to?) use Kleber's contract to get there (we're probably not talking enough about HIS inclusion in the deal, and how that remaining year might have had an impact on the return, btw). 

It really is just that they do not believe Luka, specifically, is WORTH that contract, and that giving it to them would cripple the team. That's the bottom line, and all there is to see here. Obviously, they can be way wrong about that, and it's natural for we, Luka's biggest fans, to assume they are. But, I just keep coming back to the idea that these are the people who see Luka the most, behind the scenes. They did not like what they saw. 

I think there's at least a small chance this might have improved their chances of winning in this new, shorter window. I'm at least trying to stay open to it.

This is what I keep coming back to as well. Even ESPN guys were saying it. Yes it's the Lakers, BUT, no one knows more about Luka than Dallas. And they weren't going to commit a supermax to that guy.

I think with this current crew they have a 3-4 year window competing for a title. I know something they have mentioned is not just the conditioning but the complaining to the refs. I could see Kidd frustrated with that. They had to tell Cuban to just chill out with that because he kept hurting their chances. Once he got quiet they won a title.

Like you said, it's evident they don't mind paying. The salary situation with AD is right there with Luka and they had to include salary to get it done. There is already talk that Kyrie and AD will both resign in the offseason. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if Durant tried to make his way to Dallas in the offseason as well. We'll see on that one though. I'm not in favor of giving up of the assets they do have to make that happen.

As GM Nico has made some good moves. The Brunson thing was done by the time he got to Dallas. The previous regime with Cuban had already botched that I believe.

I'm not saying this is a great move by Nico. It will take quite some time to realize if it was a good move or not. But, I am going to stick around and see how it turns out.

Feels like to me this current injury was from rushing AD back sooner than he should have been to quiet the fans.